It's not that Nintendo's audience is unwilling to upgrade, it's just that historically they've done so inconsistently.

PS and Xbox have been able to fuck up pretty badly and still sell 87m/50m units, they pretty much just have to show up and say "hey, here's the next box" and people will run out and buy it. 

Nintendo's audience tends to need more convincing.

Still waiting on F-Zero, come on Nintendo!

For sure. Cross gen ain't needed. Especially considering to really make cross gen games they'd have to have two completely separate graphical builds for each game. Cuz this ain't a GC/Wii or WiiU/Switch situation where the next gen is roughly on par with the current gen in which they could "cross-gen" with just a straight port. I don't see them doing that - making a current gen game and a next gen game for any title (unless we're just talking about not really cross gen but just them porting end of lifecycle Switch games to the successor).

Switch needs a DK game, so that should come out on Switch.

I could see a Pokemon remake or another Legends game happening in 2024 for Switch, especially if next gen doesn't start until 2025, then it'd make a ton of sense to have one last 10m+ selling Pokemon game for the final Switch holiday season next year. Next mainline Pokemon holiday 2025 will obviously be next gen, not on Switch.

Metroid Prime 4 is up for debate just because we have no idea what is going on. It is so delayed its very possible they just switched over to making it for next gen like a couple years ago, or its possible they are working on finishing it up for the Switch to release next year and its just taking forever. The last scenario which doesn't seem likely, is that they are in fact building it to be cross-gen and so have to put a ton of extra time in to do the next gen build and so are just delaying it an extra year-plus or whatever to get the next gen version ready and wait for the next-gen launch where they can put out a Switch version and a next gen version together....but this just doesn't seem likely. Especially considering Metroid isn't that popular as far as sales, that'd be a ridiculous amount of extra work to make two totally different graphical versions of the game for a game that will sell a few million at most.

And yeah, the obvious launch titles for next gen are 3D Mario and MK9. That's been obvious for several years now. The only question I think is, is Prime 4 sooooo delayed that they just moved it off Switch development to next gen, so that'll be a third launch frame title, or is Prime 4 just gonna be one of the final first party Switch games. Also it's possible they want to get Prime 2 and 3 remasters (or ports, depending on how much work they are putting into those) out before Prime 4, so there was no reason to rush Prime 4's release.

Most games should be easy to port 1440p/60fps should be easily portable at 720p/30fps. 

That’s not the same thing at all. I said as long as the successor isn’t way more expensive and doesn’t focus on a gimmick that people don’t want than cross-gen titles shouldn’t hurt sales.

DSi XL wasn’t $199.99 when 3DS launched, it was $169.99. 3DS at $249.99 was ~47% more expensive than the most expensive DS sku. People didn’t care enough about a 3D screen to pay the extra money.

On top of that, 3DS had a terrible launch/post-launch lineup.

March-Nintendogs & Pilotwings

June-Ocarina of Time 3D

September-Star Fox 64 3D

That’s the equivalent of

Switch 2-$499.99

Power Glove required

launch titles-Ring Fit Adventure 2 & Wave Race

post launch titles-Twilight Princess 4K & Star Fox Assault 4K

So yeah if that’s what Switch 2 looks like than I don’t see it doing too well.

DSi XL launched at $189.99, then they cut the price to $169.99 a few months before the 3DS, but I think that was their inclination that they could get away with $250, I don't think they just randomly decided "$250 because why not", they saw the DSi XL selling at that rate well enough for a while and thought "well if a revision to an old model can be sold for $189, surely a new system can be $250". 

Obviously they got carried away with the Wii and DS' success and became arrogant and sloppy. 

In either case, I don't think Nintendo will go soft or lazy with the Switch 2 launch. 3DS and Wii U do not feel that long ago and certainly at Nintendo I don't think anyone has forgotten how it felt to be in that situation. 

I think Nintendo will always err on the side of caution with product launches going forward for a good long while, like the Switch, I suspect Switch 2 will have a loaded lineup especially in its first 8-12 months on market. 

Launching lazy/sloppy/half assed just isn't worth it. It ends up being far more work in the long run if anything, it's so much easier have a big time start then the rest of the generation is more like walking downhill, trying to recover from a bad launch is like walking the same distance but having to do it walking uphill. Just not worth it. 

