It's interesting that some people choose to forget a couple of things:
Animal Crossing does crazy numbers during the holidays
This game is already selling insanely well, it will be the Top Selling game during
Obon in Japan, Top 5 Selling game World wide during
Black Friday, Cyber Monday and December. Nintendo makes around 50% of its hardware and Software Sales. Now I'm not saying that Animal Crossing is going to sell 25-30 million additional copies during the final quarter but over 10 million seems very plausible. It's the game's first holiday season and we are very likely to get a major
Halloween and
Christmas updates as part of Nintendo's content strategy for their biggest
GaaS title. The Animal Crossing/Splatoon team is extremely versed in maintaining the high popularity of its titles via updates. The number of women and girls getting a Switch during Black Friday or as a Christmas gift will be huge, the only major pub that has anything remotely targetting this demographic are EA(Sims) & Ubisoft(Just Dance), and neither of these games is going to take the shine off Animal Crossing.
Dumb ass publishers keep thinking that the only people who would buy a console are 10-35-year-olds with Kratos avatars. This is why when PS5/X1S are able to barely sell over 25 million combined by August next year, while Switch is the market leader with over 80 million hardware, they gonna scramble to buy small indie studios that have to build an audience on the Switch already. Why do you guys think Microsoft is pushing
Image & Form, they know which way the wind is blowing ever since putting
Minecraft on the device. Microsoft has been awfully quiet about
Minecraft sales on the Switch, but I'm certain they've already sold over 10 million copies since the launch. A single Lithuanian probably achieved more sales on the Platform than some AAA Publishers with his game -
Human Fall Flat. Nintendo also isn't shy about renting out their IPs to small devs, as shown by
Cendence of Hyrule. So while Sony & Microsoft have been pushing the narrative/photorealistic bar that AAA must achieve to be considered good. Nintendo has been building relationships with creators that are finding success on the platform. Whether it's
Golf Story, Steamworld Games, Stardew Valley, Hollow Knight, Overcooked or some other indie, where exactly do you think they are going to be focusing on the 25 million audiences or the 80 million ones?
The guys behind Wii Fit/Sports have a game out
Do you think Nintendo is happy with 4 million sales for
Ring Fit Adventure? I don't think so, I'd be damned if they don't push it like crazy once they are able to manufacture enough plastic. Sure Nintendo couldn't figure out how to sell cardboard but plastic is indeed what they've been very good at selling. It also helps that
Ring Fit is far more engaging than Wii Fit/Sports, and would be a go-to alternative to Gyms if we have another major lockdown across the World. The game has been sold out since launch, still selling out, still being resold for a profit... top this off with the more expensive Switch being better suited to playing it and its easy to imagine a scenario where they are selling the Switch with the
Ring Fit Adventure peripheral for
$350 during the holidays... fucking Nintendo how the fuck do they do it? It's almost like another fitness game developed by them also failed to reach its full potential during it's launch year due to shortages. I recommend people to look at
Wii Fit sales during 2008 and set their 2020 expectations accordingly
Dominating Japan...
Even when Nintendo dominated with the Wii/DS they only had
66.7% of the hardware market in Japan. Sony's succession of the handheld market has put Japanese 3rd parties in a particular position. Either they develop for the Switch or they become irrelevant on their home market. Looking at Sega, Capcom, Koei Tecmo in particular as their flagship titles have made no effort to build an audience on the Switch. What exactly would
Yakuza/Warriors/Monster Hunter/Resident Evil sell on a platform struggling to sell
1M units a year? With the PS5 being expensive and bulky things aren't about to turn around. This year Nintendo has
87.47% of the hardware market share... this won't change much with the PS5 launch. Abandoning handhelds has pretty much ensured that Nintendo is returning to complete domination of Japan and the various developers based there. Vita was a failure but at least it kept that audience within the PlayStation ecosystem, they sold over
50M software on the Vita in Japan, keeping a bunch of studios afloat. You can see what to expect in the coming years, looking at the current trends.
- 2016: 47.1%
- 2017: 69.8%
- 2018: 67.4%
- 2019: 79.1%
- 2020: 87.47%
Rebuilding Brand Awareness in Other markets
Remember how the PS5 is expensive and bulky... that won't make it the most appealing product in Asia. Nintendo is already dominating South Korea & Taiwan according to Media Create and this will continue even as the PS5 launches. They've also been able to actually compete in Western Europe for the first time something we should not overlook. Coming off 3DS/Wii U era, Nintendo had lost much of it's mindshare in Europe and has been rebuilding it. Sony will still be a leading platform in the European market but the gap will be much closer than what Sony enjoyed with the PS4.
TL/DR: Nintendo is doomed