Sales Data Nintendo Switch worldwide sales top 139.36 million (6.90M in the last quarter)

[My Tulpa]

Outselling the ps2 is really a non factor, if we go by profits the switch years from 2018 to 2023 have generated more profits than the entire videogame division of sony have generated lifetime. The switch is the most succesfull console ever made with or without outselling the ps2 and that's a fact.

The Switch is earning more profit and is more successful than even the Wii+DS years!

Pretty much at 140 million.

If the Switch continues getting supported the next 2 years I can see it passing the PS2 (which it probably will, not every game is some high-budget AAAA game).

Fucking crazy.

I still don’t think Nintendo will catch up with PS2 and DS. Even if they manage to reach something like 145 million units sold by December 31, 2024, selling more than 10 million consoles afterwards just seems too difficult.

Here is how I see it.

Even if the Switch has the relatively horrible drops and sales of the late life ps4 (it won’t), it is still getting close.


Switch will be ~141 million as of the end of the FY March 2024.

PS4’s last FY before the ps5 released saw it sell 13.6 million as of the end of March 2020. Over the next FY (and during the ps5 release and sales), ps4 sold another 5.8 million.

Assuming a similar 57% drop YoY for Switch, that means Switch will be at ~148 million as of March 2025.

Ps4 then proceeded to eke out another ~2 million in sales over the next couple of years. So that’s ~150 million for Switch.

That’s the WORST case scenario, following the poor ps4 trajectory,

But Switch later life sales trajectory will be far better because:

1. If Switch meets it 15.5 million sales projection for this FY year, that’s only a 14% drop YoY. When the ps4 posted its 13.6 million FY before the ps5 release, that was already a 24% drop YoY. Which means the Switch drops are softer which means the Switch won’t drop 57% next FY like the ps4 did.

2. PS4 essentially stopped all production and shipping of ps4’s by the time the ps5 released (I know, I know…in 2021 because of they weren’t able to have enough ps product on shelves they decided to restart limited production of ps4 slims again). I don’t see Nintendo stopping any Swith model production any time soon. I think the new model will be relatively expensive for them and they want the lower end options out there for a good while.

3. Current Switch models have a higher engagement and will have a longer tail than the ps4/pro had. Meaning Nintendo is going to support and promote them longer than the 3 years that Sony did for ps4.

 

[D.Lo]

Had you said exactly 10 years ago that Nintendo would dominate the 8th generation,

Nobody would know what you were talking about since the stupid numbered generations were made up by Wikipedia since then.

In reality the Switch is actually Nintendo's seventh generation console, because within a single company is the only way numbers actually make sense.

 

[Luminoth9090]

How close to their prediction did they get last year?

Initial forecast/ actual shipments for Switch hardware

FY 2016/17
Forecast - 2.00m
Shipped - 2.74m
FY 2017/18
Forecast - 10.00m
Shipped - 15.05m
FY 2018/19
Forecast - 20.00m
Shipped - 16.95m
FY 2019/20
Forecast - 18.00m
Shipped - 21.03m
FY 2020/21
Forecast - 19.00m
Shipped - 28.82m
FY 2021/22
Forecast - 25.50m
shipped - 23.06m
FY 2022/23
Forecast - 21.00m
Shipped - 17.97m
FY 2023/24
Forecast - 15.00m
Shipped - 16.00m?

It looks like this fiscal year their forecast is going to be fairly accurate, in previous years they haven't been.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

From 5 years ago:

What was the lifetime sales of the PS2? Not 158m [Update: Between 159.2m and 161.9m]

No because PS2, PS3 and PSP final LTDs aren't known.

www.resetera.com

Yeah, that's been brought up before, it just doesn't pass the smell test for me. Trying to find the image I made last time... Ahh, here it is. PS2's last known quarters were 0.9m (a Christmas quarter) and 0.5m following that. Anything like 158 or more means 3+m in the next three quarters, averaging bigger than its last Christmas.

I just hope Switch does not finish at 158M and we get endless debates

Yes yes yes.

Switch will be ~141 million as of the end of the FY March 2024.

PS4’s last FY before the ps5 released saw it sell 13.6 million as of the end of March 2020. Over the next FY (and during the ps5 release and sales), ps4 sold another 5.8 million.

