-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Nintendo needs to sell 14.93 million units in the six months from October 2018 to March 2019
- Thread starter Deleted member 249
- Start date
- Status
I don't think Black Friday was too important for SMO considering it wasn't discounted and neither was the Switch. So, there was very little to push it more than it would have done normally. Additionally, SMO was selling to a more restricted existing userbase than Smash is (literally, since when SMO launched there were still spells of sell-out in several markets, including Japan). And, to be frank, I do think Smash is simply going to be a much bigger deal than SMO, as strange as that might sound. Pre-order hints so far put Smash way ahead of the 3DS opening in Japan, which was the biggest for any Smash game, and Benji also mentioned multiple times that Smash is going to be bonkers - and I doubt he means that Smash will 'just' sell as most Smash games when he says that.
In a few months sure. But keep in mind Smash will only have 3 weeks until the end of the trimester.
Agree and disagree. Agreed that they all coexist remarkably well and I think switch will hit the same numbers as last year but to sell an extra 5 million (they are flat or down in all territories going into the holidays). It's going to take more than that. Switch will need a near record breaking December in most territories to hit its targets and I don't think there is enough room in the market for the PS4 and switch to be selling massive quantities with Xbox also getting some share of the market.
The numbers reported will be shipments though, and most are expecting Smash to have an enormous day 1 shipment. If the day 1 shipment is close to 10M (I believe Pokemon S/M's was) then the shorter amount of time on shelves means nothing.
On a related note I'm curious if it can get anywhere close to 1M just on digital prepurchases alone. It jumped to the top of the biweekly charts mere hours after yesterday's direct.
They're actually up ~5% YoY globally, not down or flat. Obviously that number will need to change in Q3 but Q3 is when their three biggest games of the year launch so it most certainly will.
I think 10M shipped this Q3 is a reasonable expectation, only 2.5M more than last year but with 3x the heavy hitting software.
Plus the MK bundle.
It was.
It depends on your overall expectations on what it'll do to determine whether 1M digital prepurchases is feasible. I do think it's feasible: 10 million units shipped day one, and at least 20% of those will be digital. A significant amount of those day one digital purchases will be preorders, so 1M doesn't seem at all unlikely imo.
I think digital will be higher for smash. I think we could be looking at 2 million or more. Especially with the bundle.
I thought shipments were up slightly but sell through continues to lag in Japan and America where we know the numbers. This year Nintendo will have stock in the channels going into the holidays unlike last year. I think Q3 will have to be 11 million because I don't think Q4 will make it above 4. No matter what it's going to have to be huge and Sony is going to cut into that market. A 200 PlayStation with Spider-Man is a highly attractive product for parents.
User banned (5 days): platform warring
To a certain extent I agree, but only outside the context of a Nintendo hardware launch. If the next Zelda releases with the update of the Switch it's going to sell a lot, if it releases on it's own it's not going to hit those BOTW kind of numbers because they already pulled that rabbit out of the hat and everybody bought it. With new hardware new switch owners will believe a new Zelda is going to be the game that will show them all the bells and whistles of the new hardware they're already familiar with that routine.
This doesn't make any sense. The narrative of Nintendo for YEARS has been basically "Less Power, More Play" and the Wii U was a dramatic improvement from the original Wii hardware spec. Even if it had been true that the Wii U had the power of a 10 year old science calculator it shouldn't have had any effect because of the games. Whatever perceived shortcomings some people believed Wii U had the shortcomings didn't cost Nintendo any Wii U customers. The rise of casual gaming on mobile phones claimed large swathes of casual gamers from Nintendo and the game content being so radically different from what console gamers were accustomed but being offered as a console experience made it a problematic purchase for for console gamers.
