 Was I wrong? Does Nintendo not need to release new hardware next year? Is Switch, despite 19% decrease in sales year over year, also having a decrease in sales the year before that, not in need of new hardware in 2023? I mean, frankly, yeah, I am wrong. But we need to talk about why I'm wrong. We need to talk about why the Nintendo Switch is actually just fine and not in need of a revision or not in need of a next generation system in 2023. And the reasoning is pretty clear, and I give credit to a lot of you out there for many of the points made over my last, I don't know, couple of weeks of videos where I talked about new hardware and how it makes sense and the declining sales and yada, yada, yada. I didn't even bring up performance. I didn't bring up how Sonic Frontiers is blurry as hell. I didn't bring up any of that stuff as a reason for new hardware because I don't think that that is a reason for new hardware. I think it's been proven that great games are great games regardless of the hardware that they're on. And if they're not great because of a particular piece of hardware, then it was the game ever great. In the first place, it's always been my argument. The Witcher 3 is inarguably better on every other platform, but it's still really damn good on Switch, which goes to my point that if you're a really damn good game, those kind of things end up not being the death knell for your game. If that ends up being a focus, ends up being a death knell, then your game probably wasn't that great in the first place. I've always stood by this because as someone who's been a fan of Nintendo for pretty much my entire life, I'm 36, so it's been 30 plus years, it's really fascinating to see how little I've actually cared whether a game hit its best possible version on Switch. In fact, amazingly enough, all Switch games from Nintendo look significantly better on emulators on PC, but yet I still rather play it on Switch. So when we look at 2023 and we talk about does Nintendo need new hardware, there are a few facts we need to keep in mind. Yes, Nintendo did decrease their projection in sales with a current fiscal year ending March of 2023 down to 19 million units. And yes, 19 million units is still absolutely incredible. To give you an idea, 19 million units in one year matches the peak of PlayStation 4, okay? Like the sort of peaks we saw with Nintendo Switch due to the pandemic in 2020 and 2021 are just utterly out of this world. They're higher than the peak years of PlayStation 2, higher than the peak years of Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS. So those numbers due to the pandemic are not normal. 19 million is still ahead of 2019, which sold about 18.6 million units in its calendar year. So 19 million is still ahead of pre-pandemic sales, not by much, but still ahead. And we weren't ever gonna think back in 2019 that, oh man, we absolutely need new hardware. We talked about new hardware, we wanted new hardware, but we didn't think it was a need, it was a desire, it was a rumor that was building. It wasn't necessarily something that had to happen, something we wanted to happen. And as we sit here entering 2023 very soon, it's become very clear that Nintendo Switch is doing just fine. Even though here in the United States right now, Nintendo Switch is pretty much readily in stock everywhere. In fact, you can still buy, as of this morning anyways, the Pokemon, Scarlet and Violet version, crazy. Normally that's sold out by now, but it's not. You can go buy it. That to me is absolutely insane. It's absolutely incredible, at least here in the United States. But this isn't true everywhere else. Japan, which is factually the second largest market for Nintendo outside of the Americas, which by the way, it's not just the US, that's Canada, Mexico, it's also South America, technically as well. Although a majority of the sales in the Americas comes from the US and Canada. It's still interesting to look at the fact that Japan is their second biggest market, according to Nintendo's own numbers. And yet in Japan, it's not that easy to get a Switch. Yes, they are getting more regular restocks than they were in the past. Hence why they're not doing these Switch lotteries anymore they once did, but it's still pretty much sold out every shipment. It might not be sold out within seconds, like we were seeing with PlayStation 5 over the last couple of years, but it's sold out within 24 hours, which means that the thirst for Switch in Japan is still there. We talked about how PlayStation 5 passed Nintendo Switch a couple of weeks ago in sales. And oh man, does this mean Nintendo Switch sold less than 50,000 units? Switch sold out that week. There weren't any Switches available in Japan that week. It wasn't that PlayStation 5 beat it because oh my gosh, the Switch sales were dwindling. I was wrong, it's because it was sold out. Japan's market is still very, very thirsty for, well, Switch. And it should be surprising. Swatoon 3 is still week over week over week over week since launch of the best selling game and it might stay that way in Japan until Pokemon comes out. And then Pokemon might stay at the top of the charts for the next month or two. Maybe Swatoon 3 comes back. I don't know, Swatoon 3 is a bit of a darling in Japan. But the point is that sales of Switch are extremely healthy. Now, we talked about just yesterday that Nintendo might raise the price of Switch. Nobody wants to hear that, of course. I know we actually lost some subscribers in that video, people say, you're spreading misinformation. Yeah, Nintendo said they have no plans to raise the price of Switch for now. They've repeated this now three times. But this last time they said during their investors meeting just two days ago, they also said, but we are monitoring the situation for the future. Monitoring