Switch is beginning to look like a console with a future after all.
Nintendo Is Back to Printing Money
While the authority and integrity of Lusipurr.com is generally beyond reproach, that does not necessarily mean that we are not caught flat-footed on occasion. One such occasion was the launch of the Nintendo Switch, and the console’s blistering success ever since. We had assumed that since the Switch was making many of the same mistakes as the Wii U, that it would share a similar fate. That has not happened.
In eight months the Nintendo Switch has managed to sell 7.63 million units, which puts it over half-way to reaching the lifetime sales of the Wii U – and it has not yet even had a retail presence for a single Christmas! By any metric Nintendo would have to be happy with this. And it is not just the hardware that is selling, as Super Mario Odyssey is not the fastest selling Mario game in North America. Super Mario Odyssey has managed to sell over two million copies worldwide after just three days on sale, and after five days on sale in the US it has sold 1.1 million units in that region. And then if all that was not already enough good news for Nintendo, the company has also this week revealed that their SNES Classic ‘plug and play’ console has sold over two million units since September!
Nintendo Switch users are overwhelmingly adult Men.
Well Excuse Me, Princess!
Also released this week were some interesting Switch user statistics. The first being that 20% of users play the system exclusively in docked mode, while 30% of users play the system exclusively in portable mode. In one sense this is unsurprising, as the biggest selling point that the Nintendo Switch has over its traditional console rivals is its portability factor. On the other hand, it is also a little surprising given how mediocre the Switch is as a portable console; it is too big, and has terrible battery life. But at any rate this is what it is, and the Nintendo Switch is more popular in its portable mode.
On a more interesting note, Nintendo has released user demographics for the Nintendo Switch – and we can observe the increasing uselessness of Nintendo gimping their content for a family friendly image. The biggest market for the Nintendo Switch is 25-34 year olds [43%], followed by 19-24 year olds [20%], and 35-44 year olds [17%]. In contrast to this if all demographics bellow the age of 18 are rolled into one group then they would still only comprise 17% of users! Mature age users comprise 83% of Nintendo Switch users! This is why it is insane that Nintendo continues fucking over mature age gamers in order to be welcoming toward children!
Even more interesting is Nintendo’s breakdown of the gender disparity in Switch ownership – as it completely undermines everything that the social justice bugmen who write for commercial game blogs will try to tell you about girls in gaming. Gaming blogs will tell you that developers need to stop making games which appeal to Men and boys, because Women comprise half of the gaming audience. What they do not want their readers to realise is that most of the Women that have been identified as ‘gamers’ are actually just Women who play a bit of Candy Crush on their phones. As such, this is reflected in Switch ownership, with 86% of Switch ownership being comprised of Men, and 11% being comprised of Women. The gender breakdown does not look to have shifted at all in recent years. 11% is a sizable and no-doubt appreciated chunk of audience that one does not wish to dismiss out of hand, but, again, it is insane to turn the gaming landscape on its head in order to cater towards this small minority.
PS4 was on top of the competition from day 1!
Sony Is Also Killing It!
Nintendo is not the only Japanese console manufacturer with good news. This week Sony revealed that they have now shipped over 67.5 million PS4 consoles! This figure is accurate as of the end of September, as Sony was able to ship 4.2 million consoles for the quarter – which is 300,000 consoles better than the same time last year! Sony has now raised their 2017 projected console sales from 18 million to 19 million units, as a result of this higher than anticipated demand.
The PS4 news does not stop there, as this past week has seen Sony making a bunch of announcements at Paris Games Week; some of which are release dates for previously announced games, and a couple of them were announcements of new games entirely. First up Sucker Punch, the developers behind inFAMOUS and Sly Cooper, are developing Ghost of Tsushima as a PS4 exclusive. The game is an open world action adventure featuring Samurai as they attempt to beat back the encroaching Mongol hordes. Ghost of Tsushima looks like it has a pretty good shot at being good, provided that Sucker Punch is able to refrain from filling it with Western poz. Erica was another PS4 exclusive announced, but it looks like a shitty FMV game, so best to avoid that one.
Sony took the opportunity to announce that the Shadow of the Colossus remaster will release on February 6, and that Detroit: Become Human will be releasing in Spring of 2018. Finally, it was announced that Monster Hunter World would have an exclusive beta for Playstation Plus subscribers which will be held between the 9th and the 12th of December.
