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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Nintendo quarterly sales update (To December 31st 2022) Switch 122.55 million

1 billion software sales soon. If I'm not mistaken, only PS2 managed to sell over 1B (1.5B in total)



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Kristof81 said:

1 billion software sales soon. If I'm not mistaken, only PS2 managed to sell over 1B (1.5B in total)

The PS4 managed to do it too. The Xbox 360 was also estimated to do it but not been confirmed.



So Nintendo finally confirmed what we all were thinking, which was that semiconductor shortages this past quarter didn't really impact Switch sales so the drop in sales was largely due to a drop in demand which is expected. So seems like that Bloomberg report wasn't true. Now its gonna be interesting to see what Nintendo does now that demand is steeply declining.



Kirby the Forgotten Land doing about 2x the first shipment it had in it's initial quarter is pretty amazing considering Kirby aren't usually the most leg-ish games. It'll prolly add another million or more during the rest of the Switch active lifetime.

As for Xenoblade 3 ... It probably was overshipped during it's launch, just like Xenoblade DE was when it released. Still the DLC story will give the game another wind to sail on for marketing purposes so I'll expect the title to be overall do over the 2M milestone at least.

Prolly means that Xenoblade 2 will remain the best selling in the franchise until something else can challenge it.

Despite the natural decline, this is still a pretty fiscal quarter for Nintendo. Just not a height they might've wanted. I don't personally foresee any type of price cuts or revision really. Special Switch editions and such will do the necessary.



Switch Friend Code : 3905-6122-2909 

javi741 said:

So Nintendo finally confirmed what we all were thinking, which was that semiconductor shortages this past quarter didn't really impact Switch sales so the drop in sales was largely due to a drop in demand which is expected. So seems like that Bloomberg report wasn't true. Now its gonna be interesting to see what Nintendo does now that demand is steeply declining.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/07/nintendo-cuts-switch-sales-forecast-after-disappointing-holiday-season.html

Yeah they seem to say the holiday 2022 sales were weaker than they were expecting. System is getting old and reaching a LTD figure where market saturation is a factor, you kinda have to expect it at this point I think. 



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So there are like, 10 or so Third Party Million Seller titles. I wonder what they were?

Urgh, why can't non Nintendo developers be as transparent about sales. Like no other game fandom has a quadrannual (?) thing where we get excited about financial reports and sales and happily update the charts.

...I mean....the phrase 'not as transparent as Nintendo' sounds like a massive indictment in of itself.



The Democratic Nintendo fan....is that a paradox? I'm fond of one of the more conservative companies in the industry, but I vote Liberally and view myself that way 90% of the time?

RolStoppable said:
ShadowLink93 said:

Very surprising that New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe hasn't hit a million after three quarters.

It managed 1.45m.

On topic: These results reaffirm that 2023 needs to see a Switch revision, because price cuts are off the table due to rampant inflation anyway. Likewise, a Nintendo Direct is due, because eventually Nintendo has to show something of Tears of the Kingdom as well as have more than "Pikmin 4 is coming in 2023" when we look beyond the release date of Tears of the Kingdom.

Regarding the revised forecasts, Nintendo is going safe with hardware, but as usual too safe with software. This quarter may not have any big Nintendo release, but expecting a 40% decline year over year is a bit much.

True. They are either gonna get aggressive to keep Switch going, or they're not gonna do anything and we will probably have Switch 2 in a bit over a year from now. Whether the Switch gets replaced in Spring 2024 or all the way to Holiday 2025 is really up to them and their lack or seriousness in keeping it going.

Price cuts COULD happen because presumably chips and cost of production are starting to go back down now with supply shortages starting to end, and Nintendo was certainly making massive profit on every system sold before supply problems hit considering they were already making good profit back in 2017 at launch, so if they wanted to they probably could do a price cut this year. As long as they can still be making profit on every system sold price cuts just make sense, because they make a lot more profit on every game sold and they get numerous games sold per user as well as some amount more of NSO subscription income.

But also a $200 Switch Home would probably capture a few extra million sales if they made one.

Also if they finally dropped old first party games whose sales have trailed off to $30 that could potentially bring in more hardware sales as people who have held off on Switch see they finally wouldn't have to pay $60 a pop for every Nintendo games. This would probably go hand in hand with a Switch Home because presumably plenty of the people who haven't bothered spending a few hundred bucks on Switch + games aren't interested in hybrid/portable play but would be willing to pick up a cheap home console with access to a bunch of half priced AAA games.

These are pretty much the options, unless they are just gonna let the Switch sail on out over the next year or so without making any moves to help it. Which would be fine, but as a Switch gamer I know there's numerous games that haven't released on the system yet that could easily fill up the next two years that I would like to see hit this gen. Given that they've long said the Switch is going to be a long lifecycle, you'd think they do plan to make moves late in its life to keep it going and keep selling games to its massive userbase, but who knows with Nintendo, common sense doesn't always apply to them. Maybe their long lifecycle talk was just hopeful thinking and they never actually planned to do anything extra to make it happen.

Only other thing they can do is have a bunch of huge games ready to get people interested in getting the system or upgrading to the OLED.

Maybe they'll announce big things in the Direct tomorrow. Guess we'll see.



I don't think a revision model at this point moves the needle much either, the Switch OLED is pretty much the most refined iteration of the Switch concept, all the issues with the original Switch had been more or less addressed and the OLED display is gorgeous. It's refined, it feels premium, frankly there's just not a lot you can add to it. 

The Switch Lite is good enough for the lower end market, not really seeing what you can do there. Yeah you could add a smaller OLED screen to the Lite I guess but that's just going to make it more expensive which kind of works against the whole point of having a cheaper, lower end model. 

There's not really a big opening I think for a new model revision unless you are changing the actual hardware for a hardware boost but that introduces a host of different problems including new games that may not work on older models and Nvidia expecting to be paid probably a lot. Don't think you really want to oversaturate the market too much at this point either because you're muddying the waters for a Switch successor. 

It's just too late for a minor Switch Pro type of thing at this stage anyway, that needed to have been out 1-2 years ago. 

3 major hardware revisions is generally enough for any piece of hardware, when you're getting into like revision 4, 5, etc. it's getting a bit ridiculous.

Sales decline is normal, all good things come to an end, when you're approaching the 6th anniversary of any hardware, you have to expect you are in the decline phase unless you have like an equivalent to Pokemon born on the Game Boy but the odds of a new IP coming out of nowhere is microscopically small, and really Nintendo was trying to replace the Game Boy by 1995/96, lol, Project: Atlantis (supposed to be the 32-bit successor to the Game Boy) just had too many hardware issues for the time that it couldn't be released. 

I think Nintendo has a lot of hopes on the Mario movie being a hit and that translating to something that keeps sales at a decent level, we'll see. 

Last edited by Soundwave - on 07 February 2023

Kristof81 said:

1 billion software sales soon. If I'm not mistaken, only PS2 managed to sell over 1B (1.5B in total)

Roughly 1.7 billion units for the PS4 and counting. 



kazuyamishima said:
Kristof81 said:

1 billion software sales soon. If I'm not mistaken, only PS2 managed to sell over 1B (1.5B in total)

Roughly 1.7 billion units for the PS4 and counting. 

1.7 billion for the PS4 ... wowza. Gotta tip your hat to that, that's a shit ton of software. Then again I think having all the 3rd party support possible probably helps get you to that level of sales.