Assuming a similar 57% drop YoY for Switch, that means Switch will be at ~148 million as of March 2025.

Ps4 then proceeded to eke out another ~2 million in sales over the next couple of years. So that’s ~150 million for Switch.

That’s the WORST case scenario, following the poor ps4 trajectory,

WORST case is DS trajectory, going from a year of 17.5m to less than 8 million total in all the years after. For Switch that would be something like... hitting 141m in March as forecast, then never reaching 148m.

 

[Eddy]

Yeah, that's been brought up before, it just doesn't pass the smell test for me. Trying to find the image I made last time... Ahh, here it is. PS2's last known quarters were 0.9m (a Christmas quarter) and 0.5m following that. Anything like 158 or more means 3+m in the next three quarters, averaging bigger than its last Christmas.

Yes yes yes.

WORST case is DS trajectory, going from a year of 17.5m to less than 8 million total in all the years after. For Switch that would be something like... hitting 141m in March as forecast, then never reaching 148m.

Yeah, I think in the thread they said the PS2 may be up YoY because Sony did not mention PS2 being down:

What was the lifetime sales of the PS2? Not 158m [Update: Between 159.2m and 161.9m]

And this is the earnings results he is referring to:

www.resetera.com

But in the end, I think the range of 157-159M is a good estimate and we may finally get the real number when Switch gets to 155M (I hope Switch gets to 160M)

PS: I used to lurk Gaf and Era for years, I don't anymore since the creation of Famiboards and InstallBase (and I was finally allowed to create an acount)

 

[Stephen]

Nobody would know what you were talking about since the stupid numbered generations were made up by Wikipedia since then.

In reality the Switch is actually Nintendo's seventh generation console, because within a single company is the only way numbers actually make sense.

Generation numbers were definitely in vogue at least at the time the PS4 and Xbone launched, if not before. I don't get the people claiming they were a recent invention by Wikipedia. I've also never thought they were a nonsensical way to group consoles. The Switch is where it gets complicated but even still I feel perfectly fine calling it gen 8 since it came out during the lifespans of the PS4 and Xbone and was around for a good portion of those consoles' time with the market to themselves.

 

[D.Lo]

I've also never thought they were a nonsensical way to group consoles. The Switch is where it gets complicated

The Switch is not where it gets complicated. The earlier eras are the real problem because until Microsoft and Sony invested/lost so much money in the industry effectively locking out any new competitor entering again, there were constant new entrants and new consoles yearly for two decades. And it wasn't all one worldwide market and was fluid throughout the world.

My standard example is the Colecovision and SG1000. Two consoles with the exact same hardware, the same computer chips, exact same capabilities, released less than a year apart (and looking at it worldwide, the SG1000 was released before the Colecovision even made it to Europe/Australia). Sega basically just knocked off the Colecovision platform and released it in Japan a few months later.

Yet due to Wikipedia trying to force everything into the Sony/Microsoft paradigm, the SG1000 is listed as in a later generation. Because it competed with the Famicom for a couple of years? Wiki's crappy list is constantly confused if hardware power/features or time of release defines a break. And forcing handhelds into the same boxes is a complete mess too.

Several of the collections of consoles that were understood to have somewhat shared lifespans already had contemporary shared generation names, eg 16-bit, 32/64-bit. Changing them to arbitrarily defined numbers is like renaming baby boomers to 'Generation 23' and Gen X to 'Generation 24' etc.

It's demonstrably wrong in several places, particularly early on with arbitrary defining lines that don't even work properly, and really the entire excercise is some autist trying to force the entire of gaming history to fit the Sony/Microsoft paradigm.

 

[FernandoRocker]

I know Nintendo (probably) doesn't care about beating the PS2 record... they care about profits (they are a business after all).

But how about yourself, personally?

I just want Nintendo to beat Sony no matter what, even if it sounds fanboyi.

 

[bixente]

I know Nintendo (probably) doesn't care about beating the PS2 record... they care about profits (they are a business after all).

But how about yourself, personally?

I just want Nintendo to beat Sony no matter what, even if it sounds fanboyi.

It sounds fanboy because it is fanboy.

I want it to get the record, too.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

Generation numbers were definitely in vogue at least at the time the PS4 and Xbone launched, if not before. I don't get the people claiming they were a recent invention by Wikipedia.

