The way this is phrased makes me wonder if people who sold their 3DS to purchase a Switch are included (as non-3DS owners) or not.
-
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.
Media Create Sales: Week 27, 2019 (Jul 01 - Jul 07)
- Thread starter Chris1964
- Start date
The way this is phrased makes me wonder if people who sold their 3DS to purchase a Switch are included (as non-3DS owners) or not.
Of course this is a factor but Nintendo sold 230k units of New 3DS at launch. Also new consoles like Switch and Wii U launch with 300k units shipped. Switch Lite seems to be a big deal for Nintendo.
Already did, twice. Once on PS3 and a second time earlier this year on Switch. I'm asking about a new Tales of game I was led to believe existed.Go play it instead:
Thank God that Bamco isn't the only Japanese publisher - you guys are focusing on them to prove a point.....I get it.
And you are in for a rude Awakening if you think Publishers like Bamco will go next-gen only with their upcoming games anytime soon.
They wouldn't be. You cant be an Active 3DS player if you dont own a 3DS.
The tweet just said "Active video game player", unless the actual poll is different?
Yes, but my point was that people who sold their 3DS to purchase a Switch are also part of the market of "3DS owners who would consider purchasing a Switch" but wouldn't be included because they no longer own a 3DS.
That is, the interesting stat in principle is "People who were 3DS owners who have not yet upgraded to Switch", but the stat polled here is "People who own a 3DS who have not bought a Switch"; those aren't quite the same stat!
I was just curious about the specifics!
Develop? Sure that takes a long time. 3+ years I can understand.
But just to announce something? They have had plenty of time. Most of the big guns were announced for the PS4 within the first 18 months.
A game doesn't have to be complete to get an announcement.
It's easier for me to believe they have nothing than that all these 3rd parties have a trove of unannounced times they are holding unto until...
It's the Wii all over again. Everyone kept saying "The 3rd party games are coming... any day now..." and the day never came. The Wii got rail shooters, weird down-ports like Chop Till You Drop, Mini-Game compilations, shovelware, etc. Despite being the #1 selling platform it still mostly got scraps.
What do the Wii and Switch have in common? Both are the least powerful console market on the market and both sell very well.
I believe if the switch was on power with the ps4 and actually launched at the beginning of the gen they'd get a hell of a lot more 3rd party support. Now obviously that's assuming it would still sell as well but I don't believe it would because Nintendo wouldn't of had the ability to make it portable at a reasonable price.
Someone would have to go back and fetch the receipts but I believe that Monster Hunter World would be the
Lower power didn't stop the PSP getting third party support.
There are shades between black and white, whenever support is being discussed in this thread people get triggered and immediately bring up AAA and PS4 style support or games. Switch will never get this kind of support nor does it need to, for it be successful and viable for 3rdParties.
FF XV, , DQ XI (initially), KH 3, 7 Remake, Avengers are all skipping Switch and SE is still one of the stronger supporters of the system and will release enough quality title on the system.
Nuanced discussions arent possible - alone the suggestion that some 3rdParty might be ready to fill the MH void on Switch, now that a 3DS replacement is in place, results in the same old "but PS4 had this and that announced early in its lifecycle". So what ? The PS4 started a new generation and was the de-facto lead system for every current-gen 3rdParty title - Switch cant be this system.
True but then again Sony already had good relationships with the majority of third parties.
In spite of the stuff that's missing from Namco (and others...and there are far worse offenders than Namco in this regard - see Capcom), I'd say the Japanese 3rd party support Switch is getting is tons of miles better than what the Wii ever got. Now, I don't want to state third parties released absolutely nothing on the system: Wii still had an exclusive main MH game and an exclusive main Tales of game, as well as Umbrella / Darkside Chronicles, several DQ games, and few more stuff. However, if we try to look at the support as a whole, and then we try to compare to what the Switch already has / is going to see in the next future, I just can't see how the support can be described as identical.
They can bundle MM2 in special edition for next year during slow periods...
I think the difference they're getting at is that the gap between the Xbox/GCN/PS2 is smaller than PS4/Switch/XBO. To the point were, while doable, requires an external studio to do switch porting if the game wasn't intended for the switch in the first place
I don't think Switch Lite will cannibalize *current* sales of the Switch. To me it clearly seems aimed primarily as a device for kids to play games such as Pokemon.
Remember, the LL models of the 3DS always sold much better than the non-LL models, even when you could argue the non-LL was a superior device (for New 3DS at least). I don't think Japan prefers smaller devices, they just want them to be portable. Certainly there will be people who will prefer the Switch Lite because it's cheaper / more kid-friendly, but it doubt it will be a more desirable SKU, per se.
