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What year do you anticipate Switch will stop leading console hardware sales?

What year do you think Switch will stop leading in hardware sales?

  • 2022

  • 2023

  • 2024 or later


Results are only viewable after voting.
Probably 2023. By that point it will drop off whilst the ps5 will be entering its peak phase. Switch could end up close to ps2 and DS, which is shocking to me as its nowhere near the quality of those systems imo.
 

FStubbs

Member
This is ridiculous fanboy whataboutism that adds nothing to the conversation. It should be my favorite system if my favorite company didn't have to worry about logistics and long term supply planning.

PS5 is in demand but they are selling more than the PS4 did. Sony planned that level of supply. It is not supply constrained, supply of components is limiting options to increase supply. They can't magically add capacity and would not unless they knew they could sustain sales at that level for years. Demand for units when the system is new does not really translate into demand when the system is 3 years old still selling for 500 bucks. If you look at PS4 sales, they are nearly constant on a yearly basis. They plan manufacturing capacity with a little margin and lock those deals in. If Sony dumped 10 million more on the market this year they would probably sell and win this stupid pissing contest for you this year. Then what? They bought capacity to sell 80% more and now instead of in the future and now have to either pay the factories to not make PS5s or pay warehouses to store them while they slowly trickle through retail, or they could get a less favorable deal on manufacturing for a 1 year bump that basically fucks up their business model.
I'm accused of being a Sony fanboy in this topic after being accused of being a Nintendo one in another topic, I must be doing something right lol.

The first part I bolded is ridiculous, that's literally what "supply constrained" means. We have no idea what PS5 sales would be if Sony could meet demand, nor do we know what demand will be like 3 years from now.

Thus it's "debatable".

The second part I bolded is your concession that it's debatable.
 

mortal

Gold Member
Either when the successor to the Switch drops or once Sony can finally produce enough PS5s to meet demand. Whichever comes first.
 

Marty-McFly

Banned
Leading years in console sales is kind of like a graph which has peaks and valleys.

Nintendo has had the longest peak streak right now. 30 straight months. Nobody has controlled monthly sales this long.

They can lose a month or two and still sell the most in a year and overall as well.

The competition has very little chance of selling as much as Switch lifetime, even though they should sell more in the years they start to peak and the Switch starts to valley.
 
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THE DUCK

voted poster of the decade by bots
As soon as a $299 portable from Sony or ms launches. Right now they have no portable competition, and I think for the most part steam won't have enough units plus it's more expensive to matter.
 

Marty-McFly

Banned
As soon as a $299 portable from Sony or ms launches. Right now they have no portable competition, and I think for the most part steam won't have enough units plus it's more expensive to matter.
That's what Sony tried to do with Vita. Atari tried to do with Lynx. Sega tried to do with Gamegear. NEC tried to do with Turbo Graphics, and Nokia tried to do with Ngage, not to mention the many more poor unfortunate attempts of companies who think they can challenge Nintendo here.

All who try fail disastrously because people want to play Nintendo franchises on portables and consumers will settle for no less.

Now that Nintendo is using all of it's manpower behind one platform they'll be even more dominant.
 
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Omnipunctual Godot

Gold Member
Soon, I hope. I hate how Nintendo has made it a strategy to overcharge for obsolete hardware that's consistently 1-2 generations behind the competition. BotW gets frame drops to 15 fps, ffs.
 

THE DUCK

voted poster of the decade by bots
That's what Sony tried to do with Vita. Atari tried to do with Lynx. Sega tried to do with Gamegear. NEC tried to do with Turbo Graphics, and Nokia tried to do with Ngage, not to mention the many more poor unfortunate attempts of companies who think they can challenge Nintendo here.

All who try fail disastrously because people want to play Nintendo franchises on portables and consumers will settle for no less.

Now that Nintendo is using all of it's manpower behind one platform they'll be even more dominant.

I think that's a seriously tainted viewpoint on other handhelds. The other handhelds you mentioned were a joke I terms of actual games being developed and or had no distribution, or were priced poorly and lost all traction. The only real competitor Nintendo has ever faced in dedicated portable was the vita, and it had weak support too plus poor pricing (memory card pricing really turned people off) .