If they didn't start at Wikipedia, then where? Looking at the history of the generations pages, it looks like they all started out with names like "8-bit era", "16-bit era", "256-bit era", or for older ones "History of video games (Pre-crash systems)" until someone(s) decided they needed to create a naming system.

 

[OctoSplattack]

If they didn't start at Wikipedia, then where? Looking at the history of the generations pages, it looks like they all started out with names like "8-bit era", "16-bit era", "256-bit era", or for older ones "History of video games (Pre-crash systems)" until someone(s) decided they needed to create a naming system.

Wikipedia's take on it is probably the newest and most widely-used, but as their own page on the matter states, others have attempted to organize consoles into distinct generations since at least the early 2000s. As you can see, no one really... agrees on anything. Wikipedia's take gained popularity for the simple fact that it's Wikipedia.

 

[D.Lo]

If they didn't start at Wikipedia, then where? Looking at the history of the generations pages, it looks like they all started out with names like "8-bit era", "16-bit era", "256-bit era", or for older ones "History of video games (Pre-crash systems)" until someone(s) decided they needed to create a naming system.

Wikipedia's take on it is probably the newest and most widely-used, but as their own page on the matter states, others have attempted to organize consoles into distinct generations since at least the early 2000s. As you can see, no one really... agrees on anything. Wikipedia's take gained popularity for the simple fact that it's Wikipedia.

It's been popularised because of Wikipedia's ubiquity of course, which is against their own charter, they are not supposed to be a primary source.

But the issue is the prominence. They have completely (re)built their 'coverage' of gaming history around this arbitrary structure.
It would be fine if they had one article about people's takes on where you can make breaks on what consoles go together in a generation. That could be an interesting opinion piece, or collation of opinions, or have qualifiers when discussing it. Someone who wrote a book about it could describe the SNES as 'a console which is universally considered part of the 16-bit generation' or the Dreamcast as 'a console which due to technology and release date straddled the boundaries of the console generations of its main competitors'.

But instead literally the first thing they write on the NES page is: "The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console". As if the existence and name of these generations is as much of a fact as the existence of the NES. The concepts of these numbered generations are drilled in on every single console page.

And it's riddled with nonsense. Their third generation page says "Handheld consoles were not a major part of this generation [because the handhelds sold in this era] are considered part of the previous generation due to hardware typical of the second generation." Considered by whom? It is completely subjective. And why is the SG1000, which inarguably has 'hardware of the second generation' listed as third generation?

The actual reason is it desperately wants to appear authoritative and structured, and that falls apart very quickly if nuance or ambiguity is introduced. But the narrative is upheld by stubborn 'professional' wikipedia editors protecting their fiefdoms.

And frankly any 'historian' who tries to make it fixed numbers is just straight up wrong anyway. Until the 90s at the earliest (really the 2000s) it was just so different in different parts of the world you simply cannot make a worldwide schema.

 

[grobla123]

If Switch is such a successful console, then where is Switch 2? Huh, Nintendo?

 

[lexony]

It's been popularised because of Wikipedia's ubiquity of course, which is against their own charter, they are not supposed to be a primary source.

But the issue is the prominence. They have completely (re)built their 'coverage' of gaming history around this arbitrary structure.
It would be fine if they had one article about people's takes on where you can make breaks on what consoles go together in a generation. That could be an interesting opinion piece, or collation of opinions, or have qualifiers when discussing it. Someone who wrote a book about it could describe the SNES as 'a console which is universally considered part of the 16-bit generation' or the Dreamcast as 'a console which due to technology and release date straddled the boundaries of the console generations of its main competitors'.

But instead literally the first thing they write on the NES page is: "The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console". As if the existence and name of these generations is as much of a fact as the existence of the NES. The concepts of these numbered generations are drilled in on every single console page.

And it's riddled with nonsense. Their third generation page says "Handheld consoles were not a major part of this generation [because the handhelds sold in this era] are considered part of the previous generation due to hardware typical of the second generation." Considered by whom? It is completely subjective. And why is the SG1000, which inarguably has 'hardware of the second generation' listed as third generation?

