Switch vs Wii – VGChartz Gap Charts – August 2018 Update - Sales

very good way to look at it, Wii came out the gate so fast it took everyone including Nintendo by surprise, I think scalpers made almost as much off Nintendo in the early months reselling the systems on ebay,.

I think the Wii would have sold at least the lifetime sales of Wii U if it would have been supported one or two years longer. It's a tragedy.

Catching up with the Wii now is pretty much impossible. In 3 years however, I'd say the trend will start to Switch, similar to how the PS4 did

That depends on Nintendo. Switch could potentially fall off in a few years as well.

Rol's probably right, but only if the release of PS5 and Xbox Scarlett don't make Nintendo feel rushed to release a successor. Signs point to Scarlett being holiday 2020, and PS5 probably won't be earlier but almost certainly won't be much later than that. If Switch 2 releases March 2021 or holiday 2021, Switch 1 only gets 4-4.5 years before its successor arrives, which would be around what Wii U got, but Switch deserves more than that, and will need more than that to surpass the original Wii in sales. If Switch 2.0 doesn't come until 2022 or 23, third parties will leave Switch 1.0 in the meantime for the PS5 and Scarlett unless the Switch gets a hardware update like PS4 Pro or XB1X. And if the Switch Pro wants to stay relevant during the 9th gen until its successor arrives, it would have to be one hell of an upgrade, pushing the system at the very least above the original PS4 and XBO, if not close to their upgrades.

If it does get such an upgrade, there's still the issue of price. People won't pay $300 or more for an upgrade, not in enough number to stay relevant, I don't think. What Nintendo should go for instead, if possible, is some kind of add on, like perhaps an upgraded dock, that would boost the console further than the current one when in docked mode. It'd lose the portability bonus, but might not need it since this boost would be expressly to allow it to stay relevant with home console experiences. Selling the upgraded dock both with and without system would allow new users to get in at the higher level and old users to upgrade on the cheap. Alternatively, they could make an upgraded tablet that fit into the old dock, so that only the tablet is upgraded, which would keep the portability bonus, but be more expensive than a dock upgrade. Or they could release an upgrade for both, but sell them separately, fitting in nicely with the Switch's multiple form factor theme. Can't upgrade both? Upgrade the form, portable or docked, that you use more! They'd have to make both upgrades boost about the same though, which might be hard.

Then when Switch's successor released, it should be backward compatible, and development could continue for games for the Switch Pro that would also give the Switch 2 more games to play. Since 3rd parties release cross gen games a few years after the start of a gen, Switch Pro should get most of the last gen versions that the PS4 Pro and XB1X get. They aren't very justified now, but when 9th gen releases, the Pro upgrade systems will probably get lots of games that the original systems can't play, which will give gamers on a budget plenty of reason to buy them. With a Switch Pro, Switch's later years could then help push it past Wii with its dud years after 2011.

First, you said yourself that Wii was hated by third parties and that Switch has already nearly outpaced Wii's third party support lifetime by year 2. So clearly you acknowledged that it is helping. Second, Nintendo wants to build third party support and to sell Switch to both consumers and developers as a console for more than just Nintendo games, so they would feel pressure to keep up. Third, no need to be so hostile, because as I said, I agree with you, I just think momentum will shift a bit in 2020ish when the next consoles release and that to keep momentum on their side for a few more years to give Switch owners a console lifespan they deserve, a mid-gen hardware upgrade would really help Switch. I'm not saying Switch is going to do terrible, I just think Nintendo should consider these things.

Do you really think that if Nintendo releases a successor in 2020 alongside Xbox and PS5, thus giving Switch only 3.5 years, that it will sell 100+million? Or even 2021 for that matter? It needs to last until 2023 to give it a fair number of years to rack up that level of sales. It obviously doesn't need every 3rd party AAA release, hell it doesn't even get that now, but an upgrade would help it get some. Without an upgrade, it'll only get indies. Switch's success isn't all BotW and Odyssey. Do you actively want Nintendo to lose AAA 3rd party support? Like I don't care if we lose CoD or EA games, but we finally got Bethesda, and that's pretty nice IMO. Plenty of people want to be able to play home console sorts of experiences on the go, that's the magic of the Switch. They want pretty much every game to come to Switch, not just Nintendo games. If Nintendo games were all that mattered, Wii U should have done at least a little better. It's failure wasn't all marketing and non-portability.

Why would Nintendo release a successor in 2021? That really makes no sense whatsoever. I could see them bringing an upgrade (similar to the New 3DS line) somewhere in between 2019-2021, but no successor anytime soon.

While 3rd party support certainly helps the Switch, what you and Rol seem to disagree with is how important the AAA publisher support really is. And here I'm on Rol's side; it helps but isn't crucial for the Switch' success.

Plus, an hardware upgrade could bring the Switch to around XBO S power. Since both this Gen and next gen of Sony and Microsoft will build on X86 architecture, I'm also sure that the current gen will be supported by third party devs for quite some time - and the Switch along with it.

A successor to the Switch I wouldn't expect before 2023-2025, by then the 100M mark is most possibly passed

Finally someone who will tell it like it is. RolStoppable is right. The Switch and the Wii are on two very different trajectories. The Switch's best years are still in the future, because third parties are going to support it so much better than the Wii.

I mean, the Wii actually did have a lot of third party games, but even the developers that embraced the concept were very much making "trial and error" games. They were trying to sell to a new type of gamer that didn't buy traditional games for the core gamer. The Wii launched with both Wii Sports and Twilight Princess, but Wii Sports was really the defining game for the whole console, and Twilight Princess style games were an afterthought.

On the other hand, the Switch launched with both Breath of the Wild and 1-2 Switch. Zelda was the defining game this time around. The Switch is meant for core gamers this time. Third party developers are going to have an easier time selling to these gamers, because they are core gamers who want the same type of games that developers are already making.

Already we have third party games like Skyrim, FIFA, and Octopath Traveler that have passed the million mark. Developers have a lot of confidence about bringing their games to the Switch, while with the Wii they had hesitation and confusion.

Whatever man, I hope you're right. I'm rooting for you to be right. You don't have to act so nasty in making your points.

Hindsight is 20/20 - But Nintendo would have mitigated the financial woes of three disastrous years if they supported the Wii a couple of extra years with strong first party support, and didn’t hamstring their Wii Channels and programs starting 2011. I liked the Wii, they had a good thing going - but trying to repeat some of the Wii stuff with the Wii U was a big mistake. The Wii was quick, sleek, and sexy. Few people wanted to “upgrade” their experience to an uglier, slower, convoluted Wii U: which is why a dead Wii continued to crush it with back catalogue sales for years - despite near dead software support. The Wii’s consumer support seemed to finally die around the same time the Wii U did. As much as Wii seemed to fall off a cliff in 2011, the hardware sales from 2011 to present were still superior to the entire life of the Wii U - and software sales from 2011 onward were 350 million+ a full third of Wii’s software sales were in its dying period. Wii U crawled past the 90 million mark lifetime. With Nintendo skipping Wii U and pumping out some more Wii software instead, launching XCX on Switch instead, with 3D World and NSMB U being NSMB Wii 2 - Nintendo probably would have seen significantly more success.

considering what its rivals were (ps3/x360) and it was pretty much an overclocked GC without any HD abilities it's amazing how well the system did.