Nobody has ever taken a real swing at Nintendo with proper game support, it's too bad ms didn't decide to make something like the Steam Deck instead of the series s, at a $299 price with scaled down xbox games, that would be a true competitor to the switch.
It's not just about Nintendo franchises, it's about aaa games. For sure a handheld with halo, forza, etc at $299 would sell, even more so if hybrid like a switch.
 
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Marty-McFly

Banned
Probably 2023. By that point it will drop off whilst the ps5 will be entering its peak phase. Switch could end up close to ps2 and DS, which is shocking to me as its nowhere near the quality of those systems imo.
As a Nintendo handheld gamer, Switch is a million times better than DS. The small low res DS screens were the worst, the controls second rate, and its games were not nearly as good as the Switch's.
 

Marty-McFly

Banned
I think that's a seriously tainted viewpoint on other handhelds. The other handhelds you mentioned were a joke I terms of actual games being developed and or had no distribution, or were priced poorly and lost all traction. The only real competitor Nintendo has ever faced in dedicated portable was the vita, and it had weak support too plus poor pricing (memory card pricing really turned people off) .

Nobody has ever taken a real swing at Nintendo with proper game support, it's too bad ms didn't decide to make something like the Steam Deck instead of the series s, at a $299 price with scaled down xbox games, that would be a true competitor to the switch.
It's not just about Nintendo franchises, it's about aaa games. For sure a handheld with halo, forza, etc at $299 would sell, even more so if hybrid like a switch.
Look at handheld game sales historically and get back to me.

There has even been exclusive COD's and GTA's on other handheld platforms with better graphics than what Nintendo could offer at the time. The games were there, Nintendo games just sell way better on portables than the competition do.

 
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THE DUCK

voted poster of the decade by bots
Look at handheld game sales historically and get back to me.

There has even been exclusive COD's and GTA's on other handheld platforms with better graphics than what Nintendo could offer at the time. The games were there, Nintendo games just sell way better on portables than the competition do.


Your math is skewed, if you launch a game with a user base of 150 million, of course sales are going to be way higher. The gta and Cod sold decently well considering the user base.

Also the he whole landscape in terms of game development has changed now, its much easier to develop for other platforms as the architecture is very similar. Launching a new portable today with amd architecture would ensure easy 3rd party support. As well, the idea that "portable games are for kids" is also completely dead, opening up the market even more.

I'm a big fan of Nintendo first party games, but a machine of similar design with other (sony or ms) aaa games would sell, and it would take a bite out nintebdos sales.
 

Marty-McFly

Banned
Your math is skewed, if you launch a game with a user base of 150 million, of course sales are going to be way higher. The gta and Cod sold decently well considering the user base.

Also the he whole landscape in terms of game development has changed now, its much easier to develop for other platforms as the architecture is very similar. Launching a new portable today with amd architecture would ensure easy 3rd party support. As well, the idea that "portable games are for kids" is also completely dead, opening up the market even more.

I'm a big fan of Nintendo first party games, but a machine of similar design with other (sony or ms) aaa games would sell, and it would take a bite out nintebdos sales.
You seem to have failed to acknowledge that GTA and COD were not big enough games grow the install-base of competing handheld platforms enough for the platforms to come close to Nintendo, or them even to survive in the market in the long term.

Nintendo is on it's way to being the best selling platform ever with very few third party AAA games even in their Top 30 of top selling Switch games.

A portable third party box is just diluted content available on many different platforms.
 

THE DUCK

voted poster of the decade by bots
You seem to have failed to acknowledge that GTA and COD were not big enough games grow the install-base of competing handheld platforms enough for the platforms to come close to Nintendo, or them even to survive in the market in the long term.

Nintendo is on it's way to being the best selling platform ever with very few third party AAA games even in their Top 30 of top selling Switch games.

A portable third party box is just diluted content available on many different platforms.

They were not on thier own. Support was weak and sporadic, and not near the level of full console support. Secondary ports, late releases, games made by secondary teams.

Who said anything about a portable third party box? This whole time I have been saying a properly supported box by one of the other big 3 would be a viable competitor.
 

Marty-McFly

Banned
They were not on thier own. Support was weak and sporadic, and not near the level of full console support. Secondary ports, late releases, games made by secondary teams.

Who said anything about a portable third party box? This whole time I have been saying a properly supported box by one of the other big 3 would be a viable competitor.
So Sony and MS are suddenly going to compete with Nintendo in the first party space on another platform? They have a hard enough time supporting their own consoles. Sony proved they couldn't support a handheld and a console already. MS is finally getting their first party in order on a console after generations.
 