A lot of times people just don't want to accept the truth. A microcosm of Switch's potential long term problem can be found in Monster Hunter, if look at this through a "Core gamer" lens I guess. Monster Hunter was a Nintendo exclusive franchise for a number of years, it was one of the more important exclusives Nintendo had that was recognizable outside of Nintendo platforms. For many years Capcom held the position that Monster Hunter really wouldn't sell on any platform other then Nintendo or wasn't fot for platforms other than Nintendo. After the release of Monster Hunter World the franchise sold a little over 10 million units completely outside of Nintendo platforms. Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate appears to have sold less then a million units on the Switch. The truth is that there are only a handful of current Nintendo IPs that are going to sell like BOTW or Mario Odyssey on the Switch. Most if not all of those golliath selling games are releasing in the next year and a half or so and that cut off is going to have an effect on the long term sales of the hybrid console. This is the main reason I think the total life sales of the Switch will probably be around forty to fifty million, which would mean that at some point in the next couple of years there will be a steep decline in unit sales, but forty to fifty million gamers is still a significantly large userbase.
(From here down is basically for those that want to start a console spat with someone that's not game for it. Sober truth is all that lies beneath. If you can't handle the truth just leave it.)
I fail to see why so many long standing Nintendo fans feel the need to frame every Switch success against what's happening in the console game space. Nintendo is never going to win that contest and why would they want to? (why do you want them to? Really?) Nintendo is moderately successful to very successful operating in their own bubble. Just celebrate that versus laying in wait for anyone to offer any criticism of your favorite game system and then try to force the conversation into the Nintendo vs. everybody else direction.
Since it always seems to come down this in any kind of Nintendo based discussion not revolving around a particular game the whole "Nintendo's IP is Bulletprroof and a Platinum Cornacopia of only Goodness" should be unpacked a little bit and scrutinized a bit closer in the context of what the average console gamer is looking for...
There's no way the Wii U ahould have been the abject failure as it was IF Nintendo's intellectual properties IN THE CONSOLE SPACE were as valuable as some people seem to think they are to the majority of console gamers. Switch wouldn't be experiencing the immediate extreme highs and now the kind of leveling off or slight decline in sales it's seeing if the IP cache was that great within the console space because other succesful consoles have not performed this way. The kind of leveling off/decline in Switch sales are experiencing now shouldn't have really started until year four or five for a successful console and the sales should still be climbing dramatically if it were selling like a super succesful handheld, especially if the Nintendo IP were as console valuable as some people like to think.
In the real world Nintendo hasn't been a real driver in console gaming proper since all the way back to the SuperNES and they've been perfectly fine. After shrinking back from the console space all those years back other franchises and console ecosystems grew, which meant a lot of core/console gamers moved away from those stalwart Nintendo franchises multiple decades ago. Because Nintendo transitioned to primarily a mobile games platform influencer and abandoned their post as a standards bearer in the console space when the standards and taste shifted there's going to be a wait and see attitude from a lot of core/console gamers today and a lot, maybe even most just aren't going to dig what Nintendo is offering...not that that should really matter to Nintendo or their fans they are successful with only a small sampling of that typical console group, plus their traditional fans, plus some probable fairweather casual gamers they're doing great.
You can't realistically expect people that haven't touched a Nintendo console for ten or a lot more years that have adopted a whole slew of other franchises to immediately clamor for a lot of game IP that's seen most of it's success on mobile platforms or haven't gotten that much exposure from mediocre to poor selling Nintendo consoles since the Gamecube era or well before in today's console environment. Mobile and console game spaces generally have had pretty distinct userbases with a little bit of crossover. As much as a lot of Nintendo fans hate it there is a smallish group of Nintendo core console fans and then nostalgia seeking consumers, many of which are casual gamers that were also most of the Wii audience that checked out of buying games regularly after the first couple of years of the the Wii, which is why there wasn't a large audience patiently anticipating the next Wii U the way other consoles fans generally are waiting for new consoles.
