Topic: Is Nintendo resting on its laurels?

@Agriculture
A few of things. Firstly your maths is off, 60% more isn't "almost double". Secondly I think it's probably worth reading your sources because in the first two links there's something interesting to note. On Nintendo's site it reports 2.9mill units sold in the quarter before last, the article you linked to quotes 2.5mill PS4 units sold for the same period. Lastly, the previous quarter is typically the quietest quarter in any case by a significant margin. So yeah, there are multiple things wrong with what you are trying to suggest here.

@Rocketjay8
The knee-jerk reaction against VG chartz is unnecessary. What you should instead be critical of is the way that @BlueOcean has read this information. Specifically the conclusion that "other ports" of Wii U games haven't sold more on Switch than they did on Wii U and even Mario Kart is only just barely doing better. Here's literally what @BlueOcean is seeing when browsing VG Chartz for Wii U "ports" in graph form. I have also added newer figures Nintendo listed in their latest financial report for some of the titles.

Note that I also have sorted this by release date. If you can't grasp why I have done this then you probably won't understand what @BlueOcean has done wrong here. I think it's pretty clear that if you understand how time works you can see that the conclusion is a tad wonky even if you are just looking at VGChartz.

@skywake Oh now I see. Thanks for explaining!

Also, while we're talking about VGChartz. As a further response to the cherry picked argument @Agriculture
was making. Hardware sales across the same periods (Jan-Aug) according to VGChartz' recorded stats:

And on this other point that was made:

Launch aligned hardware sales. They're currently outpacing the 3DS. If anything they are tracking closer to the Wii by trading positions in the trend. Of course, the Wii which did end up moving 101mill units EOL so if you were to extrapolate this out this would be the number you'd be looking at.

It is even closer to the PS4 by this same measure:

Regardless of this, there are over 4 times as many PS4s in peoples homes as Switches. There's of course a reason for that, but game developers don't care about your reasons for not winning, only if you're winning or not.

I think GTA 6 will be one of the determining factors of Nintendos future. This game will probably be released for the next generation of consoles. When that happens, 2 things can happen.

1. When the PS5 & Next Gen Xbox gets released in say 2020, Nintendo sticks with the Switch "because it's only 3 years old" and it doesn't get GTA 6.

2. When the PS5 & Next Gen Xbox gets released in say 2020, Nintendo release a Next Gen Switch that is fully backwards compatible with all current Switch games and peripherals. This new console gets GTA 6 at the same date as PS5 and Next Gen Xbox.

This, plus a few other things like Nintendo upping their game on 1st party titles, could make Nintendo a viable console manufacturer again. And no, they current aren't in a good position, they're behind by a lot. This gap need to be closed and Nintendo has done a lot to do that, but they need to do a lot more. If the gap isn't closed and they're not competing for top position, then it's unlikely they'll keep making consoles. They can't sustain their company on a small fan base, they need mainstream success.

@Agriculture Hah, there's no way. Even if Nintendo make a BC Switch 2 with the most powerful chipset available and priced it at say... $500, it still wouldn't keep up with PS5 /NeXtBox well enough to get GTA 6.

I am glad to see you acknowledge that you were wrong on this point.

Developers don't care about total install base and they don't care about console wars. They care about the potential audience for their game at the time of release. These things are related but they aren't the same thing. The metric you should care about in terms of this is the software sales marketshare and, in particular, the estimated projection. If it was any different no developer would ever release games for a new platform.

Here's a graph showing the state of things in terms of software sales marketshare:

Now again, without question, Sony is dominating the market with the PS4 currently. However it is not anywhere near as one sided as you are suggesting. It's currently more like 2:1 than 4:1 even with the 4:1 gap in the install base. With an increasing install base for the Switch and an ageing PS4 install base the gap is going to shrink not widen. All of which you would instinctively understand if you thought about this at all.

They have 1/4 of the market, they're sitting in the second spot in terms of software sales after a year. Before this they were well and truly third in the home console space for a good five years and had been losing ground year on year for almost a decade. If there is a change they need to make to capture a larger share of the market? They've already done it. The Switch is the play and it's working fantastically well

I wasn't wrong about PS4 selling more last quarter, but it's not relevant to what I was saying. It's sad to see a grown man being so invested in this conversion.

