With more than three years on the market, the Switch has now entered the middle years of its life cycle, and incredibly enough, its still gaining momentum on a near-constant basis. Sales for the console have been consistently impressive (it currently stands at 55.7 million units sold worldwide as of March 31, and doubtless, it will continue for some time to come.
At least if Nintendo has anything to say about it. Speaking recently during Nintendo’s a Q&A with investors, president Shuntaro Furukawa said that Nintendo plans to maximize the advantages Switch has given them in order to increase the system’s life cycle beyond what one would usually expect. According to Furukawa, the facts that the consoles comes in two different variants and that Nintendo’s resources and focus are dedicated completely only to a single platform, have contributed to what might be a longer life cycle for the console.
“Our current generation game system, Nintendo Switch, has entered its fourth year since launch, but its momentum is increasing,” Furukawa said. “We believe there are two factors behind this. First is the existence of two hardware configurations with different characteristics, in Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch Lite. The second factor is that Nintendo’s development resources are concentrated on developing content for a single platform, Nintendo Switch. We want to extend the life cycle of Nintendo Switch while maximizing such advantages.”
Nintendo have previously made similar statements as well, suggesting that the Switch is barely halfway through its life cycle right now, and that they expect it to last much longer than their previous consoles.
In fact, senior executive officer Ko Shiota also spoke about other factors contributing to the Switch’s success, highlight its ease of use, accessibility, and flexibility in terms of letting people play in whatever manner they choose. He added that it’s likely that Nintendo will consider things for future platforms as well.
“In addition to the performance aspects (higher technical specifications), Nintendo’s dedicated video game platforms are developed with a focus on providing a comfortable environment for consumers to play fun software,” Shiota said. “From the perspective of playing with the image displayed on a TV we believe that because consumers can play Nintendo Switch on a TV or the game console screen itself, it has greatly increased the opportunities for gameplay in various scenes in their lives, compared to previous consoles.
“Through Nintendo Switch, we’ve made many discoveries about where a dedicated video game platform can fit into a consumer’s daily life. We see scenes on social media of children and their families sitting around a game console to play, which gives us a renewed sense of the value of our dedicated video game platform. We will utilize these experiences in carefully considering the form our future game consoles will take.”
Currently, the Switch’s lineup of games releasing this year includes Paper Mario: The Origami King, Deadly Premonition 2, Bravely Default 2, and No More Heroes 3, while multiple 3D Super Mario remasters and Pikmin 3 Deluxe are also rumoured to release in 2020. Other games confirmed to be in development include New Pokemon Snap, Metroid Prime 4, Bayonetta 3, and a sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
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