On Monday, Nintendo
announced that it will stop selling the original Switch in Europe next February. That decision comes in response to European regulations that will soon require easily replaceable batteries in most consumer electronics. Rather than redesigning multiple original Switch models to comply with that regulation (as it is doing with the Switch 2), Nintendo has decided it will just stop selling the older console in the region.
Those new battery rules won’t affect the availability of the Switch outside of Europe, of course. But the move got us wondering how much longer Nintendo might keep selling the 9-year-old Switch now that the Switch 2 is drawing the focus of both the company and the market.
An Ars analysis of Nintendo’s recent history (as documented in
its annual earnings releases) shows that sales for even the company’s bestselling hardware tend to decline to zero after nine years on the market. But the data also shows the Switch being a relatively resilient market force that could sustain its commercial life well into its second decade on the market.
Down but not out
Sales of Switch hardware and software have, unsurprisingly, been falling consistently for years now, well before the arrival of the Switch 2. The older system peaked at nearly 29 million worldwide hardware shipments in the 2021 fiscal year (ending in March 2021), and Switch software sales peaked at over 235 million the next year.
Historically, though, those peaks for Switch hardware and software sales were higher than those for every other modern Nintendo platform (save the Nintendo DS). Those peaks also came later in life for the Switch than for many other Nintendo consoles. The 3DS and Wii, for instance, saw their strongest hardware sales in their second full fiscal year on the market, while the Switch didn’t peak until its fourth fiscal year.
Providing upgrade packs that make the Switch 2 version of Switch games more expensive is also a really weird tactic. Typically the better performance of an old game on new hardware is a nice bonus that drives you to the new hardware but now it's a little confusing what to buy as the benefits of the switch 2 version are never really clear without some research. Like which version of Breath of the Wild do I buy? There are at least 3 (BotW for Switch 2, BotW for Switch, BotW w/ expansion pass for the Switch).
These are the kind of oddities that drove me to PC gaming.
<small>Source: Ars Technica</small>
