The Nintendo Switch 2 is now formally announced, and just under two months away from release. It would be tempting to say that it has been a turbulent console reveal cycle, but let’s be honest, pretty much all console reveal cycles end up being so. Controversies, misinformation, poor messaging, all abound in the lead up to the launch of a new machine. It is very easy for the noise to be amplified and distort the picture. And then there’s the real world chaos thrown in on top.
So yes, turbulent would be the right descriptor for the Switch 2 reveal. But this was also the case for the PS5 and the original Switch reveals, both of which also got mired in a series of controversies – controversies barely remembered all these years after their launch, because both ended up being appealing products once people actually got their hands on them, and the market accepted both very resoundingly and convincingly. The question here is if that is the same fate that awaits the Switch 2 – because while it is true that systems such as the Wii, the Switch, or the PS5 also had fairly turbulent pre-launch and reveal cycles and ended up doing extremely well regardless, it is also true that systems such as the Xbox One and PS3 also had turbulent pre-launch cycles. And while both did reasonably well for themselves, they ultimately did underperform relative to their potential, particularly with where their immediate predecessors had left things for them.
So the question is, just how well exactly can the Switch 2 be expected to do? It is following up on what will probably end up as the single bestselling game system of all time, but Nintendo has a history of follow ups that underperform. And even without that specific history, Nintendo has kind of been all over the place with how its hardware has performed on the market. You have the Switch and DS tier, all-conquering systems that sold more than 150 million units, about a billion units of software or more, and permanently changed the industry in their image. You have the Game Boy, which sold a good 120 million units, and is still one of the bestselling systems of all time (fun fact: the PS2 is the only non-Nintendo system that has sold more than the Game Boy). You have the Wii, which sold slightly over 100 million units. You have the 3DS and GBA tier, which sold between 75-85 million units. And you can keep going down from there, all the way until you get to the catastrophic tiers – the Game Cube at under 22 million and the Wii U at under 14 million units sold.
So, let’s get that out of the way first. There is absolutely zero chance of the Switch 2 underperforming to the degree that the Wii U and the GameCube did. It is very easy to point to those as examples of Nintendo systems that performed poorly, because they obviously did; but the full context can often be lost when this is done, and that full context is important. Put simply while the Wii U and GameCube were unprecedented flops for Nintendo, and the console industry as a whole, Nintendo was still fronting platforms of 70-80 million units – the GBA, which sold 82 million units, was sold alongside the GameCube, and the 3DS, which sold 75 million units, was sold alongside the Wii U.
These portables are being brought up because for many – in fact, for most – they were the means to access Nintendo games. Indeed, portables are what should be viewed as Nintendo’s primary hardware business, not consoles. Not only does Nintendo have the single longest unbroken dominance of a single technological sector that any company has ever had in history – Nintendo has dominated portable gaming for over 40 years, going all the way back to the Game and Watch, through the Game Boy, DS, and now Switch – but that is where the true Nintendo audience can be said to reside. Multiple people have traditionally owned a Nintendo portable to go along with whatever home console they had, and Nintendo portables are not only cheaper ways to enjoy their games, they are also better supported by great third party titles than Nintendo consoles traditionally are… in fact, a key reason to the Switch’s success was that it inherited and gave centerstage to the portable side of the Nintendo hardware business, rather than the home console side.
The most immediate implication of this is that even in generations with hugely underperforming consoles like the Wii U and the GameCube, there has been a Nintendo audience of 75-80 million people who bought Nintendo hardware to play Nintendo games. That is the absolute baseline Nintendo has for an audience – and while that audience could get diverted to or absorbed by Nintendo’s portables in the past when their consoles were faltering, there are no Nintendo portables left for the Nintendo audience to go to. If you want Mario, or Zelda, or Mario Kart, or Pokemon, or Kirby, your only option will be the Switch 2. That audience assures a baseline of success to the system.
Of course, there are very valid concerns that are worth bringing up; these pertain to the extremely high costs of the system’s games and game upgrades in particular, but also the price for the Switch 2 hardware itself. While it is priced fairly, it is also undeniable that it is priced far higher than what the family and younger demographics – two audiences key to Nintendo’s immense success – would be comfortable paying. So even if it’s fair, it doesn’t help if it’s too expensive for that segment of the market anyway.
To be honest, the high costs are something that I feel wouldn’t have been a real issue for the Switch 2 under normal circumstances. Like almost all internet drama, I feel like they would have amounted to almost nothing once the system hit the real world. But these are decidedly not normal circumstances. In fact, the current stage of global economic stage – means that high costs are more worth considering than before. After all, there may be many who are so financially constrained they can no longer buy a Switch 2 (or any gaming system), even where they may have bought a Switch or a PS4 previously.