Remember, the LL models of the 3DS always sold much better than the non-LL models, even when you could argue the non-LL was a superior device (for New 3DS at least). I don't think Japan prefers smaller devices, they just want them to be portable. Certainly there will be people who will prefer the Switch Lite because it's cheaper / more kid-friendly, but it doubt it will be a more desirable SKU, per se.
That's a lack of understanding then, because surely it took more care, expertise, labor, and time to port GC games to PlayStation or Xbox games to GC and vice versa. While there is a larger power gap, they have never been so similar architecturally.
Mpl90 I don't know, in a way Wii had better support, it actually got exclusive Capcom support, a new Monster Hunter, a unique (but flawed) Tales of, and an exclusive (excluding late ports and PC) mainline DQ.
Switch is selling at a higher pace than 3DS in America and Europe, but in Japan is still far behind. With this model Nintendo wants to put Japan also above 3DS like the other territories.
You should add another important and relevant metric to this graph : Nintendo DS sales in Japan.
In Japan, the NDS sold better than the 3DS, which - so far - sold better than the NSW. It might just be a natural trend for the japanese handheld market for the 15 past years, a natural decline that every datas confirms so far. That's what I see in the numbers and the immediate conclusion I draw, more than anything else that requires too much mental gymnastic. If that's the case, it will be like I said : +10k for the baseline after the Switch Lite release, with 85% ratio in favor of the Switch Lite.
Plus, I prefer to be realistic than optimistic. Like many others, I've been burned by thinking Labo would do great, Nintendo would reach their 20m/17m objectives, third-party would jump on Switch in the third year etc. It pays to not be delusional.
Last edited:
The price drop is the major difference in this case I think. What price did the 3DSLL open at? The current Switch is still $300 (28k yen I think?), the Lite model cutting the price by 1/3 could have an impact similar to the original 3DS price cut.
I guess we'll see next week if this changes the baseline during the Summer but I think it will.
You can't really draw that conclusion when the third system (Switch) retails at double the price of the other systems. You've been shown evidence that 3ds only sold as well as it did once it hit the 15k yen price point (before that it sold terribly), so the conclusion that this shows a natural decline does not follow.
I love how people's response to this is always "well, Sony had great third-party relationships". I don't understand what they did to deserve this loyalty. It's ridiculous how much things they can get away with. I'm not going to lie, part of the reason I love sales threads is that I'm hoping for this situation to overturn. I want to see how the industry will react when the platform they unanimously support (for no good reason) ultimately fails. It's the same when following box office news. It doesn't matter how hard PlayStation platforms fail (see PS3 and Vita), Japanese third-parties will always try their best to revive the platform as much as possible. I want to see what happens next when it doesn't work anymore. Will they choose to die with Sony or will they move on? The Japanese gaming industry is fucked up, and I think it's time for them to change.
That's never the question. Of course we all know that Switch (and Nintendo) doesn't need this amount of third-party support to be successful. The question has always been "why aren't third-parties doing more to leverage the success of the platform". If the Switch can't be compared to the PS4, then what about past PlayStation platforms? The reality is that the industry has a unnecessary bias for PlayStation platforms in every generation -- not just this gen. We all know this. That's why you know the Switch will never get this type of support as well. The thing is...a lot of people like me think it's moronic and inane. It's outdated business. It's archaic. Shit, even Disney doesn't get the same type of treatment Sony does. If their movie fails, then theaters wouldn't hesitate to drop it like a rock. The gaming industry is the weirdest shit I've ever seen -- what with all the loyalty they have towards a single platform holder. It's unconventional and absurd, yet people accept it because "Sony deserves it due to how well they treat third-parties" or whatever.
Last edited:
Yes, Switch support is better. And 3rd parties aren't ignoring it completely. We can agree on that. But the notion that they have not had enough time and that 2020 will be the year the floodgates open is something I find hard to swallow at this point.
The Switch will continue to get a steady flow of late ports and small experimental games. Some devs will take it a bit more seriously (like Square Enix) and there efforts will probably be rewarded. Others will just keep chasing the West. So no I don't see that a bunch of new games are in development for the Switch and we just haven't waited long enough.
That said it doesn't really matter at this point. Nintendo is the dominant platform in Japan on the support of 1st parties and small devs. And it's doing fine.
Don't simply worked better with 3rd parties and built better relationships with them. Really though what they did was provide consoles that sold a shit ton of SW. The PS1 and PS2 SW sales dwarfed Nintendo's console and most of that was 3rd party. I think the most important thing is that they're a consistent home where 3rd parties can be confident to put their support. Even their failures tend to move a lot of HW (though obviously the vita was a significant exception).
Going into next gen 3rd parties can feel confident that the PS5 will at least sell 80-100 million HW sales with insanely strong SW sales. They also can be pretty confident that they can easily port their games to PC and Xbox.
I agree that the switch is a HUGE missed oppurtunity and I'd love to see just how successful a Nintendo console could be with the full weight of 3rd parties behind but I can easily see why they prioritise sony consoles.
Yet, the fact remained and didn't change when the 3DS hit a lower price-point : the 3DS still didn't reach the height of the NDS, which is the important factor I'm underlining and an important argument in the "decline" theory.
NDS > 3DS > NSW is still clear as day. You can even add PSP > PSV into the mix too, for further confirmation. You can go full mental gymnastic and throw every "context" you can into the mix, the trend is still solid, to this day, in Japan.
NDS > 3DS in the west too, same for PSP > PSV.
Software in Japan is NSW > 3DS, it's reversed. It's selling more software but hardware it's far behind.
Because of its price point, the 3DS peaked early in Japan. It is a rarity to have a successful system peaking in it second year on the Market. Meanwhile Switch is still growing YoY.
So 3DS>NSW is currently right but might be at the end. 3DS at 250$<<NSW at 300$ however.
I don't understand what you are saying. If they sold their 3DS to buy a Switch they arent active 3DS owners. Why would they be included in this?
Why would the first thing you mention matter? If you aren't an active user right now there is nothing to insinuate that there is an upgrade path for you. You're just a new customer at that point.
They only ever said Tales is coming to Switch. Whether in the form of a new game or remaster wasn't stated. Vesperia has always been the game the reveal announcement was referring to.
Yes of course, I don't think I said it was an exclusive situation to Japan or at the least, it wasn't what I was trying to convey.
I think it can be that system. The problem is how do you get non Nintendo fans to buy the Switch primarily for non Nintendo games. The device certainly has the appeal but the third party games are not enough. Its better in the west though where a gamer who bought Switch to play Doom or Skyrim can get something like The Witcher 3. In Japan though the big games are not on the platform yet, like at all. It certainly needs those games to become a primary system for non Nintendo gamers. Nintendo could benefit from them too since they have loads of IP that could appeal to those gamers as well like Metroid, Zelda, Fire Emblem and even stuff like hardcore platforms like Donkey Kong and party games like Mario Kart.
I won't deny that the Japanese market has declined especially for handhelds but that trend is reaching. 3 data points with one that is incomplete tells us nothing (you're also starting from the highest point and ignoring the rest). The DS was the peak for handhelds in Japan and will likely never be matched. However if you look back at previous handhelds the 3DS looks pretty good.
Maybe wait until the end of the switches life before jumping to conclusions there.
It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy though. Third-parties perceive it to be a stable brand that offers consistent sales so they unanimously support Sony. Sony's brand becomes stable because third-parties unanimously support them. It's like the chicken and egg problem. That's why I'm interested in seeing what happens if a PlayStation home console utterly fails -- not just in Japan, but worldwide. If the industry choose to die alongside Sony, then we can conclude that they're not rational. What piques my curiosity is whether Japanese third-parties are insane or not. That's a question that can only be answered when the cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy breaks.
We're talking broadly about what of the 3DS audience have moved on to owning the Switch; in that regard, I would argue that the most relevant stat is how many of the "active video gamers who have ever owned a 3DS" have not yet moved into owning a Switch. I'm arguing that that stat is more interesting and more informative than the stat of the "active video gamers who currently own a 3DS" who have not yet moved into owning a Switch.
I think we're arguing the same point from different directions; I'm suggesting that the sample they are using is not the most relevant and interesting sample they could have chosen to use; I'm not arguing that they would be included in the sample in the context it was described, but that they should have decided on a sample that *did* include them.
Lol what ? No. I can speculate as long as I want, like it's been done in those threads for years and years.
Why should you be personally butthurt someone is speculating on the future ? I follow those Media Creates Sales religiously since the Neogaf days, it has always been ok to speculate. Unless you're only allowed to speculate when you're being overly optimistic or don't go against the common narratives.
You can't just handwave the demonstrably massive boost in sales that 3DS got like that. 3DS sold only 1.3M in its first year up until the price cut. In that same period of time the year after, the 3DS sold 2.6M (or 1.81M for 2012 3DS vs. 0.94M for 2011 3DS when we align for starting week of the week after the 3DS launch). You have mentioned that Switch won't get a significant boost because it is already seen as a handheld, but was 3DS not seen as a handheld? I doubt that is the case. Was it unappealing? Perhaps, but then why did the price cut help? The only explanation that makes sense is that the price cut actually did help. Now, what logical reason is there that Switch would not benefit significantly from a similar 10k yen price drop? It can't be that it already is seen as a handheld, because that was the case with 3DS as well. If it is that Switch is already seen as appealing, then a price drop should accelerate sales a ton, because people get to buy a system they find appealing, but now for 10k yen cheaper.