The actual reason is it desperately wants to appear authoritative and structured, and that falls apart very quickly if nuance or ambiguity is introduced. But the narrative is upheld by stubborn 'professional' wikipedia editors protecting their fiefdoms.

And frankly any 'historian' who tries to make it fixed numbers is just straight up wrong anyway. Until the 90s at the earliest (really the 2000s) it was just so different in different parts of the world you simply cannot make a worldwide schema.

Wikipedia honestly is full of this kind of "Mistakes" where they rewrite history, even on quite serious topics. The bigger problem even is that some Users there are huge dickheads and trust more the over years constructed misleading articles instead of real world facts.

 

[TheMindOfThomas]

Wikipedia honestly is full of this kind of "Mistakes" where they rewrite history, even on quite serious topics. The bigger problem even is that some Users there are huge dickheads and trust more the over years constructed misleading articles instead of real world facts.

That and their arbitrary omission of relevant facts and articles because they decide what is and isn't "notable". Wikipedia is a bureaucracy.

 

[AxkilAvenger]

If Switch is such a successful console, then where is Switch 2? Huh, Nintendo?

Don’t believe their hype and lies.
140 million in 2024??
Big whoop Nintendo.

 

[Luminoth9090]

Regional Hardware

Regional Software

 

[Luminoth9090]

Calendar Year 2023 Hardware

Japan - 4,290,000
Americas - 6,190,000
Europe - 4,430,000
Other - 1,890,000
Global - 16,810,000

Calendar Year 2023 Software

Japan - 40,110,000
Americas - 87,410,000
Europe - 59,140,000
Other - 19,160,000
Global - 205,800,000

 

[Amin_Parker]

Congratulations to Nintendo on a monumental achievement.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

Regional Hardware

Regional Software

Noticing that Japan isn't far behind Europe in hardware, but WAY behind in software. The tie ratio is quite different per region.
WW: 8.61
JP: 6.98
NA: 9.74
EU: 9.64
Ot: 5.86

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

I've just updated some numbers for sums of "Nintendo Home" (NES+SNES+N64+GCN+Wii+WiiU), "Nintendo Portable" (GB+GBA+DS+3DS), and "Nintendo All" (NES+GB+SNES+N64+GBA+GCN+DS+Wii+3DS+WiiU+NSW) so though the numbers from the early years are pretty lacking it's still kind of interesting to throw them up along with Switch as the sole member of the new Hybrid group.

In hardware, Hybrid at the beginning of 2024 is about where Home was at the beginning of 2000, and halfway to its final total. Hybrid at the beginning of 2024 is about where Portable was mid-2002, and nearly a third of the way to its final total. Portable overtook Home in 2003.

Though Portable hardware overtook Home hardware in 2003, it never quite caught up in software. Hybrid software is now beyond half of what Home or Portable ever reached.

With ~5.8B software sold, the current half point is September 2008 with ~2.9B. With ~850M hardware sold, the current half point is between June (~421M) and September (~432M) 2007.

 

[TsarOfAbility]

Yeah the software graph is insane.
Any bets on NS2 pushing their total hardware over a billion? I don't think virtual boy is included in the 850 million hardware number, either, so that should make it a little easier

 

[Torpoleon]

Yeah the software graph is insane.
Any bets on NS2 pushing their total hardware over a billion? I don't think virtual boy is included in the 850 million hardware number, either, so that should make it a little easier

It's possible, but it would be really tight. If Switch sells 160m, Switch 2 would have to sell nearly 130m. Personally, I feel like total hardware will be just below 1 billion when you factor in Switch 2.

 

[boomersooner2000]

So 142M when they reach the end of March. Next FY they can do 10M to 12M through March 2025, putting the sales at 152M. It will be on the market until March 2027, even with a drop to 5M through March 2026, they would be at 157M without a price drop. I still think 160M is possible.

Do you think with the rumor delay of Switch 2 that Nintendo can sell more than 12M through March 2025 if they incorporated price cuts during the holiday season? I think Switch can potentially surpass PS2 lifetime sales in FY25.

 

[Z0m3le]

I think Switch will outsell DS in 2025 and PS2 in 2026, Switch has skus at $199 and $299, with the potential for both to drop by $50, I think both models will stay on the market through spring 2027, and give the Switch a true 10 year life span before EOL the product when Switch 2 Lite comes to market.

