Support NeoGAF

[Chukhopops]

Ridiculous that Ring Fit Adventure has sold 14M and there’s still no DLC or sequel or another game using the accessory.

 

[Woopah]

Yes, Switch is down YoY as normal in the sunseting half of the lifetime sales curve of any console but still sells a ton of units.

It isn't.

Yes Switch has risen, peaked and declined (like almost every other platform), but that doesn't mean the sales curve is the same. GBA, PS1 and PS2 for example all peaked in FY3, but their sales curves are very different.

If you compare Switch's FY5 sales to its FY2 sales, and then do that for every other Nintendo platform, you will see that Switch's curve is very different to everything else except the DS. This is due to a combination of Nintendo focusing all their development resources on one platform, and the impact of the pandemic. At this point in its life the DS had already had its successor announced, and for Switch this hasn't happened.

Switch could have longer legs than the DS, depending on when the successor will be revealed and released.

 

[yurinka]

Yes Switch has risen, peaked and declined (like almost every other platform), but that doesn't mean the sales curve is the same. GBA, PS1 and PS2 for example all peaked in FY3, but their sales curves are very different.

If you compare Switch's FY5 sales to its FY2 sales, and then do that for every other Nintendo platform, you will see that Switch's curve is very different to everything else except the DS. This is due to a combination of Nintendo focusing all their development resources on one platform, and the impact of the pandemic. At this point in its life the DS had already had its successor announced, and for Switch this hasn't happened.

Switch could have longer legs than the DS, depending on when the successor will be revealed and released.

Yes, every curve is obviously are different: peak taller or shorter, in a year or in another, a longer or shorter tail, different types of overlap with their other gens, different types of mid gen bumps (revisions, Pro versions, price cuts) etc.

In fact if we want to group them, by more or less types, there would be the sony home console ones (with a way longer tail with a long overlap during generations), the Nintendo home consoles except Wii (shorter curve/lifecycle with little intergenerational overlap) and Nintendo portables + Wii (somewhere in between).

What I meant is that all have in common these stages of growing, peak and sunset, and that Switch is in the start of its sunset stage (so we should expect yearly decline in YoY yearly sales), while PS5 and Series are in the growth stage (yearly growth YoY, specially because got badly affected by shortages).

I have to update my doc where I had all the curves with the numbers of Swith, PS4 and PS5, and I don't remember everything. What I remember is that if you adjusted their difference in quarters because of being released in different parts of the year, Switch was repeating almost exactly the curve of PS4, to the point that Nintendo placed the PS4 sales for that year and did work until the year where they expected to start the decline, but covid bump happed.

This caused the peak to be taller and longer, making it more similar to other type which as of now I don't remember (it could be the DS as you mention). In fact I'll go to update the graph.

 

[Woopah]

Yes, all the curves obviously are different. In fact if we want to group them, by more or less types, there would be the sony home console ones (with a way longer tail with a long overlap during generations), the Nintendo home consoles except Wii (shorter curve/lifecycle with little intergenerational overlap) and Nintendo portables + Wii (somewhere in between).

I'm not sure if you can group them by type like that. The Sony consoles for instance have had quite different curves, and some are more similar to Nintendo portables than they are to each other

• The PS1, PS2 and Gameboy had long tails and kept selling for a long time.
• The PS3 and DS rose, plateaued for three years, and then dropped completely once the successor came
• The PS4 steadily rose, peaked, and then steadily declined for a few years before being replaced.

Likewise for Nintendo portables the GBA, DS and 3DS all had very different curves.

 

[yurinka]

I'm not sure if you can group them by type like that. The Sony consoles for instance have had quite different curves, and some are more similar to Nintendo portables than they are to each other

• The PS1, PS2 and Gameboy had long tails and kept selling for a long time.
• The PS3 and DS rose, plateaued for three years, and then dropped completely once the successor came
• The PS4 steadily rose, peaked, and then steadily declined for a few years before being replaced.

Likewise for Nintendo portables the GBA, DS and 3DS all had very different curves.

Regarding gameboy, we have to be careful: some people put GB and GBC together when they are two different generations since even if BC, it had exclusive games, more powerful hardware and each one the lenght of a generation.

 

[Woopah]

Regarding gameboy, we have to be careful: some people put GB and GBC together when they are two different generations since even if BC, it had exclusive games, more powerful hardware and each one the lenght of a generation.

Nintendo themselves are the ones that count them as a single generation. Its a similar story for DS/DSi and 3DS/new3DS which also had exclusive games and more powerful hardware (although those generations weren't as long as the GB/GBC one due to the lack of a Pokemon-inspired relaunch.)

 

[yurinka]

Nintendo themselves are the ones that count them as a single generation. Its a similar story for DS/DSi and 3DS/new3DS which also had exclusive games and more powerful hardware (although those generations weren't as long as the GB/GBC one due to the lack of a Pokemon-inspired relaunch.)

I know (as I said), but I think doesn't make sense to count GB and GBC as a single generatioin because it could be applied to any BC console.

But well, who cares. They are so old that doesn't make sense to compare them with current devices. The market changed too much.

 

[TLZ]

Yes Switch has risen, peaked and declined (like almost every other platform), but that doesn't mean the sales curve is the same. GBA, PS1 and PS2 for example all peaked in FY3, but their sales curves are very different.

If you compare Switch's FY5 sales to its FY2 sales, and then do that for every other Nintendo platform, you will see that Switch's curve is very different to everything else except the DS. This is due to a combination of Nintendo focusing all their development resources on one platform, and the impact of the pandemic. At this point in its life the DS had already had its successor announced, and for Switch this hasn't happened.

Switch could have longer legs than the DS, depending on when the successor will be revealed and released.

I agree with all that, but I still don't see it surpassing PS2's or DS's numbers. But I think it'll come very close, 135-140m+, which is still great.

 

[Woopah]

I agree with all that, but I still don't see it surpassing PS2's or DS's numbers. But I think it'll come very close, 135-140m+, which is still great.

Yeah that sounds about right to me too

 

[Luminoth-4545]

All time best selling Hardware in a single fiscal year, the cut off is 15 million. Only 8 platforms have ever sold 15 million or more in one year, NSW FY21-22 places 7th.

 

[Luminoth-4545]

Pokemon going strong.

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

Ridiculous that Ring Fit Adventure has sold 14M and there’s still no DLC or sequel or another game using the accessory.

I think it sells enough on it's own there really isn't a need to make a sequel, because it would just kill sales of the first one. Probably waiting for new hardware. It's the Mario Kart 8 problem, right? Why make a new one

It has had some DLC, it's just all been free post-launch support. Which is great!

 

[Luminoth-4545]

Wrong thread.

 

[MrA]

I agree with all that, but I still don't see it surpassing PS2's or DS's numbers. But I think it'll come very close, 135-140m+, which is still great.

If Nintendo has a good reason to keep selling after switch 2 they could pass the ds or ps2 (low cost model/agressive developing countries expansion etc) but I think just under 150 million is the floor , unless nintendo drops it like a rock after the switch 2 release, selling 10 million units over the next 3 fiscal years seems reasonable to me
(Historically nintendo keeps successful hardware in production around 3 years after a successor, wii mini was produced until 2017, ds until 2014, 3ds 2020)