I'm not saying I think the Switch is going to fail, it's obviously a tremendous success already, but they're not going to get anywhere near the 335M number they revised their lifetime projections to be assuming Switch would sell more like a handheld then a console...to hit anywhere near that number they would have to sell between 40M-70M units per year on a 6-7 year lifecycle and that would have to encompass the entire core gamer audience, switch's current core audience and more. Most likely the Wii U userbase represents the actual size of the Nintendo console specific core userbase that is actually reliable for games sales.
The thing is that the casual gamer that plays phone games isn't gone so that's one part of the Wii audience Switch is not going to get in the kinds of numbers the Wii had, console ecosystems outside of Nintendo are fairly strong now, so Nintendo is only going to get and keep a slice of that market. It's better to be prepared than to be unrealistically optimistic.
Nintendo is going to have to continue to develop some new hit properties like they did with Splatoon that have more of a console/Switch specific association rather than try to completely rely on past IP, indie games or just lean on transitioning Nintendo mobile titles to the switch.
Nintendo has a good history of making bankable single player and some co-op games, but multiplayer relative to the CODs, Battlefields, Battlefronts, Fortnites of the world is really a different kind of animal for Nintendo or Nintendo first parties. They should stick to doing what they do well while pushing a little further with multiplayer games to keep the audience they have.
Well shipments were down YOY for Q1 and sell through was up, so it's a bit confusing to keep track of the two. Q2 seems to have compensated for that though.
I really just don't think Sony's plans will do anything meaningful here. I fully believe Nintendo and Sony will sell every single discounted SKU they produce, so the competition will not hamper either of their numbers at all.
Q4 should be well above last year's too because A) it was still sold out in Japan at that time, B) Smash being at the tail end of Q3 will have a significant carry-over effect and C) even with just NSMBUDX the lineup is already a good deal stronger. Assuming they have anything for Feb-Mar (which I think is a fair assumption) Q4 shipments should be at least 40-50% higher than last years IMO.
Is this an extremely elaborate joke post? I'm genuinely asking. 335M?
Long text, but I do think I see what you're arguing here. I will reply to certain parts of your text first, and then present my overarching points with regards to your argument.
You seem to assume that a franchise can only be a system seller at its first entry on a certain system. I definitely think that's wrong: just look at Pokémon, Call of Duty and FIFA to see the opposite: despite releasing almost yearly (and often being quite similar to the entry before it), these games sell new hardware to new people every time they come out. The reason for that imo is that being a system seller should not be regarded as a one-off event separated from all its context. Selling a a system to someone is typically done in combination with the existing library: some who thinks a Zelda game looks good might be pushed over the edge by the presence of a Mario Kart game they are also interested in. Additionally, the potential audience for a system is not stagnant: every year new adults and children can reach ages where they become interested in gaming, and that represents an ever replenishing supply of people. Indeed, any mundane situation change for an individual might be a reason for them to become interested in buying a (specific) system. Clearly the first entry in a franchise, all other things being equal, will pull in the most people out of any entry, but there are plenty of new potential customers that could be pulled in by the release of a new title in a franchise.
The issues with the WiiU were many more than just power. It had terrible branding, marketing that tried to appeal to an audience that was perfectly happy with staying on the motion controlled Wii or moving to smartphones, and very high pricing for a piece of hardware that had no impactful gimmick and didn't pack the power, either. What's more, the momentum the hardware could have had was pretty much stopped dead in its track with a rather light release schedule in its first year. This situation is rather the opposite of what sucessful Nintendo consoles have presented: the Wii had a revolutionary gimmick that attracted a huge audience, and I would argue that the Switch also has a gimmick that sets it apart quite distinct from any system before it, and that furthermore garners quite a bit of praise from many media outlets and regular users.
Addtionally, attributing the decrease in audience to smartphone gaming doesn't really take the trajectory of Nintendo consoles throughout history into account. From the NES, console sales were falling until they hit the Wii goldmine. That audience disappeared largely (although the success of party games on the Switch indicated imo that a distinct set of people interested in those games is present on the system), but to say that the smartphones' rise pre-empted the WiiU's failure does not match up with an imo wider issue in Nintendo's ability to make console hardware appealing.
