I agree consoles have been dying faster. But Playstation has been the exception rather than the rule. PS2 was selling for over 10+, and PS4 has continued to sell even into 2023 today.

Nintendo plans to support the Switch with 1st party and 3rd party software until the end of the fiscal year of March 2025. But they never specified when they would stop production of the Switch. My guess would be that Nintendo would do some part-time production once the Nintendo NG releases (in Nov 2024), and once 2025 they will slowly produce less and less (in my post earlier today, I mentioned what I think will happen. Switch will produce about 8 million switch in 2025, and March 2026 will be the official announcement of terminating production). 1.25 years after the launch of the next generation console is really fast.

Yes, Nintendo did show weeks under 200k, but so has the PS5 and Xbox Series, that is not good for a brand new console to be selling that low compared to a 7 year old console. Granted, PS5 has been selling much better since August.
I guess we will have to see and watch what Nintendo can do.

My estimates may be high but I give realistic reasons as to why the sales estimates were high.
I agree that Nintendo wants to sell their new consoles at a reasonable price near $300. And since the Switch is $300 it needs to be given a price cut. Once the NG comes out Nintendo will be in a state and mentality of selling to make room for the new. Nintendo needs shelf space in stores. Yes there are rumors of the NG being backwards compatible, if that is true then that is all the more reason to be selling the Switch (the old slow hardware compared to NG) at a much lower and deeper cost. There are also rumors from the same person that spoke of BC, that the NG will be $400 with a $450 "upgrade".

In order for Nintendo to reach their 15M this FY they need to sell 7 million from Oct to March (6 million from now to March). Very easy. The Switch will and can sell 7.3 million this holiday season alone. (In March 2023 Switch reached 125 million, add 15 million and the goal is 140 million by March 2024). I agree that Nintendo will have a 10 million goal for the following FY, reach 150 million. And then they can cruise the next 10 over the next 2 years max. (I predict they reach 160 million by March 2026). 

I divided the number of Switches sold to the number of households in the U.S & Japan. The U.S has approximately 130 Million Households and dividing the 51M sold figure to 130 Million households would mean approximately 39% of U.S Households own a Switch. It's likely lower than this percent tho because like you said there are a decent amount of households that own more than one Switch mainly cause Switch is also a portable console which is less likely to be shared than a console since portable consoles have too small of a screen and can be taken anywhere sometimes away from their family to make sharing it feasible so people might buy multiple Switches to each have their own personal console. Also I'm sure a good amount of Switch owners upgraded from the OG Switch considering the Lite & Oled came out, as well as other color and art variants of the Switch. So it might not be 39% of Household actually owning it, but I could see maybe 30% with all those things considered.

At FY end 2023 (end of March 2023) Nintendo officially shipped 125.62mil. Switches. At that point, Nintendo predicted that they will ship 15mil. for FY2024. Ideally and likely, they will ship a bit more than predicted, probaby ship a bit more than 1mil. more. So, we would then be close to 142mil. shipped at end of March 2024. From there, I remain with my 10mil. for FY2025 and we will end at 152mil. shipped at end of March 2025. If things will go smooth, another 6mil. are possible for FY2026 and we will be at 158mil. at end of March 2026. In such a scenario, it will be relatively easy then to sell some more and break the 161mil. This would be my more optimistic scenario but not unrealistic at all.

Yeah next gen Switch is certainly going to be backwards compatible and won't be priced more than $50 above the (at that point) 7.5 year old Switch. I do think they'll probably give the Switch and OLED $50 price cuts next year to keep sales decent until whenever next Fall the successor ends up launching (September I'm thinking). But even if the hybrid Switches are down to $250 and $300, and next gen launches somewhere between $350-$400 or perhaps has two SKUs at $350 and $400, few people would choose the old systems at only $100 less than the brand new system that plays all the games from the old system. There will still be buyers of the Switch, but there won't be many, and it'll be budget conscious buyers who don't already own a Switch after 7.5 years, so the Lite will probably be the most popular model at that point. I don't see the Switch selling more than 5 million once next gen launches, or at least not more than 5 million after holiday 2024, cuz maybe it still sells a couple million holiday quarter next year.

Furthermore, Nintendo is NOT going to want people to be buying the Switch once the new system is out. Because of backwards compatibility, so that it can still sell Switch games, they are going to want people picking up the new higher revenue system that also gives them access to the next ~7 years of games.

