It may be a console with old hardware, but Nintendo Switch has all it takes to remain a protagonist of the market in the coming years.
Although the thoughts of the press and enthusiasts are all aimed at Nintendo Switch 2, the old console still continues to grind out really excellent sales numbers and offer great satisfaction to players with high-level titles. What do we deduce? First: Nintendo Switch is clear proof that hardware power is not a determining factor to create a large console. Second: he will probably continue to reiterate this concept for many more years flanked by the next console.
On this last point, president Shuntaro Furukawa was clear: Nintendo Switch will continue to receive many games in the next fiscal year (and we already know some), regardless of the debut of the next console, now taken for granted by many in the second half of 2024, and which will remain the “main business” of the Kyoto company in the near future.
After all, the latest numbers speak for themselves. With nearly 140 million units sold, the Nintendo Switch is currently the the best-selling console in Japan and third globally, after PlayStation 2 and Nintendo DS which gravitate around 155 million units. Of these, 6.9 million units were sold in the last quarter of 2023 alone and in the same period a certain Super Mario Bros. Wonder was released, a blockbuster with almost 12 million copies sold so far.
I don't know about you, but in place of the high poppies of Nintendo I would absolutely not be in a hurry to retire the console. In short, it is plausible that Nintendo Switch will follow the same trend as PS4 and Xbox One (which upon closer inspection will also be supported in their eleventh year of life), alongside the new generation console for several years, perhaps taking advantage of a significant price cut to become an attractive access point to the extraordinary catalog of exclusives of the great N.
Backward compatibility exclusives or cross-gen games?
Having established that Nintendo Switch is far from retirement, it will be interesting to see how the company intends to manage the coexistence between the two consoles. For example, he might decide in the early years to achieve a good number of cross-gen games accompanied by some exclusives created specifically for the next console. Or, you could think of a clearer division, with games exclusively for Nintendo Switch 2 and others only for Nintendo Switch, with the latter however usable via backward compatibility… provided it is supported.
Where rumors and indiscretions would seem to agree on a console that is once again of a hybrid nature, as far as the backward compatibility of Nintendo Switch 2 there is a certain divergence of opinions between those who say that it will definitely be there or at least for titles purchased digitally and those who instead report that it won't be there at all.
The first case is certainly plausible, thanks to some indirect clues coming from Nintendo itself, which last year spoke about how the transition to Nintendo Switch 2 will be much more fluid than in the past thanks to the Nintendo Account infrastructure and how the data of the user linked to it (including the history of digital purchases) will be “the foundation from which Nintendo will be able to maintain a long relationship with customers”.
This is an editorial written by a member of the editorial team and is not necessarily representative of the editorial line of Multiplayer.it.
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