Sticking rigorously to NDS > 3DS > NSW without paying attention to price development is bad argumentation, because you ignore the actual reasons why. You do not make a case for why we should ignore the huge price discrepancy between Switch and 3DS. NDS > 3DS is obviously true, but that is a single comparison, and incidentally one to the most successful system ever. 3DS > Switch is also true, but your claim that this is a fundamental fact of the market decline cannot be assumed when the conditions (in this case, specifically the price) are so enormously different. The trend exists of 3 data points, of which one is faulty due to it being an outlier in terms of price so far. This means that you haven't given any strong evidence for this trend to be true.
PS VITA suffered from many severe issues that it never recovered from: it had huge memory card prices, its launch price was really high, it had bad support from SONY first party (and, more significantly, didn't have Nintendo backing, something that NDS, 3DS and Switch all do have), and was missing the franchise that made the PSP so popular: Monster Hunter. VITA was a system that suffered from a ton of problems, and didn't have any significant software to prop it up like other systems (PSP, NDS, 3DS, Switch) have. It's possible that the decline occurred in part due to market decline, but the VITA is too problematic a system and ecosystem to conclude that from: its many faults and poor support give plenty of reasons to explain the decline from PSP.
Last edited:
I really don't understand why you're being so aggressive. Butt hurt? Grow up.
I didn't say you can't speculate. I'm saying you can't use a data point which isn't actually complete yet to create a trend. Right now you have DS > 3DS and maaaaaybe 3DS > switch. That's not a trend. You're also leaving out all previous Nintendo handhelds to create that trend.
The stat in that tweet is meant to show that the Switch Lite is an upgrade path to people that are using their 3DS right now. Someone who owned a 3DS 6 years ago is not a useful point to base anything off of. Why would that matter? As I said, at the point you stop owning the hardware you are not a user looking for an upgrade. You're just a new customer.
I get what you're saying. I just dont see why its relevant. The 3DS is 8 years old. Anyone who had one but doesnt now are a totally different group than people that still actively use theres.
No system ever reached the height of the NDS in Japan. Only the PS2 sold more than the DS as far as total sales and that was only by like 1 or 2 million units. What the fuck kind if comparison is the DS in terms of success and decline? Are consoles in serious decline in the West because nothing in 20 years has ever sniffed the PS2?
A trend is used to speculate on the future, that's the basis of it. If you prefer to wait until the end of the Switch lifetime, more power to you.
We could speak all day about the PSV, I disagree with you hard. To me, it would have been a decline from the PSP, regardless of how Sony managed it. The PSP days were over and hard to recover from.
After you posted all those arguments, can you precise exactly what "then a price drop should accelerate sales a ton" means exactly, to you ? What will be the effect on the future Switch baseline, 6 months after the Switch Lite is released for example ? What if your prediction doesn't happen and the Switch Lite won't change much of the current baseline (~10k or so after launch hype) ? Will it confirm the decline I'm speaking about ?
I think that particular 3DS/Switch ownership stat just isn't very interesting.
Like the percentage of people who still actively play [X old console] who do not own [Y new console] isn't particularly interesting. Typically when people get a new console, they stop playing the old one. So I wouldn't expect there to be a particularly high percentage of people who still actively play their old console and also own the new one. As stated above, to get a good idea of future growth for the Switch Lite, having a poll of people who bought a 3DS (not necessarily active) but haven't bought a Switch would be much more illustrative.
Like the percentage of people who still actively play [X old console] who do not own [Y new console] isn't particularly interesting. Typically when people get a new console, they stop playing the old one. So I wouldn't expect there to be a particularly high percentage of people who still actively play their old console and also own the new one. As stated above, to get a good idea of future growth for the Switch Lite, having a poll of people who bought a 3DS (not necessarily active) but haven't bought a Switch would be much more illustrative.
No. The PS4 is trending to sell more than what the PS3 did in the west (if that's not already the case). If we consider the home-console part of the Switch, it's selling more than the Wii U in the west too. Only the Xbox brand is in decline in the west, the other consoles are fine in those part of the world.
NDS > 3DS > NSW is as clear as day though and while I think the Switch Lite will have an effect, I doubt hard it will change the overall trend and decline of the handheld market in Japan. If anything, it will probably confirm it.
