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New report suggests third-party Switch 2 game sales are "below estimates" (www.gamesindustry.biz)
submitted 1 day ago by tonytins@pawb.social to c/games@lemmy.world
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[-] Ashtear@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 day ago

It's too early to draw any conclusions. Take it from Mat Piscatella, who's forgotten more about video game market research than I ever learned myself.

Hardware launches are not like game releases, anyway. It's the establishment of a new product market, and early game releases on consoles have an ebb and flow to them that later blockbusters do not. It's about building growth, not first-week sales.

[-] LandedGentry@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

  1. Nintendo

  2. Switch

“New product market”? Only in the most literal sense of the term. Functionally those rules do not apply at all. I mean come on, it’s called “Switch 2,” the sequel to a must-buy system.

This is a company that has been dropping consoles for almost half a century and still ends up in millions of homes when they fail. “Nintendo” is synonymous with “video games.” The switch Is literally one of the most successful video game hardware releases in history. When it comes to Nintendo, conventional wisdom does not apply. As evidenced by the unbelievable abuse their fans will endure sometimes.

Nintendo gets all these caveats and generous interpretations. If this was a new Xbox (definitely) or PlayStation (maybe) we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. People would just assume Microsoft or Sony fucked up. We’d be pointing and laughing and cheering on their demise.

[-] Ashtear@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago

conventional wisdom does not apply

All the more reason why it's far too early to draw any conclusions.

[-] LandedGentry@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

It depends on why it doesn’t apply. You can’t just throw out some little flippant answer like that and act like you made a point of any substance.

There are sales expectations during product launches, and in the video game world when you’re selling a console there is a ratio of console to games that is expected. A notable example where people saw the same trend was the PS3, because people were buying it as an (at the time) affordable Blu-ray player with little to no intention of buying games. So in that case conventional wisdom did not apply, and this wasn’t apparent at first, so they had to figure out what was going on.

The point is nobody is saying Nintendo is doomed, but they’re saying that third-party sales are pretty far south of where they expected, which is concerning. That could always change, but as of now, it is clearly a note worthy data point. I don’t know why you feel this need to downplay it but it’s unwarranted and kind of strange. If I were Nintendo I would at least start lightly probing as to what is going on and at the very least keep close eyes on it in the coming weeks to see if the trend doesn’t reverse.

Just like “the fastest selling video game console launch in history“ matters, “lagging third-party title sales” matters too. Unless Nintendo is not allowed to brag about how many units they’ve sold initially because that data point, apparently, is not meaningful to you/too early? I would certainly disagree with that, but it’s pretty consistent with what you’ve argued so far.

this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
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