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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday January 07 2018, @03:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the no-electrician-needed dept.

The Nintendo Switch has been named America's fastest-selling home games console.

A total of 4.8 million units were sold in the US during the 10 months following the Switch's launch there on 3 March last year.

The Switch breaks tradition with the firm's previous home consoles in allowing owners to use it as a portable console for game-playing on the move.

One analyst said Nintendo had completely turned its business around.

The previous record for the fastest-selling console in the US was Nintendo's Wii, launched in 2006, which went on to be one of the top-selling consoles in history worldwide.

However, the company's next offering - the Wii U - fared much more poorly.

As a consequence, Nintendo had been under considerable pressure to deliver a popular device this time around.

What if you don't like Mario or Zelda?


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday January 07 2018, @03:16PM (1 child)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday January 07 2018, @03:16PM (#619170)

    fastest-selling home games console

    Doesn't mean much in early 2018 due to scheduling of console releases.

    The xbox one and PS4 came out in Nov 2013, the switch came out ten months ago

    Global sales as of last september were 65M PS4, 30M xbox, 5M switch. The xbox growth rate was flat (near zero) where PS4 sales and switch sales were about the same.

    Somehow if the 10 month early adopter rate of sales of the switch is only microscopic better than four years after the PS4 release, um... just saying we won't be seeing this headline in 2021.

    Only the laziest adopters are buying xbox/ps4 now. Maybe its weird to hijack a switch thread, but I got a PS4-VR "for the kids" and I'm enjoying the heck out of playing battlezone and drive club and a couple other games. The weird "job simulator" game is perfect intro for noobs at parties, the cooking one is especially entertaining (eventually everyone independently discovers the game of tossing things into the fishtank; only other job-simulator players will understand this weird comment). I am a very late console adopter, I know.

    The biggest problem I have with the switch is my gamer kid and his little gang of gamer hooligans have this fixation on minecraft story mode that just won't end and he already has a perfectly good tablet to play it on, so selling me a super expensive switch to buy MC:SM again is not very appealing. Also "Muh video game controller has a screen on it" is very Wii-U and thats not ... cool. I'm just not seeing the switch appeal. You can buy the tablet games he already has on the tablet he already has on something like the wii-u that he already has, but what do you get out of it other than doing the same thing after spending lots of money?

    The funniest thing about owning a PS-VR is reading "reviews" by children about how horrifically low res the game is, realizing I'm so old I literally grew up playing Atari 2600 which was not exactly a 4K / retina display worth of resolution. I actually remember how crappy PS1 looked and PS-VR is vastly better. Yes it is not as high res as the 4K TV hooked up to a PS4-pro, but I am having too much fun to care?

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Monday January 08 2018, @05:48AM

    by bob_super (1357) on Monday January 08 2018, @05:48AM (#619426)

    The numbers are about the first months after release, not the current picture. The Swotch was released out of season, and still trounces everything else over its first few months.

    I just held on and dragged my feet, so that Minecraft waited until we got the Switch for Christmas, avoiding the redundancy issue. That and Mario Kart 8 combine to make very motivated and obedient children (only allowed 30 minutes a day, and not eager to lose it). Mario Odyssey makes a compelling case for the motion controls of the controllers (MK8 too, with the drive assist for the little one who doesn't get it yet, making it fun for all). It's a great platform given that my kids are in the sweet spot (fun games, not better-than-yours graphics on FPS(n+1)). We had looked at PS4/Xbox, and the AAA titles are almost all for teens and older.
    Bonus: went on a multi-day trip, just tossed it in the luggage, but played it mostly on the hotel TVs. Wouldn't have done that with the bulky competitors.