Switch only needs new Mario game to reach 160 easily

Each year thousands of  children become old enough to have a Switch

Believe it or not, there are plenty of households in the USA (and around the world) where $299 for a console is an unreachable goal. The inevitable price cut will certainly help many of those folks enjoy the healthy catalogue. There are so many families that are always, and I mean always, one console generation behind. As many have stated in the past, this is Nintendo's war to win or lose. The real question is how fast does Nintendo want people to move onto their new baby. If software creates profit and folks are still buying up last gen software like hotcakes, I don't think they'll be falling over themselves to make the Switch obsolete. The original Gameboy is a perfect example of this.

 The console makers have in the past  put out percentage figures for returns/ faulty hardware, but how they compare across the home and portable console space I  don't know and while it would be interesting if someone could find those figures, at the end of the day it's just one of many factors that make up the sales numbers   and isn't something that's just inherent to just the Switch.

Yeah there are millions of households in the US alone that live paycheck to paycheck and a $300 purchase (plus the games that come after that) is a major buy.

And of course there are millions of kids in the world each year reaching the age where they can play games and are interested in games for the first time.

But, Nintendo absolutely has to do a major price cut to pick up the million of potential new users.

Right now it looks like its probably on pace to get a little bit over 140m. <135 million by end of this year, and let's just assume a new system comes out in a little over 12 months from now, that means it'll be close to 140m when replaced, and maybe just reaches 140m if no price cut because why would anyone buy a Switch except the $200 Lite if they can buy the next gen system at likely the same price as the OLED with full backwards compatibility (I'm assuming Nintendo aren't insane and the successor will have backwards compatibility). They $300 and $350 models would completely stop selling because no one in their right mind would buy the old systems if the new system is out and probably will cost $350 as well.

The Switch absolutely needs to drop to a significantly lower price than the successor for it to pick up those extra millions of sales once it is replaced. It would also help sales before it is replaced as well of course. If Nintendo drops the price to $180, $250, and $300 this year to keep sales going strong this year, and then sometime next year just before it is replaced, whenever that ends up being, drop it again to say $160, $230, $270, versus presumably a next gen system at $350, I think that's enough of a price difference where they could continue selling the Switch to late adopters, parents of young children, Sony/MS gamers who will only bother to get a Switch when its cheap, and people who don't have much money to pay $300-$500 for a system. If they also implement the Nintendo Selects or whatever to drop lots of first party games to $30 that helps make the case even more for those who don't want to or can't spend many hundreds of dollars on games. With this maybe Switch could hit 150 million eventually by selling for a couple extra years and finishing up it's last 12 or so months before being replaced with a bit stronger sales.

Otherwise, with no price cut, and assuming successor is maybe just over a year away, Switch probably ends up right at 140 million, give or take a million or two.

Of course there is the insane option of Nintendo choosing not to make the successor backwards compatible, thereby taking a huge risk next gen by losing lots of the momentum of the Switch sales. Though in that case the Switch and successor would be completely separate and so there would still be a reason to buy $300/$350 Switch instead of the successor - to play Switch games. Though that would hurt the successor and be a very stupid business decision, and it probably wouldn't lead to that many more Switch sales because it'd be hard to convince people to buy a 7+ year old system at its launch price when it has been replaced at a similar price point.

Best case scenario at this point, Nintendo is planning price cuts over the coming 12 months, they've got a few major games (Prime 4, 2D Mario, DK, etc) still coming, next-gen is a direct successor (a Switch 2) and they won't launch the next-gen until late Spring/Summer or even holiday 2024, and the successor will have backwards compatibility so it builds on the Switch userbase, and they can try still sell the Switch even after the Switch 2 launches as sort of a cheaper version at like $100-$200 cheaper than the new system and with lots of first party games discounted to $30 so the Switch turns into the cheap affordable Nintendo system to get for a couple years and those late buyers of the Switch can also just upgrade to the next gen later on since all their Switch games will work on it too. They do that and I could see 150+ million.

Yeah, I doubt it's too great a percentage for any platform, but it might be enough for, say, the PS4 and the Switch still be more or less even, or the differences between PS3/X360 (the latter due to the RROD) being a little larger than numbers indicate.

Like what Sony seemed to be doing with the transition from PS4 to PS5, I imagine Nintendo will prioritize profit over unit sales. As a result, I don't expect a major price drop. Maybe $50 on all units and then price the successor at $400. Surpassing the DS & PS2 would be great, but I'm sure Nintendo cares more about maximizing profit than being the best selling ever.

Nintendo Switch 2 will be $400 minimum, could even be $450. The thing will not be cheap to produce and Nintendo doesn't want to sell it at a loss. That premium price means two things: 1. For many people its too expensive and the old Switch models will continue to sell and 2. Switch 2 will not sell as fast as Switch 1 did and probably will never have record yearly sales as Switch 1 but Nintendo will be ok with it because Switch 2 will sell more evenly over many years and in the end might sell as much as Switch 1.

Switch 2 will be max $350, in my opinion. I think people are already overestimating the power and chips set Nintendo will opt for.

Almost certain it'll be the Orin NX, though (a die of unsure dimensions but it looks to be at least 300 mm2). Even if shrinking it to TSMC's 5N makes it around the size of the Tegra X1 on the OG Switch, it'll still be much more expensive to manufacture.

Of course, Nintendo might opt to sell it for reduced profits or even an initial loss and make it back in software, which I think they will. Their cash cow is obviously software, after all.