You would be hard-pressed to believe the Nintendo Switch would become one of the company's best-selling consoles, especially if someone had told you this after the massive commercial flop that was the Nintendo Wii U; Nintendo's second worst-selling console after the Virtual Boy.
The Nintendo Switch has been revealed to have sold over a very impressive 55 million units as of March of this year, which is quite impressive for a console that has only been on the market for three years at the time of the announcement, and this is a gain in momentum that doesn't seem like it will be slowing down any time soon.
What could obviously put a stop to this, would be Nintendo officially announcing a brand-new console, as their focus would have to shift to that new project. This is something that many have wondered, as many consider that Nintendo's approach to handheld gaming is perfect right now, and that Nintendo should only improve on this formula when developing future consoles.
It isn't just players who believe the Kyoto-based company has struck gold with the Nintendo Switch, as investors firmly believe that Nintendo should probably follow Apple's footsteps and develop new iterations of the Switch in the same way Apple manufactures iPhones.
"With every console generation, the install base resets to zero and their earnings power essentially resets to zero. They can continuously have an install base of say 100 million consoles out there, that just moves along over time," reveals investment manager 10 West Advisors' Toan Tran.
In regards to the Nintendo Switch, Tran claims that the video game company could benefit from Apple's approach for selling iPhone devices, and focusing on releasing more powerful iterations of the Nintendo Switch instead of rebranding their new consoles like they've done in the past.
Tran doesn't specifically mention Apple, but that perpetual platform model is exactly what he describes when suggesting that Nintendo should stick to their guns and keep profitting from the Switch as a console that gets technological improvements over time.
"The million dollar question here is, is Nintendo the hits-driven cyclical that defined its history pre-2017?" states portfolio manager of Crossroads Capital Ryan O'Connor who, according to Bloomberg's report, also believes that Nintendo sees the Switch as a perpetual platform, and is convinced that this is not the latest cycle until a new console is revealed.
During Nintendo's financial briefing for the fiscal year ending March of 2020, President Shuntaro Furukawa revealed that as Nintendo Switch had just entered its fourth year, its "lifecycle will follow a course that is different from our previous Nintendo home consoles," which also agrees with the predictions investors have made in regards to this perpetual platform model.
This could also explain why Nintendo has taken so long to reveal a revised version of the Nintendo Switch, as that rumoured "Pro" version of the handheld hybrid could well end up being a brand-new model of the Switch that could be regarded as their next-gen version of the popular console. We'll just have to wait and see, but the idea of Nintendo embracing the Switch for life is quite the appealing concept for players.