Topic: Help me understand your certainty around the recent Switch 2 leaks :)

As acknowledged, profile age data can't be trusted fully, but plausibly is one data set, among others, Nintendo uses to inform its business.

But another data set we know they have, and which is probably more trustworthy (not bulletproof though, I know), is play data.

The 2023 'Most Played' list, for example, indicates something significant about the profile of people actually using the Switch:

Not a game rated higher than PEGI 12 in there. That's not to say that there aren't a lot of hours being clocked up on 16-18 rated games, but only Nintendo has that data.

Very few Nintendo-published games ever fall outside the 12-and-below range. Nintendo knows that people of all ages can and do enjoy those games on their platforms every day. So their marketing, while broken down into stuff targeting specific age sub-groups, hardly ever excludes the other age ranges.

But very few people above the ages of infancy are immune to the pull of prettier, flashier graphics - all ages get sucked into that - which, tangentially, is probably why graphics so often take precedence over frames-per-second - and so Nintendo is obliged to not ignore, and to keep up with, technological advances. They want to exclude no-one, so they do their best to balance the costs that could deter younger audiences with the performance expectations of older audiences.

As for Wii U off-TV play, I'm fairly sure Nintendo did promote that because it was a big factor in getting me back into the scene in 2013. I wasn't paying attention to gaming at the time, but happened upon some form of marketing for it and pulled the trigger. One of my best decisions evs. But personally, console-quality gaming but portable was an obvious aspiration for many for a long time. I doubt the Wii U data suddenly gave Nintendo a moment of realisation that they should target that.

The heck is even happening here?

Why do you believe that the reveal of Switch 2 will hurt the sales of regular Switch? It could even go the opposite way, it could boost Switch sales. Let's examine two areas, the hardware and the software.

Regarding the hardware, it is obvious that a Switch 2 reveal will hurt Switch's sales, as a lot of people will be saving money to buy the new console. But is this a bad thing? It just means that you will lose some money during the holidays, which you will get back when the new console is released. And having a more successful launch for the new console seems way more important than selling a few Switches more during the end of Switch's life.

Now, regarding the software, I would argue that if Switch 2 is revealed before the Christmas holidays and is confirmed to have backwards compatibility, this would increase the sales of Switch software during the holidays. People would no longer be afraid of buying games for the Switch that will be useless for the new console. If I believed that Switch 2 wouldn't be backwards compatible, I would be saving money to buy software for the new console, not buying software for the old console. So, with backwards compatibility no longer being a concern, there is 0 reason for the Switch 2 reveal to hinder Switch software sales.

@alexwolf
I've made a similar point a few times RE: "holiday sales". I think it's possible to put forward the argument against even more succinctly than you have. All you need to do is make a list of something like: action before announcement becomes action after announcement resulting in net effect. eg:

• Buy competitor becomes wait for Switch 2 resulting in the purchase of Switch 2 (positive)
• Buy Switch becomes wait for Switch 2 resulting in a higher end purchase (positive)
• Buy Switch becomes buy Switch resulting in no change
• Buy game for Switch becomes buy game for Switch resulting no change (you got EoW anyways)
• Wait for Switch 2 becomes wait for Switch 2 resulting in no change
• Buy competitor becomes buy competitor resulting in no change
• Buy game for Switch becomes finish backlog resulting in less software sales (negative)
• Buy Switch and Switch 2 becomes wait for Switch 2 resulting in the loss of a Switch sale (negative although said consumer is going to feel cheated so they'd gain some goodwill by avoiding this)

Some of these are negative effects but I'd argue on Nintendo's ledger the positive side outweighs the negative. If we were talking about whether to extend the life of the console to extract more out of the R&D expended on the platform? Then sure. But we're not. We're talking about announcement timing for R&D already spent and a production button already pushed. We're talking on the scale of months not years

@skywake

With that said, you believe that announcing the Switch successor before holidays is more likely to be a net positive for Nintendo in the long run, correct?

I see the estimation that ''announcing Switch 2 before the Christmas holidays will hurt Switch's sales'' so often, and it almost never comes with a few sound arguments to back it up, it seems like mindless parroting at this point.

To be frank, I really want to believe that a Switch 2 announcement is coming this month, and it seems like the most logical option for 2 reasons: 1. announcing Switch 2 before holidays does more good than bad for Nintendo, in terms of hardware and software sales. 2. ~6 months of notice before the console release sounds like the absolute minimum, and based on the rumors going around and the evidence we have, Switch is planned for an Easter release on 2025.

