Topic: What's causing Nintendo's software sales on the Switch to be so good?

One notable trend with the Switch that has emerged is that software sales for Nintendo's own games are the best they've ever been. Not only are mainstays like Mario, Zelda, and Smash Bros. breaking series records. But ports are regularly outperforming their Wii U counterparts, and even niche oddball stuff like ARMS and Astral Chain are able to pull a solid 1-2 million copies.

What about the Switch is making Nintendo's software soar in sales? My take is simply, how the Switch presents itself. The Switch is designed to be a device meant for games before anything else, aimed at anybody and everybody who plays games. Regardless of what you want, there's at least something about the Switch anybody can gravitate towards. Unlike the Wii, which was pegged with a "Casual" stigma that it was never able to fully shake. The Switch works well for both novice and dedicated gamers, and thus games of all kinds are able to find a home on it.

I honestly think software sales this strong is also what allows Nintendo to take more risks with their games. When even something as odd and Japanese as Astral Chain can debut at No. 1 on the UK charts, what do have to loose? Sometimes people think that less success means companies take more risks as that means they need to find something that might stick. But I find this to be untrue a lot of the time as it only really applies to companies who never really had many hits in the first place. In cases like Nintendo, its the opposite. You can see this as recent as the Wii U, where Nintendo began doubling down on established franchises because software and hardware sales were underwhelming. Or in an non-Nintendo case, Sega, who announced recently that they'd be focusing primarily on its established core franchises going forward due to poor software sales. Point is, when your making a lot of money on the best software sales you had in years, might as well spend some of that war chest on weird ***** too.

I think the question that needs to be asked is "why have Nintendo's software sales been so poor until now?". Nintendo has always had exceptional games, even back when they were struggling with the WiiU they were still producing high quality content, even if the audience wasn't there. This is proven by the amazing sales those same WiiU games are now seeing.

While I don't doubt that Nintendo marketing the Switch as a "games first" device helps towards their current success, there are two things Nintendo has struggled with over the last few years - poor launches & terrible company relations. Nintendo since I started buying hardware myself (from the Gameboy Colour onward) Nintendo has not once stuck the landing on a console or hardware, either through poor software line-up, bad pricing or even just not clearly deciding HOW to advertise their product... there were even a few months that people thought the 3DS would fail shortly after launch.

In regards to Nintendo's company relations, Nintendo is infamous for acting like a mafia don all the way back to the Super Nintendo by charging high prices for development software & tools, giving demands to developers about their games.. anyone remember Nintendo losing Final Fantasy 7 (and subsequently ALL Final Fantasy games) due to demanding Square cut the game down to fit on a small cartridge, despite having cartridges that would fit the game?

However, the Nintendo that released the Switch seems to have gone through a lot of changes in the last few years & that may be due to the failure of the WiiU, I never thought I'd see Nintendo work so closely with a company like Tegra who seemed to take a large chunk of control during the Switch's launch - then Nintendo also working with DeNA on the online side of things... then actually handing out FREE dev-kits!! To smaller developers!!!

So what's causing Nintendo's software sales to be so good? Hard earned lessons & some humility.

That was mostly true during the pre-Wii days. Nintendo's problems with third party support since then have more to do with circumstance and stigmas rather than a hostile attitude.

Sometimes, the quirky / oddball games offers different and unique gaming experience.
There is always a gamer who like different way to play, unlike typical mainstream games.

@TheMisterManGuy I disagree, there were still a lot of stories coming out from developers about Nintendo being quite arrogant into the latter WiiU days & early Switch.. however I certainly think Nintendo has learned it's lesson through all the success it's seeing through third party/indie sales.

As for "stigma", I don't doubt that Nintendo had acquired a reputation for being a "kiddy console" but I genuinely don't think that accounts for Nintendo's woes in the late 90's and early 00's. Heck, Microsoft's name was pretty much associated with the devil incarnate prior to the launch of the Xbox yet they still managed to ship a lot of games. I see the stigma as an excuse Nintendo was using to not learn lessons.

Oh and in regard to my point on dev kits, I looked it up & while Nintendo don't officially release the price of their kits a few articles seem to pin Nintendo charging around $2,500 per Wii U kit competing with Sony's PS4 kits. For the Switch Nintendo dropped their price down to $450 per kit, added in a huge suite of new tools and by using a Nvidia chipset made coding MUCH closer to the other consoles, decreasing port time.

Basically Nintendo made it much cheaper, easier & faster to code for the Switch than they ever had before, attracting a larger mix of developers to their console.

I can agree with them becoming complacent with the Wii U days, which led to poor communication with third parties simply due to the way relations were handled back then. But I don't think that's the same as the totalitarian, "do what we want, or piss off" attitude of the NES and SNES era. It's more incompetence and poor planning, on top of thinking third parties will come based on brand recognition. After-all, the Wii was a huge hit, and now there's more power and a more complex controller to get the mainstream multi-platform games too. Of course, that backfired on Nintendo heavily once the Wii U sales realities became evident.

So you're correct that Nintendo's learned from where the Wii U went wrong. But it was a different set of issues than they had before.

I've heard a lot of people say the Switch has actively encouraged them to buy more games, because of what the Switch inherently is. Which usually means, being a home console that can be played as a handheld specifically.

In general I feel like everything came together for the Switch to succeed, so I'm not too surprised game sales are doing so well lately.

@TheMisterManGuy While I agree that the failure of the WiiU was largely due to their own complacency & incompetence, I've read too many articles from developers to think Nintendo was a changed company at that point. Rather than argue back & forth I'll simply quote from Digital Foundry's Secret Developer articles a post from one the first devs to work on the WiiU..

"The technical and feature support from Nintendo were lacking for third-party studios. There was a feeling internally that if you weren't a first-party development studio, you were largely ignored by Nintendo, as we were superficial to their profits."

@DanteSolablood Whoever was in charge of third party relations with the Wii U clearly had no idea what they were doing obviously. But like I said, it was all down to complacency and poor planning. Nintendo was under the assumption that because they now have a more powerful system and fully featured default controller out of the box, on top of having the brand recognition of the Wii, third parties would come based on those factors alone. But if you don't have games, or a good team, those don't actually matter.

Even with the Switch, Nintendo has always been first party driven. You buy Nintendo systems primarily for Nintendo games. Their own platforms are first and foremost, vehicles for the software experiences their own developers want to create. It's just that now, they no longer have incompetent people handling third party relations.

And like I said, it's not the same as the iron-fist, draconian policies they had in the NES and SNES days.

In regards to the Switch, it started with three important factors;

1) Iwata’s change of Nintendo internal studios and creating an environment which made sure that both the hardware and software divisions could work easier together. In older times, the hardware guys made a plan, created the hardware and threw in the lap of the software team. “Well guys do something!” Now both parties have their voice and can easier make decisions based on the development.

2) Switch’s introduction was, smooth and has more coming. The initial presentation was the best.

3) Breath of the Wild, accolades van iedereen. Heeft de Switch direct zijn eerste hit

. Portable
. Lots of Exclusive titles
. Plenty of online titles
. Large library of games *for a two year console
. Unquie Titles
. Indy Games
. Motion Controls
. Nintendo allowing many developers to use the switch
. Good marketing *less casual stigma
. Friendly Online Community
. Hype launch from being a hybrid console
. Good amount of multi-platform games
. Constant Updates
. Amiibo Support
. Many Different Controller Support
. Ease of use for people with Disabilities
. Storage Space
. Console Diameter

@TheMisterManGuy Quality titles released at a steady, consistent and relatively fast pace on a device that is well marketed, easy to understand and extremely convenient. - This is what is causing titles to sell well on the platform.

It's a snowball effect. Games sell well, attract attention that causes more games to sell well. We saw it in reverse too on the Wii U things failed to gain significant traction, and this lack of success further hindered future releases, which discouraged developers, slowed releases and so on.

Also the Switch has benefited over the last two years from being the hot ticket "new" game system. When the Switch came out, PS4 and Xbone were already on the market for a while - thus they hype had begun to die down.

Not to get off-topic but the Xbone is pretty much current gen Wii U, from the horrible marketing and *lack of exclusives. (*multi-platform WiiU)

*edit: I meant xbone here

@ScottNintendo Not really? I mean the Xbone might be struggling compared to 360 but it has still sold tremendously better than Wii U. And Wii U didn't lack exclusives at all - it lacked almost anything else. I will agree that the marketing on both is less than great - but still, MS has done better by the Xbone than Nintendo did with the Wii U. Seriously many people actually didn't know the Wii U was even a stand alone console - it was that bad!

@Heavyarms55

Yes I should have explained better, I meant Xbone has lack of exclusives like how the Wii U had a lack of multi-platform games.

But if you look at how major the Xbox 360 was to the Xbone, it looks like a pretty simular failure as the Wii to Wii U to me.

I mean the last time I went into my last store it was almost comical in how many titles there was when next to the ps4/switch catalogue.

Then nobody seems to even talk about Xbone, plus it had the problem being called Xbox One was comical confused people with the original Xbox.

Plus the amount of people who swapped Xbox for PlayStation.

@Heavyarms55
True, when the WiiU was in store and i was buying a game i hear someone say about the wiiU that it was just an add on for the Wii. Some people didnt even know it was a stand alone console. I explained it to them but they still where unsure about it and bought a Wii lol.

@ScottNintendo Fair enough. I agree that Xbox One is a dumb name. The reason I never call the Xbox Scarlett by that name. I always call it some nonsense like Xbox Pistachio because I am sure MS will give it a silly name.

Xbox will strike back next generation I think.
In happy Nintendo is selling this well

@DanteSolablood "why have Nintendo's software sales been so poor until now?"

Since when have their software sales been poor? The Wii U? Even Mario Kart had an attach rate of more than 50% on that system. Software sales have never been their problem.

@TheMisterManGuy The reason Wii U ports outsell their respective releases on the Wii U is because there are more Switches than Wii Us.

The quality of the first party games is a huge factor.

The Switch's attach rate is good, around 6-7 games per Switch. But the PS4 is still top dog with an attach rate of 10-11 games per PS4. Why? Award-winning first party games. God of War, Bloodborne, Horizon Zero Dawn, etc. It's one of the reasons MS and the XBone have fallen to third place this generation.

What was the last well-received first party original MS game? Sunset Overdrive? It's unfortunate that Sony recently bought Insomniac. No sequel of Sunset Overdrive for XBone fans.