That doesn't paint the right picture. It leaves out the handhelds. During SNES/N64's lifetime there was the very successful Game Boy/Game Boy Color (maybe we should also mention the Super Game Boy), during GCN's lifetime there was the very successful GBA and DS. Sure, GBA to Game Boy/Game Boy Color was a decline but 1. the latter was a very unique and special situation with a very long lifecycle and 2. the former was an artificial very short lifecycle because Nintendo rushed out with the DS early because of fear of the PSP. But within it's very short lifecycle the GBA was very successful and in turn the GBA to DS was a very huge increase in sales and profits.

Further, NES to SNES is a decline but nevertheless, SNES (hard- and software) was very profitable for Nintendo. Also, coming from a quasi monopoly (NES) to a situation with a very strong competitor (Genesis/Mega Drive to SNES) is not really a fair comparison.

The N64 and GCN even more so were real disappointments sales wise. For the N64 Nintendo came in cocky, arrogant and with lots of self-confidence. They were the top dog in the video games industry. They didn't expect to lose their turf to a young lad called Sony. GCN was a disaster as Nintendo lost their self-confidence and for the first time in their video games history they tried to catch-up (to Sony) instead of leading the industry.

The biggest disaster, the Virtual Boy was basically a prototype product brought to the market. I think what happened is that Nintendo saw during development that the Virtual Boy is a bad product but somehow they missed to stop it early enough, so that already too much money went into it. They simply wanted to recoup some of the funds that went into it and therefore, decided to bring it into the market anyway, at least in Japan and NA. They never officially released the Virtual Boy in Europe.

Then there's the Wii U. We can keep that one short: A prime example to any business school of a product where everything went wrong!

Saying the above, I think it's as good as impossible that Switch 2 will sell as many units as Switch 1. To sell again 160 mil.+ (or even "just" 145 mil.) is a too tall order (as it is for any console, no matter if home console, handheld or hybrid, no matter if from Nintendo, Sony or someone else). It's simply not realistic. The question is, how many unit sales of Switch 2 will be looked at as successful? Personally, I think Nintendo's minimum target is 100 mil. The upper end will probably be around 130 mil. (depending on how long its lifecycle will be).

I don’t disagree with anything you said, I’m just not sure how any of it relates to the point I was making when you quoted me.

I said if Switch 2 is a pretty straight forward successor that doesn’t have an unwanted gimmick jacking up the price than I don’t think cross-gen titles will hold it back.

All this talk about 3DS is irrelevant because 3DS does not fit that description, it was a lot more expensive than the DS line because of the 3D screen people didn’t care about and it had a poor software lineup.

The whole point was talking about whether or not cross-gen titles will hurt Switch 2, Nintendo was not releasing cross-gen titles on DS/3DS so I’m not sure how that was a counterpoint to begin with.

It was only more expensive than the DS pricing range for 5 months though, after its 5th month the price was rapidly cut to $169.99, so the pricing thing was never a problem for the 3DS after that. 

I think basically just upgrading the graphics hasn't always worked well for Nintendo. Now sure, maybe it can be different for Switch 2. Maybe Nintendo's audience is larger, more robust and more important older (with more disposable income now). 

It's still going to depend a lot on making sure the initial software is really good, the first 8-12 months need to be great, not just good, great. 

While true that Nintendo sales are inconsistent, that’s due to major mistakes by Nintendo rather than fans needing convincing. From things like alienating 3rd parties by sticking with cartridges or chasing gimmicks nobody asked for, it’s been specific fuck ups that have hurt them.

As for PS/XB, I don’t agree at all. While there is a pretty consistent total sales for PS+XB consoles, the individual market share has varied widely. It went from 85/15 to 50/50 when Sony fucked up to 70/30 when Microsoft fucked up.

Besides that argument can be made for Nintendo as well, despite making a bunch of foolish decisions last generation, they were still able to sell ~90 million units of hardware between 3DS & Wii U.

As long as Nintendo doesn’t make any huge mistakes that alienate 3rd parties or focus on unwanted gimmicks that jack up the price or have frequent 1st party software droughts than I don’t think cross-gen titles will hurt them.

And I’m not saying all games need to be cross-gen, like let’s say Nintendo releases 8-10 1st party retail titles in it’s first 12 months with 3-4 of them being big made for the ground up exclusives and the other 5-6 being mid-level cross-gen titles and a couple updated Switch 1 ports.