Slashdot Mirror
Nintendo Switch Outsells Wii U In 10 Months (variety.com)
In less than a year, the Nintendo Switch has earned the designation of the fastest-selling U.S. console of all time. It has outsold the company's previous flagship Wii U just 10 months after its introduction. "Altogether, Nintendo has sold more than 14.86 million Switch units since its debut in March of 2017," reports Variety. "The company sold around 12.5 million Wii U's between 2012 and 2017." From the report: For Nintendo, this is a remarkable turn-around reminiscent of the introduction of the original Wii back in 2006. In fact, earlier this month, news broke that the Switch had become the fastest-selling game console in the U.S. to date, handily outselling original Wii with 4.8 million vs. 4 million units moved over a ten-month span after each device's introduction to U.S. consumers. Nintendo sold 7.23 million Switch units during the holiday quarter alone. The company adjusted its financial guidance for Q1 in light of continued demand for the device upwards by 33%, and now expects to bring in an operating profit of 160 billion yen ($1.47 billion), as well as revenue of around 1 trillion yen ($9.38 billion).
This comes as no surprise to me really. The Switch bridges the gap that has been hurting consoles in more mobile markets, by giving people a system that can be played on the go and put into a console mode when at home. I suspect they wanted to try this with the Wii U but the tech wasn't quite there yet and instead they ended up with a gimmicky screen controller.
The game library for Switch is a fraction of what the Wii and Wii U have. Why would you buy one? It's not even significantly better graphically.
ZIP
I would have bought one myself, if it could play my Wii games. My Wii is mostly defective, so I could certainly justify it if it did. But, alas, it doesn't.
Yes, when I see garbage I mod it down. Posts about Trump, jokes about luddite appers, and inflammatory flames are going to get negative mods. You can expect down mods for this like you can expect that rain is wet.
Feel free to post off topic about fake censorship. Also expect down modding of such off topic posts. Have a nice day.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Moderation is not censorship. You and everyone else are free to browse at -1 if you want.
If only you weren't an AC, and had mod points.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
... it combined the gameboy with the console. Without the mobile element I have doubts it would have been as successful. Nintendo was largely saved by the gameboy it allowed their consoles to weather the storm. But they still have tanked some of their own properties like starfox and F-zero stupidily.
The only conclusion I can come to is Nintendo's unique titles are driving this. The console as a mobile gaming option is cumbersome and battery inefficient, meanwhile Nintendo continues to release amazing content that stands out far more than other consoles content, most of which is available on every other platform.
I've wanted Nintendo consoles to fail for over a decade now because I want them to become strictly a game developer. Sadly, I don't see that happening any time soon so I'll probably buy a switch in the near future.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
are due to Nintendo fans who sat the Wii U Gen out. It's good for Nintendo that their core customers are back, but I suspect the sales will slow once they've saturated their existing market. e.g. this won't be a repeat of the Wii.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I am glad to hear it. The last Nintendo console I bought new was the Gamecube, I bought a Wii eventually and view it only as a retro/kids toy. I may buy a second or third generation Switch after they fix the warping and other problems the console had at launch so I can check out the first party titles (Zelda, Mario, Metroid).
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
It was all about the games, Wii U promised so much, but it never had a Zelda or major Mario title.
The controller was never used much by the games, because the other makers are cross-platform, and work to lowest common denominator. None of the other consoles had the funny controller, so none of the games used it.
Switch launched with a really major/beautiful Zelda game, and the preview of another major innovative Mario game at launch. So we bought it, played through Zelda the first few months, filled summer with Splatoon, and then into Mario, and still playing the second half of Mario now, (with the cube unlocked moons to find).
The Switch has plenty of split-screen multiplayer party games. Intentonal troll is intentional?
Because the Steam ports of console games are often messy, buggy, unplayable shit.
The Wii U main feature is that you can play on the Wii U gamepad screen instead of using the TV screen, but it's not really portable since it still needs the console. It essentially created a feature that has no practically use while other console Nintendo made were better. Why would anyone use the small gamepad screen at home when you could use the large TV screen? If gamers wanted living room TV gaming experience, they get a Wii. If they wanted it to be portable, they get a 3DS. Even the numbers explain it.
Also, Nintendo's attempt to put games on Wii U were mostly failure. This is not because the games on Wii U were bad, but the use of the gamepad (main feature) is still an impractical turd for most of those games. So any gamers who got the chance would buy the Wii or 3DS version game, skipping the Wii U version completely. To step right onto the Wii U gravestone, the rise of mobile game market didn't help drive Wii U sales at all. At worst, the mobile game market further reduced Nintendo overall potential new customers.
