ziggyrivers
thunder
- Pronouns
- He/him/his
My sentiments exactly. And we’re looking at this in years. We have to think in months. If we go by the fact that there’s no announced software for the second half of this year, software sales are gonna decline. TOTK will explode, but not enough to carry the console throughout the months. Sure, Nintendo can more easily push new software, but why bother releasing games for the coming 36 months just for a dying console?This is a very good post. Of course Nintendo can wait until 2025/2026 with new hardware, but it would be a bad business decision with the current market trends.
That doesn’t make sense. It’s a the equivalent of Apple skipping the iPhone 15 and just increasing iPhone 14 lineup production.
In terms of supply chain management, what is Nintendo gonna do with supply lines that are ready to be used, but empty? Just sit on them? Doesn’t make sense.
Wherever you look at it, confirmation bias or not, there is no leadership, Accounting, Marketing, Operational or Supply Chain Management sense in betting on a declining console:
• Accounting: Switch ecosystem can heavy good margins, but a forecast of declining hardware and software means that everything else has to be revised for a pessimistic perspective
• Marketing: Marketing plans are made a year in advance. Promotion schedules, bought spaces in media and social media calendars. Whatever marketing they have for the games to be released the latter half are either done or in the finishing touches and are to be integrated in the general marketing plan of the Switch brand because we’re getting confirmation of events Nintendo is attending this year. We could make an argument that marketing is gonna blow out the weeks after Zelda, but Nintendo has had a marketing cycle where BOTW was released on March, while they made a big event on the Switch’s launch confirming Odyssey will release in October, two months before Zelda. So Nintendo isn’t a stranger on having big IPs on the same Marketing cycle with months of difference
Operational: why invest resources in a platform that the only thing you can do is minimize its decline?
Supply Chain Management: your supply lines are getting less use the more time passes because of a decline in hardware sales. What if Nintendo once again revised hardware for the negative? Even more space?
There is no logical assumption to justify a console release MORE THAN 18 months from now