You call this a microcosm for Switch's potential long term problem, but I don't see the exact extent to which you want to claim this. MH has shown that it doesn't need Nintendo handhelds to be successful, definitely, but MHGU is not a good measure for whether Switch can sell such games, so if your claim is that Nintendo's cannot meaningfully contribute to such franchise anymore, then I would wholeheartedly disagree. In fact, despite popular belief, a publisher like Bethesda can get strong results on the Switch (their words, not mine) and have consequently pledged strong support for the future, including Doom Eternal and Wolfenstein Youngblood.
First of all, the trump card in that handful of major IPs you mentioned, Pokémon, is a franchise that releases approximately annually, and sells hardware each and every single time it comes around. Secondly, while Nintendo does have a handful of important IP, some of those should not be ruled out for a return for a second entry on the system. I don't think Animal Crossing and Smash will have a second entry, but Zelda, Mario, Splatoon and Mario Kart could definitely see a release on the Switch again. Splatoon stopped its updated, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe hasn't had noticeable support that would indicate that it will be the only MK game in the franchise, either.
You mentioned a levelling-off demand for the Switch, but I don't agree with that. In fact, contrary to your conclusion that Nintendo's IP cache is not strong enough, I think an analysis of what relased this compared to last year would be illuminating: last year Nintendo launched with Zelda, then released MK8D a month and a half after that. Then came Splatoon 2, with SMO rounding off the year in terms of significant releases. For this year, nothing significant at all has released for the system, yet sales are flat year-on-year. With Smash and Pokémon coming in the next month and change, hardware sales will spike, way above the level of last year's fall quarter. As such, assuming that the current quarter is going to disappoint, the Switch will be up significantly YOY after December, which can hardly be described as a levelling-up.
... Sorry, but what are you talking about? You jump from one extreme (335M) to the other (WiiU userbase being the reliable core userbase). The latter, by the way, is highly debatable: Switch software sales are really good, and genres that weren't selling on the WiiU at all are doing very well on Switch (for example FPS games and JRPGS). It seems to me, at least, that the Switch audience presents a core userbase that is much more expansive than the WiiU - or at the very least differentiated from it.
Clearly there are now three players, each of which is quite strong, but they don't need to keep a consistent market share to achieve the same or better results: the console markets has grown tremendously compared to the early days when it was only Nintendo, so the Switch could sell double what the NES did (hypothetically speaking) and still have a vastly smaller market share. What's more, the console market is not exclusive: multiple console ownership is rampant, so they don't even always have to compete with the other consoles. When it comes to software, of course, the system needs to be able to pull in multiplat sales compared to its peers, but so far most multiplat games have seen strong Switch sales (and I'm not only talking about indies - there's Switch versions of AAA games doing very well and a barrage of smaller scale titles where Switch can be the leading platform, like Sonic, My Hero Academia, et al.). The image that arises about the Switch's situation is not one of melancholy; it's one of very strong software sales and really good hardware sales as well.
--
All in all, I would say that I disagree with your stance that Switch is still on a core Nintendo fanbase from which it cannot break out: both party game sales and core multiplat game sales show otherwise. As a result, I don't see why there would be a sudden stop in the system's sales, especially not the 40-50 million range you proposed. The system is healthy, and blooms when major games from important Nintendo IP launch on it. It will go on to sell a lot, has a decent chance of breaking 100 million imo, and will be a great new paradigm that Nintendo will leverage to appeal to gamers with a differentiated product that still addresses all the markets.
Seeing some of the comments in this thread about older games, I think its worth pointing that both Zelda and MK8DX sold more this last quarter (Q2 - 2018) than they did a year ago (Q2 - 2017). Mario Kart is up by more than 50%... and last year's Q2 started when the game was only 2 months old.