 

[Torpoleon]

I don't see Nintendo dropping the price of the Switch. If anything, I think it's more likely that they get rid of the Switch OLED model eventually, and then you'll have Switch Lite at $200, Switch at $300 and Switch 2 at likely $400. A big reason why I think this is because I believe Switch 2 will use LCD screens.

Despite that, I do see Switch passing DS and possibly passing PS2 as well (wish we got the final numbers on PS2).

 

[Cheetah6442]

I don't see Nintendo dropping the price of the Switch. If anything, I think it's more likely that they get rid of the Switch OLED model eventually, and then you'll have Switch Lite at $200, Switch at $300 and Switch 2 at likely $400. A big reason why I think this is because I believe Switch 2 will use LCD screens.

Despite that, I do see Switch passing DS and possibly passing PS2 as well (wish we got the final numbers on PS2).

They are going to remove the original model, not the OLED version.

 

[Guaraná]

Being 21 million behind, I can safely say that Switch won't outsell the PS2. Nintendo will probably cut the production once the SUCC arrives to force the transition, just like Sony did. I bet something close to 10mi for the next FY and at max another 5mi once the NSW2 arrives.

 

[Jbone916]

Being 21 million behind, I can safely say that Switch won't outsell the PS2. Nintendo will probably cut the production once the SUCC arrives to force the transition, just like Sony did. I bet something close to 10mi for the next FY and at max another 5mi once the NSW2 arrives.

I don’t think you can “safely” say it won’t happen when even in your prediction you have such a small margin (~5M).

Also, why does it seem like people keep coming up with higher and higher estimates for the PS2’s final HW total? (160M+) IMO, we should really go by Sony’s reported shipment numbers (155M) instead of all these debatable estimates.

 

[Guaraná]

I don’t think you can “safely” say it won’t happen when even in your prediction you have such a small margin (~5M).

Also, why does it seem like people keep coming up with higher and higher estimates for the PS2’s final HW total? IMO, we should really go by Sony’s reported shipment numbers instead of all these debatable estimates.

5mi is not a small margin.

 

[ArchedThunder]

Being 21 million behind, I can safely say that Switch won't outsell the PS2. Nintendo will probably cut the production once the SUCC arrives to force the transition, just like Sony did. I bet something close to 10mi for the next FY and at max another 5mi once the NSW2 arrives.

I dunno, I can see 13-15 million this coming fiscal year, another 5 the following one and then a few more million after that. Since the Switch 2 will probably be more expensive I could see Nintendo keeping the regular Switch and Switch lite around for a few years as a budget option.

 

[Jbone916]

5mi is not a small margin.

When you’re forecasting multiple years of future HW sales, it absolutely is.

 

[Guaraná]

I dunno, I can see 13-15 million this coming fiscal year, another 5 the following one and then a few more million after that. Since the Switch 2 will probably be more expensive I could see Nintendo keeping the regular Switch and Switch lite around for a few years as a budget option.

The thing that makes me disagree is the last part of your post. I don't think Nintendo will keep producing the Switch once the new one arrives. At least not for more than 12 months or so.

When you’re forecasting multiple years of future HW sales, it absolutely is.

Hopefully you're right, we'll see.

 

[ArchedThunder]

The thing that makes me disagree is the last part of your post. I don't think Nintendo will keep producing the Switch once the new one arrives. At least not for more than 12 months or so.



Hopefully you're right, we'll see.

They kept making 3DS units up until late 2020, so I don’t see why you‘d think they’d kill Switch so fast.

 

[OctoSplattack]

I think it's a bit of a toss-up how long the Switch will stick around after the successor drops. Their handhelds certainly stick around for another few years, but all their home consoles after the SNES have gotten discontinued within the months afterward AFAIK. Hell, the Wii U got discontinued over a month before the Switch released. I personally see at least the Lite sticking around for two years, before Nintendo releases a Switch 2 equivalent.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

Being 21 million behind, I can safely say that Switch won't outsell the PS2. Nintendo will probably cut the production once the SUCC arrives to force the transition, just like Sony did. I bet something close to 10mi for the next FY and at max another 5mi once the NSW2 arrives.

