Nintendo Switch has
been on the market for just over 12 months, while the console shipped
nearly three million units in the first month of its launch,
exceeding Nintendo's initial projection of two million. As of January
2018 over 14 million units sold worldwide. It is the fastest-selling
console in Nintendo's history, and is the fastest-selling console of
all time in Japan and the United States within its first year.
Nintendo are breaking sales records all over the place in an already
crowded industry, what with Sony, Microsoft and the Mobile markets
taking more than their fair share. Nintendo are well and truly back
in the race and 2018 is just going to take them to an even higher
level of success.
How have they managed
to maintain the momentum? With brilliant marketing strategies and
sticking to their rather ballsy plan of keeping the system in a
minimal operating state geared purely for gaming. All this without
even a proper social online experience for multi-player gaming.
Holding the online subscription services back before fully launching
it is where the ballsy move comes into play. In an industry that’s
jam packed with online gaming and easy communicating solutions,
Nintendo stuck their neck out and said “No, we want to do it this
way, our way!” quite frankly rightly so, too! A soft launch with
limited features and supply, meant the die hard Nintendo fans will
get their hands on the units first. Thus allowing Nintendo to ride
the word of mouth momentum as fans began to show off their new piece
of kit! Eventually Nintendo had no choice, they had to ramp up
production and marketing, due to the somewhat unpredicted popularity
Nintendo Switch was actually having. Before the first month of the
unit being in the wild, it had become very apparent that Nintendo had
just launched one hell of a product that gamers actually want! They smashed their predicted sales target of 2 million in the first month, with over 3 million units being sold. If
that wasn’t enough they also said no to multimedia streaming
services, which in my opinion was one of the best decisions, sales
have proved gamer’s do not need to have media streaming services to
entice them to buy into a new console. Holding back these features
means Nintendo have ammo in their bag for when sales of hardware
start to dip. They can whip these out fairly quickly and let’s be
honest, Nintendo will have already planned for media streaming to
launch globally one day.
What about the games?
Within a 12 month period a very strong Nindies selection with over
500 games (which also include third and first party games) in the
E-shop library, there is plenty for gamers to sink their teeth into. With the first quarter
of 2018 over, we look to the rest of the year in anticipation.
Nintendo has already announced some hard hitting games that are
guaranteed unit shifter’s like Metriod, Pokemon for Switch, Yoshi,
just to name a few. While these titles may not necessarily be
releasing this year gamers will likely jump on the wagon early once
more info is released later this year.
We also have the Online
subscription services arriving sometime in September. This will
introduce the final iteration of the Switch online companion app (no
doubt it will evolve over the following year) as well as access to a
catalogue and revamped NES and SNES titles with, where applicable,
online features added to them. So the shape of Nintendo Switch is
looking rosy for the foreseeable future.