I expect Fire Emblem will be around March-April, Animal Crossing not sure, but possible. I also forgot there's a Yoshi next year... I'm more doubtful now.
I think Zedark did an excellent job of answering your post but I want to add that 40-50 million with the current trajectory would be a disaster. It would mean that the Switch has to basically stop selling after April 2019 so it isn't realistic to think that. A drop off could happen sure, but it would not be as hard as you say and will still lead the Switch into 70+ million territory.
Personally I believe the Switch will far exceed 100 million and be the next PS2 in terms of success because of the long lifespan potential spanning multiple SKU's.
All depends on how Let's Go ends up doing
Marketing for smash will be key too, but Pokemon is what will determine how far they will soar or fall
Marketing for smash will be key too, but Pokemon is what will determine how far they will soar or fall
No.
$200 PS4 Slim with Spider Man and a $200 Xbox One Slim will do the majority of sales because the value is better do to them being cheaper.
$200 PS4 Slim with Spider Man and a $200 Xbox One Slim will do the majority of sales because the value is better do to them being cheaper.
A small point, a "trimester" is one-third of a set period, so for a year it'd be four months (i.e. Sep-Dec). Three-month periods are "quarters".
Multiple products can sell at the same time, believe it or not
That's only for November. The Switch will sell a lot more in December, and possibly that will carry on over to January. The market has already determined that the Switch is good value for money, even with cheaper alternatives for gaming competing with it.
If the news about Go players wanting to buy Let's Go pans out it might actually make it, though right now I think 18-19 million range is the most likely.
A trimester is three months.
If you're thinking of school years, each of the three terms is a trimester because you don't have classes all year long.
You are talking about Black Friday specific promotions which will last for a few days in November.
December will be all Nintendo and especially with Smash launching soon they will sell a shit ton of consoles. We have had a sales insider a few days ago mentioning the Switch already "soaring".
I stand corrected, thank you. However, when a trimester isn't any three months, but corresponds to a financial period, I still believe "quarter" is preferable usage.
nah, you're probably right. Lots of people aren't ready for the success this game is going to have.
So what you're saying is that it will do more than 25 million? That'd be great!
So like last year ?
PS4/One having cheap Black Friday skus/bundle after 5 years on a market isnt really shocking and something that is already part of Nintendos estimations.
NIntendo cant be part of the price war this FY.
That'd be a bloody awful performance lol.
Should do more than that in the months October-December imo.
They sold 5M the first half of the year, you don't think they can sell more than 1M more than that through the second half of the year? Which is historically far, far stronger for console sales?
And Red Dead 3 is a bigger system seller than Pokémon Let's Go & Super Smash Bros. Ultimate combined.
Wait. Wait. Wait. You honestly believe Red Dead is a bigger system seller than Pokemon? Red Dead is a huge franchise, but Pokemon is in another league.
That's what he's saying, though: 1 million more than was sold thrughout the first 6 month (which was 5 million). A bump of 1 million compared to that number is ridiculously low, especially with Smash and Pokémon releasing.
6 million is 1 million more then they sold in H1. You're saying in H2 they will only sell 1 million more than they did in H1.
Which is crazy when Q3, which is in H2, usually gets about 50% of all yearly console sales. Last year they sold 7.5M in Q3 alone. You're expecting that to drop to about 3M.
I think they'll sell 4 million this December. Maybe I'm low balling the Jan-to-March stretch.
I'm not sure about a system seller but Red Dead Redemption 2 already sold 17 million copies and is still selling. I don't see Pokemon Let's Go matching that.
Yes. With both pokémon and Smash releasing, a typical 10 million units sold would be a sever underperformance. 10 million is what a normal system does with one or zero big games in the last 6 months. Switch should do much more this holiday period.
~10 million is not "an awful performance".....
Whatever you say, it's still not an "awful performance". 10 million will always be damn good.
- Status