I'm very sure that the Successor launch games (3D Mario, Mario Kart, Splatoon 4, Legend of Zelda, Smash Bros, etc) will be Successor exclusive. The only way there will be b/c is for 2025 games that were supposed to be on the Switch, which if we look at Nintendo's remarks they said that March 31, 2025 was the end of Switch software producing (this remark may have changed due to a delay in the Successor, so we can assume at the latest is Dec 31 2025). Pokémon will be a b/c with Legends Z-A, but will release on Switch first. MP4 will be b/c but will release on Switch first. Smaller franchise games will be b/c for the Successor's first year (like WarioWare, Detective Club, etc). The big stuff stays on Successor only.

I agree with your synopsis. Thank you :)

Yeah I expect smaller stuff will continue to come to Switch, much like smaller titles continued to release on 3DS after Switch came out, plus Pokémon of course which tends to always stick around for a while on replaced hardware.

You gotta strike a balance between profiting from the massive userbase you've built on the old system, but also growing the new system's base by motivating people to upgrade with exclusives.

My opinion is that sales-wise, the Switch has demonstrated itself as the heir to Nintendo's combined handheld-home console legacy, combining their handhelds consistent hardware sales numbers with their home consoles' high first-party software attach rate. Given this, one would expect the general baseline for any Nintendo system going forward would be the combined numbers of the 3DS+Wii U at 89 million, a generation where everything that could have gone wrong for Nintendo did. I do not see any conceivable way it will end up below the 3DS's sales number of 76m. The most likely scenario for the Switch 2 is that it ends up somewhere around the current yearly active userbase number for the Switch which is currently hovering around 120m.

Following up, I think this chart from Install Base makes my point clearly enough. Throughout most of its history, Nintendo has maintained a steady baseline of ~20 million consoles shipped per year, with the only exceptions being the Wii+DS era, where sales peaked over 50m in 2008 and the Wii U+3DS era, where sales collapsed to 10 mil a year. Even the Switch, for as successful as it has been, has basically only managed to restore Nintendo's combined sales to about where it was during the late 90s and early 2000s, which tbf is a very strong baseline for a single system selling at a much higher average price. Given this clear trend, its only realistic to expect Nintendo to continue to average about 20m a year with both the Switch and Switch 2 going forwards, maybe higher if Nintendo can tap into the same mass market trends that contributed to the Switch's peak 2020 sales.

Although, a lot of the reason the SNES had fewer sales than the NES wasn’t because of decline in interest for the SNES, but because of a substantially shorter generation. By the time the SNES came out, the NES had been available or semi-available for 6-8 years, and then remained widely available for most of the SNES generation - until around the DKC era. But the SNES all but vanished when (or shortly after) the N64 launched.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not dunking on the SNES or trying to undermine its success; it was still a very successful console that won its generation comfortably.

But I'd say the reason it sold less than the NES was primarily due to much, much stronger competition. The NES only had to deal with a few weak opponents; the Megadrive/Genesis on the other hand was a formidible foe that gained a lot of marketshare by leapfrogging the NES and beating the SNES to market, as well as aggressive marketing.

I wouldn't say the SNES vanished quickly either; it continued to get games like Donkey Kong Country 3, Kirby's Dreamland 3, and Harvest Moon and even a revision in the SNES Junior after the release of N64.

I’m not saying the SNES sold fewer units, or that it didn’t have stiff competition. I’m saying the SNES sales aren’t because of decline in interest, rather interest in Nintendo was bigger than ever during the SNES generation. It sold about 80% of the units of the NES in around half the time of the NES.

It releases 6-8 years before the SNES, while SNES released only 4-5 years before the N64. And unlike the SNES, the NES also overlapped SNES for a few years, extending the generation even longer. On the other hand, the SNES was basically dead at, or shortly after, the N64 launch. And the three games you mentioned didn’t change that as Harvest Moon and Kirby’s Dreamland 3 weren’t widely available or advertised (many were surprised Kirby’s Dreamland 3 existed when it launched on VC), and DKC came out before the N64 launch outside of Japan. And even if Harvest Moon and Kirby’s Dreamland 3 were actual big games, they would still only be token releases, releasing less than a year after the N64–so, not really extending the generation much.

The SNES was the first time that Nintendo artificially killed off a generation. A strategy they’d repeat on the GBC, DS, and Wii later on.

SNES wasn't killed off prematurely, it was manufactured until 1999 in America, three years after its replacement, and 2003 in Japan, a whopping 7 years post-replacement.

It has to be remembered that the N64 was late to the party; PS1 and Saturn arrived in 1994 so SNES was already facing an uphill battle against newer next gen machines long before it was replaced; it managed to hold its own thanks to phenomenal late life titles like Yoshi's Island, DKC 1-3, and Super Mario RPG, but interest in it could only last so long once it was firmly in last gen territory.

Dreamland 3 saw release in the system's two biggest territories, JP and NA, and Harvest Moon even saw a PAL release. The situation was nothing like the Wii or DS which were dropped almost immediately.

The PS2 was on the market for 12 years and was selling for as low as $100 by the end of its lifecycle and was half off its debut price only 4 years in. Switch has sold 140M plus without a price cut or a DVD player. PS2 sold 155 or so units lifetime without any of their games selling 20 million copies.

The sales record is for the fanbase as the Switch long surpassed the success of the PS2.