They sold a lot of Switches to kids and 20s/30s women. This is absolutely the crowd which would not care about an upgrade.
The fuck are you talking about? Kids always want the newest hottest shit to show off to their friends. They hear there's a new Switch coming out and they will jump on that shit like flies to shit. And 20s/30s women don't make up anywhere near the Switch's entire install base. They'll eventually buy whatever the newest Switch is too, because women, above all, are
consumer, and buying shit is just what they do.
Just look at how many copies of Animal Crossing they sold. Does anyone really think that game needs more graphics?
That's pretty irrelevant to what we're talking about.
Like I said, I'm not expecting a Switch successor to fail, but the idea that Nintendo wouldn't do anything cross generational is a bit short sighted at this point.
I never said that Nintendo wouldn't do
anything cross generational. I even said we might get a few minor game releases, particularly around the Switch 2's launch period, because there is usually some overlap around that time as companies make the transition. But it would be foolish to expect any major releases on the Switch after the Switch 2's launch. That's just not how Nintendo operate. They aren't Sony.
That's not even getting into third party developers/publishers that will continue to support Switch.
And I've already stated that third parties will continue to produce games after Nintendo has long moved on. The Dreamcast continued to get games long after it was discontinued in the West. The Vita was basically kept alive for years purely by third party output, long after Sony had basically abandoned it. There are always a few third parties that continue to produce games for a console long after the manufacturer has moved on.
There was a reason PS4 and Xbox One kept getting games up until this year.
Because Sony and Microsoft couldn't produce enough consoles to meet demand because of the worldwide chip shortage at the time, caused by COVID, which also strained the supply chain. Cross platform releases were the only way they could get enough game sales to make money.
There's always a healthy amount of people who are going to stick with what they got,
If that was really a problem, companies would never bother to even release new generations of consoles.
but they've certainly been known to at least deliver a swansong release for each home console (even Wii U), with some getting games years after their successors' release.
Rarely are those major releases though. Usually, they are minor titles, maybe a remake, the type of thing that nobody will usually pay much attention to. Even in the third party realm, its usually minor games or releases, or smaller indie games that continue to release titles. The focus will shift to Switch 2.
I'd be very surprised if they pulled an N64 here, drop it and just pray they don't fail again. People probably don't realize it but each system after NES had worse sales until Wii, then they went straight back to doing worse than ever yet again.
A lot of the sales loss console to console is purely due to Nintendo themselves doing stupid shit that costed them sales. The Playstation and Xbox over the same time period trended in the exact opposite direction (excepting the transition from the PS2 to the PS3, but that was also due to Sony's stupidity). Now, how hard Nintendo drops the Switch will probably come down to how well the Switch 2 does initially, but the fact is, the Switch's console sales are slowing down and third party support is mostly indies at this point. Its run its course and Nintendo understands that. That's why game development for the Switch has slowed down and there's no real killer app for the holiday season. Nintendo have clearly already shifted the bulk of the development to the Switch 2. That's just what happens when you are preparing to put out a major product. And if Nintendo wants that product to succeed, you have to put your full force behind it. There's just a limit to how much you can hedge your bets. And you have to give Nintendo credit: despite the flops that some of their consoles turned out to be, they fully commit to them and do everything they can to try to give them a fighting chance.