PS3 was also the last place system, last gen and the PS4 is the leading console this gen. However, the PS4 is barely outperforming the PS3.
I said consoles. Not the PS brand specifically because the principle is the exact same. You dont use the heighest point of sales and say something is in decline. No system will ever reach the PS2 but gen 7 sold way more hardware than gen 6 and gen 8 will be up over gen 6 as well. The Xbox brand only has 3 data points. How can you say its in decline?
There is way more to it than that. 3DS is the 2nd best selling system in Japan. DS is first. DS is literally untouchable. The Switch is trending behind the 3DS because the 3DS had an absolute price cratering because it was a shit product at its base price. The Switch has sold well at almost double the 3DS price.
You cant ignore the reasons.
It's incredibly arbitrary to use Dengeki's financial year. All of the big PS4 games this year came out in January-March. The PS4 has had absolutely no major release since the beginning of the Dengeki financial year. The biggest is Days Gone and the only other relevant release is Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain. Not sure why retail sales should much higher.
Consider this hypothetical:
There are 100 3DS owners
1 of them keeps their 3DS and purchase a Switch.
90 of them sell their 3DS to purchase a Switch.
"Only 10% of active video game owners who own a 3DS also own a Switch"
"91% of active video game owners who have ever owned a 3DS now own a Switch"
The first statistic can be read to imply that the current Switch is not a tempting prospect for 3DS owners (with the implication that the Lite could fill that gap), but without more context of the size of that group, it's not necessarily useful information - it *could* plausibly be a tiny group that aren't worth tapping into. My point is that this statistic in isolation can mislead.
But I think a key thing I was missing is that I was reading a "sold 3DS" as one that drops out of circulation, which of course isn't really a thing; they're sold to someone! In short, I'm horribly overcomplicating things for myself and really struggling to articulate it!
I get what you are saying but Dengeki provided the most comprehensive numbers regarding software sales right now I believe.
Your claim for a decline requires that NDS > 3DS > Switch lifetime. If cheaper versions of the Switch can't raise sales of the system significantly, then it becomes clear to me that Switch is fundamentally incapable of hitting the numbers that 3DS hit, and that would indeed suggest that portable hardware seems incapable of achieving the highs of its predecessors, yes. At least for the moment (since you never can rule out a future handheld system doing NDS-like astronomical numbers again, of course).
Now, what would I expect be the influence on hardware? To compare this, I will give you a comment on my expectations for Switch sales in the first half of 2020 compared to the first half of 2019 (which seems a fair comparison to make in my view). For the first half of 2019, we have the following sales:
Code:
|System | This Week | Last Week | Last Year | YTD | Last YTD | LTD |
| NSW | 59.184 | 29.058 | 50.678 | 1.483.898 | 1.167.557 | 8.373.444 |
Code:
|System | This Week | Last Week | Last Year | YTD | Last YTD | LTD |
| 3DS # | 65.267 | 66.953 | 31.545 | 2.284.815 | 1.185.436 | 6.420.554 |So what about the period from the launch of the Switch Lite to the end of the year? For that, I think it's instructive to compare with Switch last year (when it had major software during the holidays) and to 3DS 2011 holidays. First, we look at the Switch 2018 holidays:
Week before aligned Switch Lite release:
Switch YTD = 1.739.981
End of year:
Switch YTD = 3.534.165
Total = 1,794,184
Now, we look at the 3DS holiday 2011 numbers:
Week before aligned Switch Lite release:
3DS YTD = 1.835.442
End of year:
3DS YTD = 4,282,142
Total = 2,446,700
My expectation for Switch this year, in the weeks from September 20th to the end of the year (15 weeks counted) is for Switch to sell somewhere around 2.6M. This period for Switch in 2018 was actually pretty good considering the price of the system, although it had two major hardware movers with Pokémon Let's Go and Smash Ultimate to help. This year, however, it has a true new generation Pokémon, which should rival the other two in terms of hardware selling capability. 3DS had Mario Kart 7, Super Mario 3D Land, and Monster Hunter ultimate in that period to move units, which is a very strong lineup as well. So, the software is roughly comparable in terms of hardware selling capability between the systems, so the comparison is as good as we can get it. I believe Switch will do slightly better than 3DS did in the same period, with maybe the hardware sales being skewed a bit more towards the first few weeks than 3DS had (that is, I expect a November-December comparison to potentially give a draw or a small win for 3DS, but the September and October weeks to be much in favour of Switch). In that September-October period I mentioned, 3DS did 376,202 units, and I expect Switch to do significantly more than that between September 20th (or that week) and the end of October.
These are my expectations for the next year or so.