Sony seemed like they had to make a choice for manufacturing capability, but transitioning like that isn't something either company has made a habit of. There are definitely cases where production between two generations didn't overlap, but that was the market's call.

Also worth noting that meeting this year's goal + 10m + 5m would put Switch a million past the last announced PS2 number, and in the hell spot where nobody is quite sure which is ahead.

I think it's a bit of a toss-up how long the Switch will stick around after the successor drops. Their handhelds certainly stick around for another few years, but all their home consoles after the SNES have gotten discontinued within the months afterward AFAIK. Hell, the Wii U got discontinued over a month before the Switch released.

They were all way deader than Switch will probably be, though. N64's last year before GameCube? ~1.5 million, hard to be more exact with the known numbers. GameCube's last year before Wii? About 2 million. Wii's last year before U? About 6 million, but it still shipped another ~3 million post-U.

 

[Marce-chan]

I think Nintendo will definitely keep the Switch line as entry points for, at the very very least, a year after Switch 2 comes out.

It doesn't look like the console will be any cheaper than 399 $ so I highly doubt they'd just try to force people to jump from 199, 299 and 349 options to this. Even more when all those versions never got a price cut to begin with and are still selling a lot(even more than their forecasts, at its 7th year).

They could just discontinue the Wii U because nobody was buying it for awhile anyways, but they kept the 3DS around as the traditional handheld/kids/entry point for awhile until Switch fully replaced it. They also kept DS and GBA after their successors came out.

I can see a price cut happening or maybe them extending bundled games with no additional cost beyond black Friday deals.

 

[OctoSplattack]

They were all way deader than Switch will probably be, though. N64's last year before GameCube? ~1.5 million, hard to be more exact with the known numbers. GameCube's last year before Wii? About 2 million. Wii's last year before U? About 6 million, but it still shipped another ~3 million post-U.

True, all those consoles pretty much fell off a cliff, which is very much not a problem that the Switch is having, with it's 100 million strong active user base. Still amazed that it did well enough during the holidays that Nintendo felt comfortable enough to bump up their hardware projections, even if it was just by half a million.

Only having the Lite is the "worst case" scenario to me. I think we'll also have the OLED still kicking around, while the V2 Switch is possibly phased out -- the same way we ended up with the 2DS and New 3DS, but no standard 3DS models, towards the end of that handheld family's life. And with that combination, I think the Switch can make it to 155 million over the next two or three years (like you said, 10 million next fiscal year, 5 million after that).

If it needs to hit past 160 million to beat whatever the PS2 is actually at though? Not sure. It'd probably need a price drop and/or new model ala the New 2DS or Wii Mini to pull that off.

 

[Linkstrikesback]

Only having the Lite is the "worst case" scenario to me. I think we'll also have the OLED still kicking around, while the V2 Switch is possibly phased out -- the same way we ended up with the 2DS and New 3DS, but no standard 3DS models, towards the end of that handheld family's life.

The standard 3Ds and 3DSXL models were actually phased out well before the end of the systems life. Most regions stopped producing the non2DS/new models by early 2015 barely 4 years after the handhelds launch, and 5 years before itd be actually discontinued.

Whatever the situation ends up being with the switch, I'm not sure we can learn a lot from the 3DS in this specific case

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

The standard 3Ds and 3DSXL models were actually phased out well before the end of the systems life. Most regions stopped producing the non2DS/new models by early 2015 barely 4 years after the handhelds launch, and 5 years before itd be actually discontinued.

Whatever the situation ends up being with the switch, I'm not sure we can learn a lot from the 3DS in this specific case

The "New" models were basically direct replacements, more like Switch's v2 except we actually get unique numbers for them.

 

[Old Sorta Fan]

So, let's see....

-Performance clearly superior to a Raspberry Pi 3, probably.
-Built-in storage enough for installing as many as 1-2 games
-Voice comm requiring the use of an app on your cell phone
-Paid subscription online service feature list competitive with Heat.net
-Peripheral pricing so high and bizarrely lopsided with the initial hardware bundle that it makes buying a second Switch for parts a sensible option

...that's pretty dire, but it's still a much more compelling product than the Wii U at first reveal, simply by virtue of being a handheld. Might be somewhat more successful than the Wii U since it's not trying to leverage a poorly thought out archaic tablet as a unique selling point this time, but the cost of ownership is looking astronomically high. It's arguably higher than the major console competition, given the peripheral pricing, anemic built-in storage, low value paid online, etc., so it's abandoning a lot of the appeal that would otherwise come with being a handheld.