Zannegan

Member
So Sony and MS are suddenly going to compete with Nintendo in the first party space on another platform? They have a hard enough time supporting their own consoles. Sony proved they couldn't support a handheld and a console already. MS is finally getting their first party in order on a console after generations.
These are fair points, but (Devil's Advocate) give it a couple of years and Microsoft could feasibly put out a portable, dockable Series S, at which point they would no longer have to worry about supporting two platforms. If that did well for them, hybrids could even become their main SKU until they can finally force the planned cloud gaming dystopia into the mainstream.
 

THE DUCK

voted poster of the decade by bots
These are fair points, but (Devil's Advocate) give it a couple of years and Microsoft could feasibly put out a portable, dockable Series S, at which point they would no longer have to worry about supporting two platforms. If that did well for them, hybrids could even become their main SKU until they can finally force the planned cloud gaming dystopia into the mainstream.

Which is basically what I was saying about modern architecture.......even a model along the lines of the Steam Deck playing slightly scaled down series s games could do this now. No need for extra teams, full 23 xbox studios plus third party support would be easy. It actually makes more sense overall than the series S, with one major thing that probably stopped ms from doing it to begin with - hardware cost. But if the magic number keeps dropping, it's true a portable hybrid could replace series s completely.

It's not nearly as far fetched as you (mcfly) make it sound, I guarantee you this very scenario was tossed around ms headquarters before settling on the s and is likely still being considered due to the switch sales numbers.
 
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Marty-McFly

Banned
People wanting MS to go portable now seems like the bargaining phase. Even if there was a feasible way to scale everything down perfectly to a portable SKU with a good battery life, pricepoint and memory solution (a logistics nightmare), and the entire Xbox Series X lineup was capable of running on it, it would still lose badly to Switch in sales. Switch has way better first party software sales than the PS4 did, and the PS4 crushed the Xbox One on first party software alone selling well over double the amount of consoles. Steambox will serve as yet another cautionary tale.

Not to mention, MS is much more interested in pushing Gamepass subscriptions rather than hardware sales at this point. It's just a pipe dream.

Even if such a thing could be successful, it wouldn't impact the Switch at all. Nintendo is selling the Switch nearly completely off the backs of their own software. They are not competing in third party AAA space red ocean that MS and Sony are and are completely self sufficient. Focusing all of their resources on creating Switch content as opposed to supporting two different platforms has made them nigh unstoppable if they weren't enough already in the handheld space.
 
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2022 i think. the Switch is nearing the end of its life and availability of Series X + PS5 consoles is getting better.

BOTW2 is likely the last big game for Switch. it started with Zelda and will end with it. Alright, we might get another Pokemon game but i reckon by then most people who want to play Pokemon will have already bought a Switch.

think we'll get a Switch 2 announcement in 2023.
 

Kataploom

Gold Member
Probably by 2023 or 2024 minimum, there are massive games still coming for the thing, so I wouldn't count on other consoles availability to stop its momentum, Nintendo is already breaking PS record by a wide margin, it's not that it's selling due to them lacking in the market, it's selling on their own, despite that, PS5 and Xbox Series wil barely touch it for a year and a half
 

MrA

Banned
Soon, I hope. I hate how Nintendo has made it a strategy to overcharge for obsolete hardware that's consistently 1-2 generations behind the competition. BotW gets frame drops to 15 fps, ffs.
by 15 you mean 20 and in only 1 part of the korok forest and only otherwise drops frames during rain, why is there this weird obsession with making stuff up?
 

jigglet

Banned
Hard to say. Remember the Wii only stopped selling cause Nintendo dropped it like a sack of shit and stopped making games for it. Nintendo was their own worst enemy. Maybe they'll do the same for Switch. There's no evidence they've learned their lesson yet considering Switch was a 100% clean break from their last console (new eshop, new account system, new virtual console, no backwards compatibility). They've yet to prove to us they won't murder the entire Switch ecosystem and start from zero again a few years from now. I will believe it when I see it.
 
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Marty-McFly

Banned
Soon, if they kept on selling underpowered portable hardware.
PS2 was the least powerful console of its generation and has the record for all time sales (which Switch is on pace to beat).

DS also recorded 150 million in sales at a time when PSP had GTA, COD and way better graphics.
 
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