I think you underestimate how much more power it takes to up the frame rate or resolution a little bit. If GTA 6 runs at 4k in 60 fps on Playstation 5, it can probably run at 720p 30 fps on a souped up Switch. The important thing is that it's the same game, not like during the N64/PS1 era were multiplattform games were basically loosely based on the original game, and really a whole other game.

I think what most people in this conversation fail to realize is that there is no way the next consoles won't be 100 % backwards compatible.

The PS4 & Xbox One are basically PCs, and the Switch is basically a tablet and they all run very standard operating systems. The next generation will just have higher technical specifications. So all this talk about install bases being old or new is completely irrelevant since they'll transfer over the generational change.

The reason why game consoles had to re-built their user base every generation was that they used new type of hardware and software every generation.

@Agriculture I agree that the XB1 successor will have 100% backwards compatibility especially because of the focus on the past with XB1 as well as the fact Halo Infinite and Gears 5 are XB1 games. PS5 however, I'm not sure. There's rumours surrounding it basically being another PS3 situation and I could see that being the case given other things their stance on stuff like crossplay and locking Fortnite progress to PS4. Competition is healthy but Sony wants a monopoly.

@Grumblevolcano

You can be certain that the PS5 will be PS4 compatible.

You said nearly double, I asked for a source. Your source said 1.6x not 2x more and additionally highlighted the fact the it actually sold less in the period prior. When I pointed this out you proudly defended your original argument by effectively saying "well so what, it doesn't matter. Here's some more of me misreading sales data".

And when I highlighted the inaccuracies in this new reading of different data? You're now attacking me as a person rather than the rebuttal. How dare a "grown man" feel the need to knock up a graph in 5mins on a lazy Sunday, they must be so invested in this conversation. And just to prove how non-invested you are you then read and individually replied to three other comments in this thread

@Grumblevolcano An overpriced PS5 that lacks the BC feature when it's the right time to implement one is going to lead them to a monopoly?

Fun fact, the PS3 was actually overpriced because it included PS1/PS2 hardware to implement BC.

The rumours pointed a custom Navi-based system, with Zen CPU, both by AMD. I'm not really in the mood to visit the dark side of the web in order to dive into the technical side of this, especially on a Sunday morning, but if anyone has that knowledge ready, be my guest (@skywake?). I'm not sure how much of that is based on the current x86, and how much can be emulated if it's not. So I have currently no idea to be honest if it's something to worry about or not.

Yes, exactly. The next Playstation will use the x86 architecture since it's basically all that exist now, and because of that there is nothing preventing full backwards compatibility. And the idea that they would chose not to include it is ludicrous, it would be like squandering away all they've built up since 2013.

The only real question about next gen backwards compatibility is if Nintendo decide to not allowing the next Switch to use the same dock and joycon, which would be a mistake. Ideally they should offer a package of just the Switch 2 tablet so people could upgrade without buying duplicate peripherals.

It's good that you admit the PS4 sold 60 % more consoles in the same time span. Now hopefully you see that there's a lot more Nintendo needs to do to get back in the race.

@Octane I never said it would work, these companies try to push the boundaries of what'll benefit them but anger the fanbase as far as they can when they're in a very positive position. See Nintendo Switch Online for example, the Switch is a huge success so let's put a garbage quality paid online service in there and see if the fanbase just accepts it

@Agriculture except... Consoles sell more at PS4's point in its life cycle. You should be comparing PS4 year 2 sales to Switch, and last I checked the two graphs we're about even launch aligned.

@Yorumi Are you a PC fanboy? The PC has its flaws too, ya know.

You can't really compare generations of consoles anymore. It's very likely consoles from here on will just gradually get higher specs and stop getting support after some iterations, similar to how smartphones work.

@Agriculture
Nothing comes to mind as to why the PS4 has twice the units in households except for it being launched 3.5 years earlier than the Switch.

You make good arguments.