It’s hard to tell exactly how this plays out, for so many reasons. Primarily, it is impossible to make any assumptions when the situation changes literally by the day. But also, traditionally, video games have proven unusually resilient to economic downturns in the past – in the 2008 recession, almost every other industry suffered, but video games hit a new high, led by the success of the Wii, Xbox 360, and PS3. In 2020, the global economy collapsed in the wake of COVID-19, and spending on almost everything else went down – the movie and streaming industries are still trying to recover from the aftershocks of COVID, as an example – but buoyed by the PS5 and the Nintendo Switch, it set new records in terms of sales and revenues.
Of course, just because that’s how it was before doesn’t mean that’s how it will be this time, particularly if this truly is supposed to be the worst economic crisis in a century. But it does mean that it’s impossible to predict how much it impacts the elasticity of demand in response to game prices.
One thing that can be safely assumed, however, is that if the pricing is proving to be an issue, then it can be easily adjusted. Nintendo did well here with their planning and execution – based on troubled console launches of the past, there are a lot of things that can go wrong, and almost all of them are not fixable in the long run. For example, you could completely mess up the branding of your system, to the point that people are either not aware it exists, or are confused about what it is if they do know it exists – this is exactly what happened to the Wii U and the PS Vita. This is almost impossible to fix – if you mess up the branding, it will take a lot of time and resources to undo the damage. Nintendo avoided this with the Switch 2, which has as straightforward branding as it is possible for a successor system to have.
Or you could mess up the hardware itself, make it fundamentally unappealing – typically this tends to be by adding functionality or gimmicks that are disruptive to the core experience, and unwanted by almost the entire market. The Wii U, Xbox One, and Nintendo 3DS are all examples of this – and again, it can take years to put out the necessary hardware revisions or software updates that help sidestep this issue. It took Xbox One almost a year to rid itself of the Kinect. It took the 3DS two and a half years to get the 2DS, a revision that got rid of the 3D gimmick entirely. Nintendo sidestepped this as well by mostly avoiding gimmicks in the Switch 2 at all; it’s mostly just a bigger and better version of what people already have and love, and what new functionality does exist on the system, such as the mouse controls, is completely additive rather than being disruptive.
Another major fumble a new system can make is messing up the games release pipeline. If a games system doesn’t have enough notable games available at and after launch, then it withers on the vine as usage and engagement falls off, and so do sales and word of mouth. Nintendo, again, fell prey to this, with both the Wii U and the 3DS, as did Microsoft with the Xbox One and Xbox Series, as well as Sony with the PlayStation 3. This issue is killer. Especially with how long modern game development cycles are, it can take years to get the necessary system selling games out if your pipeline is not sorted, and by then it can be far too late – look at the Wii U, or even Xbox Series. The Switch 2, however, is set on this front – it is launching with the first successor in a decade to one of the highest selling and most beloved games of all time, is getting a brand new AAA 3D Donkey Kong platformer just a month later, and is getting a new Kirby, a new Pokemon, a new Hyrule Warriors, and Metroid Prime 4 Beyond over the remainder of the year. Assuming Nintendo keeps up the same cadence for game releases next year – and they have managed to do that over the last eight years, so we have little reason to believe that will change now – the Switch 2 has avoided this problem too. And this is before we consider the great lineup of games from third parties that the Switch 2 is also getting this year and into the next.
Which brings us to the last big issue a new system can have, a high price. This obviously sucks, and can derail early momentum at its worst, but it’s also the easiest to address. While global marketing plans, profit margins and revenue projections, and supply chain bottlenecks, among other logistical considerations, all have to be taken into account, the price of a system is the easiest to adjust in response to the market. If the Switch 2 does prove to have sluggish sales because of the price, Nintendo can merely reduce it and fix the problem. Because there is no other real issue with the system as it stands right now.
Given all of this, then, I would expect the Switch 2 to have a contraction in sales from the Switch 1 – but not anything as catastrophic as some of Nintendo’s generational transitions have resulted in in the past. If anything, I expect it to be similar to the PS4 to PS5 transition, where Sony ended up offering a better, higher end, more premium, more expensive version of the very successful product from last gen, and which ended up doing very well – but not as well as the PS4. Just like the PS5 is currently falling behind the PS4, but still selling at a nearly record breaking pace, I expect the Switch 2 to eventually fall behind the Switch 1, but continue selling at a great pace regardless. In the end, I would not be surprised if the Switch 2 finishes its life with 100-120 million units sold. But at the bare minimum, I think we can expect sales in the 70-80 million units range as a baseline, judging by the performance of previous Nintendo portables.
No matter what, however, it is guaranteed to not be a failure. After all, no system in history with a mainline Pokemon game underperformed.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