Handheld form factor and performance, but with $60 game pricing, paid online, tiny storage, and obscene peripheral costs. Worst of both worlds, arguably, and the mediocre mobile SoC isn't going to do it any favors when people hook it up to their living room setups. I seriously doubt I'll want to stretch out Switch games onto my 75" 4K HDR TV.

Not exactly situated to take the market by storm with all that and a very thin launch lineup. Not something that's easy to root for as a consumer, either, since Nintendo loaded up on anti-consumer business decisions here. It's telling that first shipment pre-orders are still available.

No.

Thank you for digging up this copypasta. Love to laugh at NeoGaf nonsense.

 

[Mekanos]

With the Switch 2 possibly being delayed to 2025 I would be pretty surprised if the Switch 1 doesn’t become the best selling console.

 

[Old Sorta Fan]

It's been popularised because of Wikipedia's ubiquity of course, which is against their own charter, they are not supposed to be a primary source.

But the issue is the prominence. They have completely (re)built their 'coverage' of gaming history around this arbitrary structure.
It would be fine if they had one article about people's takes on where you can make breaks on what consoles go together in a generation. That could be an interesting opinion piece, or collation of opinions, or have qualifiers when discussing it. Someone who wrote a book about it could describe the SNES as 'a console which is universally considered part of the 16-bit generation' or the Dreamcast as 'a console which due to technology and release date straddled the boundaries of the console generations of its main competitors'.

But instead literally the first thing they write on the NES page is: "The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console". As if the existence and name of these generations is as much of a fact as the existence of the NES. The concepts of these numbered generations are drilled in on every single console page.

And it's riddled with nonsense. Their third generation page says "Handheld consoles were not a major part of this generation [because the handhelds sold in this era] are considered part of the previous generation due to hardware typical of the second generation." Considered by whom? It is completely subjective. And why is the SG1000, which inarguably has 'hardware of the second generation' listed as third generation?

The actual reason is it desperately wants to appear authoritative and structured, and that falls apart very quickly if nuance or ambiguity is introduced. But the narrative is upheld by stubborn 'professional' wikipedia editors protecting their fiefdoms.

And frankly any 'historian' who tries to make it fixed numbers is just straight up wrong anyway. Until the 90s at the earliest (really the 2000s) it was just so different in different parts of the world you simply cannot make a worldwide schema.

That Wikipedia article is what happens when PlayStation fanboys edit your article. I wonder if they will change it when Sony goes third party like Microsoft.

 

[Scrawnton]

So, let's see....

-Performance clearly superior to a Raspberry Pi 3, probably.
-Built-in storage enough for installing as many as 1-2 games
-Voice comm requiring the use of an app on your cell phone
-Paid subscription online service feature list competitive with Heat.net
-Peripheral pricing so high and bizarrely lopsided with the initial hardware bundle that it makes buying a second Switch for parts a sensible option

...that's pretty dire, but it's still a much more compelling product than the Wii U at first reveal, simply by virtue of being a handheld. Might be somewhat more successful than the Wii U since it's not trying to leverage a poorly thought out archaic tablet as a unique selling point this time, but the cost of ownership is looking astronomically high. It's arguably higher than the major console competition, given the peripheral pricing, anemic built-in storage, low value paid online, etc., so it's abandoning a lot of the appeal that would otherwise come with being a handheld.

Handheld form factor and performance, but with $60 game pricing, paid online, tiny storage, and obscene peripheral costs. Worst of both worlds, arguably, and the mediocre mobile SoC isn't going to do it any favors when people hook it up to their living room setups. I seriously doubt I'll want to stretch out Switch games onto my 75" 4K HDR TV.

Not exactly situated to take the market by storm with all that and a very thin launch lineup. Not something that's easy to root for as a consumer, either, since Nintendo loaded up on anti-consumer business decisions here. It's telling that first shipment pre-orders are still available.

No.

I remember reading this when it was first actually posted. Can't believe I remember this horrible thing.