jamesesdad
CAGiversary!
Yeah that was my bad providing incomplete sales data. It still pretty clearly shows a downward trend in sales data starting at 2013, and only picked up this year due to renewed interest in pokemon. I'm not claiming that this data should be ignored, but likely wont be a trend that continues through 2017, especially with such a weak software lineup, and the launch of a new piece of portable hardware.
The items that sold out this holiday season were supplied in extremely limited quantities, using that as a metric to judge success isn't fair. The new 3ds was 1/3 cheaper than msrp, and the NES classic was driven by a market of scaplers, not people genuinely interested in acquiring the product for personal use. Nintendo misjudging demand and not having enough units in the market shouldn't be taken as a success. It should be troubling that nintendo can't judge demand, or manage supply in a way that 3 months after the biggest shopping holiday of the year there still aren't 6 year old 3ds units on the shelves....
I specifically mentioned 3ds games with actual release dates. I agree that there are games slated for 2017 that could be good, but most don't even have a release date, so we likely wont see them till the end of the year. My point being there isn't much compelling software to spur sales like we had last year.
My basis for saying casuals wont buy the system is the last 5 years of nintendo losing money hand over fist in the console market. 3ds sales are incredibly soft in comparison to ds, and the wii u was a comercial disaster. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out casuals have moved on to gaming on smart devices.
I'd gladly take actual data or real information, but your observations based on people you know, or what your kids like is 100% anecdotal, which is why I chose not to engage with you on that subject. The problem with your anecdote is I can easily tell you I know 25 people who play games casually that won't be buying the switch and don't even know what the console is. Or the 3 kids in my family under 16 only game on desktop or ipad. It doesn't prove anything, and we get into a meaningless debate about meaningless information.
I actually think reggie is great at his job. I just know better than to believe anything that comes out of his mouth that doesn't have actual numerical data associated with it. Thanks for the well thought out response though, please don't take my criticism as anti nintendo. I love the company, they were my childhood. But to not take an extremely critical eye to their failures in the market over the last 5 years seems shortsighted and fanboyish. I want nintendo to succeed, I just don't believe the upper management at NOJ will allow that to happen as long as they are mired in conservative business practices from 2 decades ago.
I think it's a matter of getting the cost down to keep reaching people that didn't buy in at higher pricepoints and a broad library. I think the PS2 had a broad (& deep) library. Wii not as much. And Sony did a much better job getting the cost down. Nintendo tried the Wii Mini but was too little, too late. Lots of PS2s also sold cause it was a DVD player as well. That was a big deal back then. I wouldn't doubt if that extended its lifecycle.
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up, and Nintendos been doing a lot of 
