The Nintendo Switch 2's second month on the market was another explosive one, at least in the U.S., where it surpassed 2 million units sold life-to-date, putting it 75% ahead of the unit sales pace set by the Nintendo Switch 1.
I love how everyone dumped on the Switch 2’s pricing when it was announced (not here — this was on another site/community) but as soon as it launched, the sales numbers exceeded expectations.
Honestly Nintendo didn’t price it high enough — it was clearly not priced as high as the market would bear. It’s making such good sales because people consider it to be a solid value for what they expect to get out of it.
If I hadn’t just gotten a Switch 1 (OLED) 9 months prior, I might have gotten one. As it is, it’s a minor upgrade and I see no reason to upgrade at this point. But a lot of people are.
Fortunately, the game I play, Animal Crossing, isn’t hard coded to the Switch’s limitations. I think it was always meant to be used on an upgraded console. Playing it on PC/Mac, people have gotten it up to 8K without modifying the game in any way, just running it on a more capable machine. (Macs are particularly good for emulating Switch as they both use the ARM64 platform, like your phone probably does. PCs do tend to have more powerful GPUs, so they can mitigate the additional emulation, not just going from Switch to Windows, but from ARM64 to x86-64. But Macs are already halfway there.) I can’t do 8K… my monitor and my MacBook both do 1440p though, which is 4X the Switch 1’s native 720p. It doesn’t look that much better (the textures are optimised for 720p) but it does perform better. Loading times zip by. If there’s a Switch 3 and it does 4K and it still has backward compatibility to Switch 1, I imagine Animal Crossing will do similarly well on that. Though, I kind of hope they make a new Animal Crossing title entirely.
First year is always for enthusiasts and is supply constrained, not demand constrained. This price was high but within expectations, even then, I know people who only play on Switch but haven’t upgraded due to this.
We will see the real effect from next year. If it keeps this momentum or significantly slows down.
I love how everyone dumped on the Switch 2’s pricing when it was announced (not here — this was on another site/community) but as soon as it launched, the sales numbers exceeded expectations.
Honestly Nintendo didn’t price it high enough — it was clearly not priced as high as the market would bear. It’s making such good sales because people consider it to be a solid value for what they expect to get out of it.
If I hadn’t just gotten a Switch 1 (OLED) 9 months prior, I might have gotten one. As it is, it’s a minor upgrade and I see no reason to upgrade at this point. But a lot of people are.
Fortunately, the game I play, Animal Crossing, isn’t hard coded to the Switch’s limitations. I think it was always meant to be used on an upgraded console. Playing it on PC/Mac, people have gotten it up to 8K without modifying the game in any way, just running it on a more capable machine. (Macs are particularly good for emulating Switch as they both use the ARM64 platform, like your phone probably does. PCs do tend to have more powerful GPUs, so they can mitigate the additional emulation, not just going from Switch to Windows, but from ARM64 to x86-64. But Macs are already halfway there.) I can’t do 8K… my monitor and my MacBook both do 1440p though, which is 4X the Switch 1’s native 720p. It doesn’t look that much better (the textures are optimised for 720p) but it does perform better. Loading times zip by. If there’s a Switch 3 and it does 4K and it still has backward compatibility to Switch 1, I imagine Animal Crossing will do similarly well on that. Though, I kind of hope they make a new Animal Crossing title entirely.
First year is always for enthusiasts and is supply constrained, not demand constrained. This price was high but within expectations, even then, I know people who only play on Switch but haven’t upgraded due to this.
We will see the real effect from next year. If it keeps this momentum or significantly slows down.