Switch might be at 145-146 million end of 2024, and by then I expect Nintendo will barely be producing any Switch consoles. They'll probably get a couple million excess consoles ready for the holidays that seasons and then bring production down under 50k/week, and then end production by end of 2025, maybe giving one last price cut to gradually sell the final 500k or so in 2026. Cutoff could come even sooner than that though. I think Switch will get to like 151 million when it's all over. From the day next gen launches Nintendo is going to be fully focused on getting people to buy that given bc and it not being that much more expensive than the Switch.

That makes a lot of sense! Thanks.
That's really cool. Wow the Switch is even more of a powerhouse than most people realize (Same goes for the DS & PS2, even though PS2 was used as a DVD player).

So is counting by household a real statistic metric that is used? Just curious, cause I don't know much about the lingo.

Also, when Nintendo announced that they were at the mid-point in the life cycle of the Switch back in Feb of 2022, what did they mean by that? I ask cause it looks like the NG is coming out next year making the Switch lifecycle 7-8 years rather than the 10 years that most people deduced from that quote.

Interesting but like if you were Shuntaro Furuwaka, what would you implement to make the Nintendo Switch more desirable to purchase? I do agree that FY2025 will have the goal of selling/shipping 10M.
I personally think that Nintendo can easily sell more Nintendo Switch units in the next FY, at least from what the rumors say and statistics from past lifecycles, but I went for what I felt was midway from the more optimistic route and the more conservative route.

The rumors have said the Nintendo NG will have Backwards compatibility. This doesn't prove that the NG will be BC. Nintendo hasn't been the best when it comes to BC. Yes, most handhelds were BC with the previous gen, and the last two generations of consoles were BC with their predecessor (except the Switch). Honestly from a business standpoint I dont see a reason to make the NG BC, that would help distinguish that the NG is a new console and is something that everyone must have. Now, there are signs that the NG will have BC: reliable rumors, quote regarding software for Switch into March 2025 (only ~6 months after the release of the NG, so this point could be used for both BC and no BC), and easy access to 7.5 years of games.

I went to see how much Nintendo consoles were when they launch, and found a website that shows that along with their adjusted for inflation price as of 2022.


The economy in the last year around the world has been tanking, so most likely the prices would be around the $350-$400 mark. I think Nintendo, along with the rumors, will set the NG digital model at $400, and a cartridge model at $450 (in order to combat inflation, and especially the fall of the Japanese Yen). Do I want this, no. Never I'd rather pay $300 for my entertainment than $450.

Why do you think the Switch will only be at 145M? When it can easily reach 140M by the end of 2023.

Personally, I believe Nintendo has another game we don’t know about (possibly DK, releasing around the theme park opening) that is waiting in the wings for Switch in 2024 set to be a decent-sized title. Something already done (like Wonder was) that would benefit the 140m+ user base of Switch more than it would the launch of Switch 2, which I think Nintendo has a specific criteria for.

So, after Mario vs DK and Princess Peach during the first quarter, we have Luigi’s Mansion 2, Paper Mario, and Metroid Prime 4, which I believe will be a dual-release. Throw in smaller stuff like Professor Layton and all it would take is another Pokemon remake/Arceus sequel as Switch’s November title for the console to have a very good 10m+ transition year.

And while I agree that a price drop is not happening while Switch is Nintendo’s main focus, I think that changes once Switch 2 releases and I do expect some sort of official price reduction in the future.

I had once pegged the Switch passing the PS2 by March of 2025; now ~152m by then sounds about right if Nintendo does indeed give the Switch the ending it deserves, which I believe will result in the console becoming the biggest selling of all time - even if that’s not Nintendo’s primary concern.

Yes, I agree that Nintendo has at least one more major game to release on the Switch for the Summer of 2024. And it will most likely be a DK game, due to the heavy plot surrounding the Kongs from the Mario Movie, and the opening of the Donkey Kong Country opening in Universal Studios Japan (most likely in Summer 2024).
But I disagree that The Pokémon Company will release a new game for the Switch. The Pokémon Company released a COO Address in which they mentioned slowing down their game release window. Thus we might start to see a 4 or 5 year release window. Many people are speculating gen 5 remakes but they wont do so until the release of gen 10 (which is next but they wont release it until near the end of gen 10 given how they released gen 4 remakes & Legends at the very end of gen 8). So, given this we might see gen 10 in 2025 with the 2nd holiday season of the NG, and gen 5 remakes near the beginning of 2027/2028. They might release a side game, kinda like Pokémon Rumble, or a Pokémon Colosseum/Gale of Darkness next year but that is probably way too optimistic.