I believe it's a net-benefit for Nintendo to announce within ~6-8months or so of release in order to build momentum and control the message. And I think that would be true whether they launched in April or November. I also believe that this would broadly line up with mass production as mass production means production leaks and leaks mean they can lose control of the messaging

I just also happen to also believe that there's a fair chance we see a release in the first half of next year. And when you combine that with November/December being low-attention months and the beginnings of production leaks over the last month or so? ...... it seems more likely than not we see an announcement this year. I don't think holiday sales for Switch are much of a factor at all

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@alexwolf I can't think of any time a game console company has revealed a next gen console in the September-December period.

If Nintendo does reveal Switch 2 before January, I trust whatever their plan is, and they probably have something special up their sleeve. Switch install base is huge enough, maybe they can't do badly this holiday season.

edit: I'm banking on you tagging me if there's a switch 2 reveal before January to say, "SEEEE @WoomyNNYes!?!?!".😁

@WoomyNNYes

Wasn't Switch revealed between this period?

Yeah, the Switch was revealed in October 2016

@alexwolf @CinnamonRobin Ahh, crap, you're right. 😆Thanks for correcting me. Although, Nintendo was in a much more desperate situation with the Wii U in that final holiday season. Surely that's a factor?

The good, bad and ugly of Switch 2:

The good- The other consoles are held back by 4k, and Switch 2 will be able to do ports of current gen games at 480-720p upscaled to 1080p.

The bad: It will only sell about 50-75 million units at best, echoing the luke warm reception of 3DS because Nintendo didn't innovate and didn't make a great leap in power either. At worst, it's the WiiU all over again.

The ugly: There is no need for Switch 2. 140 million gamers have a portable in the Switch 1. They don't need a new one. Nintendo needs a revolutionary home console that wows the mass market and presents something that can't be experienced anywhere else. Switch is limited by its portable paradigm. In order to revolutionize gaming, you need new motion tracking tech that is very much not portable.

@darthkermit At some point, smartphones hit a mostly optimal design shape, and it gets harder to reinvent the wheel. If the Switch has hit a decent enough form factor with the hybrid console, maybe we shouldn't expect Switch 2 to be able to wow as much as the first time we got Nintendo's first hybrid console. Maybe a normal projection for Switch 2 console should be more in the neighborhood of 70-100M units, rather expecting anything near Switch's 140M units.

I'm thinking 100M is very plausible; that would be a similar dip as GB to GBA had which was another case of a console primarily getting more powerful and the popularity stayed very high but it inevitably sold slightly less since it was no longer a new idea and some people just kept playing their old consoles. It would be neat if Nintendo could shake that route and skyrocket to 180 million sales next gen but it would be difficult.

@WoomyNNYes I think that’s exactly right and we shouldn’t expect them to necessarily follow same announcement/release window. This was from a 2023 Investor Q&A, and even though the WiiU isn’t mentioned explicitly, I still think that was part of it:

“Question: Nintendo Switch was announced under the development codename “NX” in March 2015,
and then the official name was announced in October 2016 prior to its launch in March
2017. Looking back, do you consider this a success in terms of hardware marketing, given
there was a space of about two years between the initial announcement and launch? Do
you think a similar interval between the announcement and launch of a next-generation
platform will be necessary?”
“ Furukawa: Looking back at the release of information leading up to the Nintendo Switch launch, we
announced the “NX” development codename in March 2015 during a joint announcement
with DeNA Co., Ltd. regarding our business and capital alliance (as it related to joint
development of smart-device game applications and its operation, and also the core
system development centered around Nintendo Account). When we announced our entry
into the mobile business at that time, we needed to let people know that Nintendo would
be continuing to focus on the dedicated video game platform business as our core
business. So, I believe that the timing of the Nintendo Switch announcement was a special
case.”

As others said the Switch. Also the tricksy thing about using these kinds of precedents is that for consoles before the Switch we were in an era where E3 dominated and so most major announcements were there. And even when they weren't they were at other trade shows so the timing was always outside of their control. So effectively we have a sample size of 1, the Switch reveal itself

Also if memory serves while the Wii was first presented at E3 2005 the WiiMote itself, which is a bit of a big deal in terms of the Wii, was shown at TGS that year. In September. So they weren't opposed to announcements in that period even back then

@KidSparta
The equivalent to the NX codename drop would be the announcement at the start of this year. And I think the point they were making there is that they needed to announce "NX" as early as they did to make it clear they weren't leaving the dedicated hardware space. Which doesn't apply now

If you were to read anything into that I think the most you could say is that we're going to see a launch sooner than 2 years after that announcement they made at the start of this year. Because there's no need to reassure people about their commitment to hardware products