the situation means they would consider raising the price in the future. And the reasoning is the weakening yen. So money made today is worth less next week. And that's kind of what happens as the yen weakens. So Nintendo looks at it as, hey, our profit margins on hardware are actually not doing that well. Maybe we need to increase price eventually. And Nintendo's technically already sort of done this. Notice Switch OLED special editions for Swatoon 3 and Pokemon, Scarlet and Violet were at 359.99. Nintendo did not do this for any prior special edition Switch Lite or Switch. So it go back to the Animal Crossing Switch, you know, 299.99. Get to Pokemon, Scarlet and Violet Switch OLED, 359.99. So Nintendo's already sort of slipped in a small price hike probably to compensate for the weakening yen on those special editions. But that's not a hero there. The Switch is just healthy. The game sales are just incredible. So as much as we talk about how, oh, you know, console sales are, we're down 19% year over year. Yeah, but software sales almost doubled the same period from the prior year. Now we had major games come out of course, Scenoblade Chronicles 3 and Swatoon 3 during that quarter. So obviously, you know, those are huge games we didn't have last year. So sales were going to be higher. But the thirst is there. Swatoon 3 has sold basically eight million units by the end of September. That's insane. Eight million units by the end of September. Go look at when that game came out and tell me you're not impressed with eight million units in less than a month on the market. That is utterly fantastic. Scenoblade Chronicles 3, barely on the market as well, fastest selling Scenoblade game ever. Pokemon, Scarlet and Violet coming up. There are metrics out there right now that show Pokemon, Scarlet and Violet pre-orders are the highest pre-ordered Pokemon game ever. Let alone on Switch. Pokemon, Scarlet and Violet pre-orders are through the damn roof. And if you haven't pre-ordered the game yet, what's wrong with you? Use our affiliate links down below to do so. But it's okay if you haven't and you wanna wait for reviews. That's fine. You know, educated consumerism is always better than just blindly buying a product based on promises. But guys, it's become increasingly apparent that Nintendo Switch is doing just fine. They do not need new hardware because of sales. They don't need new hardware because even Nintendo has talked about how, hey, we've hit market saturation a little bit, right? The Shintura Furukawa's own words. Hey, if we made more Switches, we're not sure we could sell more Switches, right? That was Shintura Furukawa's own words and those are still true, but it's true in context of them selling 19 million. They have the ability clearly to produce 28 million in a fiscal year as we saw back in 2020. But making 28 million systems a year when you can only sell 19 million is obviously a problem. You're not gonna make that amount of units. You're not gonna continue to make 20, 25 million units. If you're not selling 20 to 25 million units, they clearly don't think they could sell an extra eight million, nine million units if they were making that. But what is clear is that Switch is still a highly demand system. It's still gonna sell incredibly well this holiday season. We will be north of 120 million in sales by the end of this fiscal year. Maybe well or maybe we're close to 125 million, we'll see. And we know there's incredible games still upcoming with Fire Emblem Engage. We know that that has a release date. We know Pokemon 4 is supposed to come next year. May 12th next year, tears of the kingdom. So we know the software is still coming. Nintendo's still releasing software at record rates. So I just sit back today and I go, you know what? I'm probably wrong. I've been making this push for new Switch hardware personally because I do want some new hardware. You know, there is a personal desire in me to want new hardware, not to be right. I don't care about being right guys. People have a misconception at times that I actually care if my opinions and projections are correct. And I projected new hardware next year thinking it was the ideal time to release it. Maybe 2024 is more like, I still think Switch sales might dip next year from 19 million. Maybe it'll be more closer to 17 million instead of 15 million. And if that's the case, I do feel like Nintendo can wait till 2024 if they want. But look, I'm just a Nintendo fan creating conversations about things I care about. I clearly care about new hardware coming out because I'd like to have new hardware, but I also don't need it. And I recognize the fact that need and want are not the same thing. And many of you guys have been correct. So I was wrong. You were right. We don't need a new Switch next year. We still might get one, but we don't need it. And that just means as Nintendo fans we're eating pretty damn good, right? This has been a pretty great generation. We just taught yesterday about how most people play Switch are adults. And now we're here firing back again that Switch is just a unique platform, man. Maybe it's because of the pandemic helping to extend the life. I don't know, but Switch is just a very unique platform. It turns six very soon. We're gonna be in the seventh year and Switch is still going stronger than most of any of Nintendo's platforms in the past. I mean, they've had peak years in previous consoles that were just like five million, but with you. But they've also had peak years where it was like 12, 13 million. Some of the most successful systems of all time weren't peaking at 19 million, let alone 28. So go Nintendo and let's just keep enjoying our Switch for probably years to come. I am Nathan DeRuplo, Jams from Nintendo Prime. Thank you for tuning in and I'll catch you in the next video.