Switch on the other hand main feature is a portable console that can also be played using the TV screen. At the very least, this feature is a plus compare to the Wii and the 3DS. Here Nintendo did two things right.
Number one is drive up hype with the new game, Breath of the Wild, released on the Switch first. This works well because the game itself is good and game is what drive console sales after all.
Number two is console support for developers. For the first time, Nintendo made it easier for developers to make games on their console. This at least creates a level ground on par with the mobile game market which already has devices support for developers, and it quickest flooded the Switch store with a lot of games for gamers. Now all Nintendo needs to do is to keep up with the flow of game hypes with their exclusives, and they will continue to success.
I ended up trading some old computer equipment for a practically new Wii-U that someone got bored with and I love it. I wouldn't want it as my main console (I have a PS4 for that) but I like it for all the exclusive games it had. Towards the end of its life I picked up a ton of exclusives cheap and I've been slowly playing through them all (Tokyo Mirage Sessions FE is my current favorite). I see that some of the better exclusives have been ported to switch (Bayonetta 2 for example) but there are still tons of Wii-U exclusive games that make it worth owning like Xenoblade Chronicles X and Super Mario 3D World.
I'll end up getting a Switch eventually, but right now I'm not seeing much worth playing other than Mario Odyssey and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (BotW is on Wii U as well). I'm sure this will change but for right now the Switch isn't particularly compelling.
When my Wii crapped out it was about 3 months after the Wii U launch, rather than buy another Wii I decided to invest in the new console with the expectation that I'd be able to keep playing my Wii games and pick from the selection of new games for the Wii U...
New titles were few and very far between, titles that were expected to drop in or around launch ended up taking far longer to get out the door or were just outright cancelled. There was hardly any 3rd party support and the online experiences it offered were fairly weak.
The only titles that really stood out were Splatoon and Mario Maker both released near the end of life of the console.
The Switch on the other hand has so far done everything right, the first year saw two absolutely colossal hit games drop from Nintendo as well as ports or sequels of Wii U games that were pretty good. On top of that there's been far more 3rd party support, with some fairly big titles getting ported over. The eShop has a good selection however the pricing is unbelievable (in most cases it's actually cheaper to just buy the physical cartridge) nothing really off the wall there except they DO have a good selection of games. And that's what it comes down to, buy this thing and there's a library of games to play right off the bat. The Wii-U was a solid system but the trickle of games was inexcusable and in my opinion the real killer.
Of course Nintendo hasn't launched it's online services (or the pricing model) yet so who knows how that will impact the future...
crazy dynamite monkey
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned how unNintendo like it is for them to build a battery into the console. It's relatively easy to replace compared to an iPhone but certainly not without risk. And of course Nintendo sells a battery replacement service. looking at the tear down, it's clear that there's room for a swappable battery but Nintendo opted out to keep the cost down.
They were, until something called Denuvo came out and pretty much turned the PC gaming industry on its head because it meant you game wasn't pirated within 2 seconds of release. (Nowadays, it's hours, but in the past it was a couple of weeks, which is huge), which meant PC games could branch beyond online RPGs,, MOBAs and FPSs where an online server could check you paid for your stuff.
It's really brought out a lot of better games on PC. Before PC ports were basically garbage - meant to extract every last dollar by doing a crappy port and releasing it and hoping you made up the porting costs before it was massively pirated.
These days though, the gravy train is pretty much over again as Denuvo is cracked and we're back to massive piracy as par for the course. Which means back to crappy-ass ports years after the game was released.
Sure, Microsoft can promise games like Forza and all that making it over, but you know it's only because of the online authentication and verification - if you can't play Forza online, and the online stuff is disabled, you don't really have much left.
Well you can certainly dislike the console all you like, but it's definitely untrue to claim that the only exclusive titles are Zelda, Mario Kart, and Mario Odyssey. You originally said "in-house", but 1: exclusive titles by other companies are also reasons to get a console, and 2: you doubled-down by claiming that "all the other titles in the store are ports of PC games."
According to the Wikipedia lists there are a couple dozen games exclusive to the Switch and a dozen more that are exclusive to Nintendo consoles including the Switch. The most notable ones I've heard of are:
Arms, Blaster Master Zero, Fire Emblem Warriors, Pokken Tournament DX, Golf Story, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, Snipperclips, Splatoon 2, Super Bomberman R, and Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
Out of those, six of them are published by Nintendo or the Pokemon Company, and two of them are even in-house (Arms, and Splatoon 2,) so even your first, less rigid claim is demonstrably false.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank