Anthem NPD domination soon come >:)
And Days Gone too, don't sleep on that one
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NPD August 2018: Madden NFL 19 #1, Switch #1 in hardware
- Thread starter Deleted member 21
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And Days Gone too, don't sleep on that one
9 million people bought Smash on the 3ds.
Mario Kart 8 will end up selling ~30 million on the Switch despite "only" selling ~8 million on the Wii U
But its a silly argument anyways. There are many many people who are buying Smash for Switch who didnt even buy a Wii U or 3ds, believe it or not.
They dont ALL have to buy a Switch this Nov. and Dec. to make a significant difference.
If the Switch can sell ~2.3 million last Nov/Dec in the US with nothing releasing those two months...certainly it can sell over 3 million those two months with Pokemon/Mario Party/Smash.
As if marquee games have to come out the same month in order to boost hardware -- especially Nintendo hardware? Did Mario Odyssey not come out one month before the November/December period? Did all the people interested in Zelda already have a Switch by November/December? Pokemon and Smash will no doubt be huge, but let's not act like Switch hardware sales last November and December were based on nothing.
Agreed
Let's not act that people suddenly choosing to buy a Switch this Nov/Dec are just buying it for Pokémon and Smash Bros.
They are buying a machine to play Pokémon and Smash Bros and Mario Kart and Botw and Splatoon 2 and Mario Odyssey and Donkey Kong TF and Kirby and Bayonetta and Arms and Zenoblade 2 and Mario + Rabbids and Mario Party and NSMBU + Luigi and 1-2 Switch and Labo and Octopath Traveller.
There is much more value/incentive to buying a Switch this holiday than last.
Hence the greater sales.
I would somewhat disagree with the bolded. The overlap is much higher than in any prior generation, but these machines are not all equivalent propositions. Having to operate at a minimum level of about 5w puts severe constraints on Switch's ability to play high-end home console games. Just look at the list of the likely biggest multiplatform games released in 2018: Call of Duty, Battlefield, Far Cry, NBA 2K, Madden, FIFA, Red Dead 3, Monster Hunter, DB Fighterz, AC Odyssey. Of those 10 games, only 3 are on Switch. And the ones that are--just like the lower-selling other examples people might think of--are 60fps games on other consoles that can't hit that framerate on Switch. Most drop to 30fps or lower; the least demanding, DB Fighterz, does manage to hover in the 50s. It's clear the Switch struggles with such games, and it therefore won't get a lot of them.
But of course, it does play many of the lower-profile games, including the huge swath of indie content this generation has seen. And in the end I don't actually think any of the above is germane to the question of whether Switch is a portable or not, because library isn't how that distinction was made. Clearly the Wii library was radically different than 360 and PS3, right down to the presence of different-from-the-main-game versions of Call of Duty, Madden, etc. such as portables frequently got. Yet Wii wasn't classified as portable, or as a new third category versus the HD machines. So I don't think the games catalog was ever really a defining trait, and neither is audience (a very closely related thing).
As for pricing, the Switch is only $50 more than its predecessor, and Sony's Vita. That it matches with the current home consoles is partially an artifact of launching 3+ years later. Besides, was the Sega Nomad classified as a portable? Adjusted for inflation, it was the same price as the Switch. Or how about N-Gage, the same price without adjustment--was that a home console? How would NPD have classified the TurboExpress?
As for "the additional option of mobility"...well, yeah. That's by far the most important feature of the device! When multiplats do come out on Switch, portability is overwhelmingly the reason listed for choosing that platform. (To the point where almost no other reasons are ever given.) Being portable is definitional for the Switch. The category NPD chooses to assign may seem trivial--people in the thread have rhetorically asked why it matters, or called for the distinction to be abolished retroactively. But portability has an effect on sales, distinct from and orthogonal to the software library, audience, price, and other factors. Those other factors are important, but aren't sufficient to fully describe Switch's appeal. I assume you'd agree that a family with four children is more likely to own multiple portable consoles than multiple home consoles. Note that this statement is fundamental; we might alter that prediction after comparing library, price, demographics, etc. of specific devices, but the portability alone is enough to make a meaningful distinction.
Just curious, how did NPD classify OUYA? How about PlayStation TV?
See Mr. Piscatella's rationale for categorizing Switch with PS4 and XBox One above--Switch does not have a substantially less core audience than the other consoles, not yet. Pokemon has the possibility to start changing that, but it's not a done deal.
That said, I totally agree that Nintendo historically has a greater concentration in December than their competitors. But I feel that effect will be minimized this year due to the Smash bundle releasing weeks before the game. I expect it to move a ton of sales from December to November, in the same way the metal slime PS4 did in Japan in advance of DQ Heroes (though on a bigger scale with Smash). December will still be higher, but I don't expect a delta anything like Switch last year.
And for Microsoft particularly, the boost of One X will have reduced.
Of course. I believe they'll sell well over 3m this holiday. The discussion has basically been, will they sell over 2m in December alone? That's a much taller order (though again, not impossible).
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what your expectation for Spiderman drop for Week 3 in UK... i know this is US thread and you are US Sales insider but US and UK have quite a bit of similar taste.
Well of course they will.
If they sold over 1.5 million last December, of course they will sell much more than that this December considering the releases.
Maybe you are arguing that the majority of holiday sales for Switch this year will shift to November...thus December will be flat...but I don't buy that. I'm pretty sure Nintendo December sales always firmly outdo their November sales. I dont expect that to change this year.
this sounds complicated.
Liabe Brave
very good points.
saying switch is basically playing the same stuff as the others is bewildering.
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If a PC is specced only to play WoW and not 4K Witcher 3 it's still a PC.
The categorization of Switch doesn't matter. It's completely meaningless in the modern marketplace.
I don't know what OUYA and Vita TV were classified as and it's not worth the time it would take me to go look. That's how much this categorization doesn't matter.
The categorization of Switch doesn't matter. It's completely meaningless in the modern marketplace.
I don't know what OUYA and Vita TV were classified as and it's not worth the time it would take me to go look. That's how much this categorization doesn't matter.
