A Switch 2 prognosis: if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

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[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter is written by ‘how people find your game’ expert & company founder Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]

Welcome to GDCo’s bumper Friday newsletter, which had to be reconfigured a tad yesterday to take into account that Nintendo’s Switch 2 is finally ‘officially’ a thing. (And not just a ‘third-parties leaking info about it rampantly’ thing, heehee.)

Talking of which, pre-announce leaks said the Nintendo Direct with more Switch 2 game info would be on February 2nd. Turns out it’s on April 4th, and whoever was trying to leak got confused between (DD/MM/YY) and (MM/DD/YY) date formats, which differ between Europe, America, and Japan! (Ahh, opsec fails.)

A Switch 2 prognosis: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it…

Listen, you folks are smart, so you’ve probably heard a lot about the Switch 2’s official confirmation already (coming in 2025, backwards compatible, Switch 2 Experience physical events starting in April) & barebones ‘reveal’ video(above).

And sure, while we wait for the next Nintendo Direct, we can speculate wildly on why the ‘reveal’ video is so much more basic than the Switch’s original reveal. Nintendo wanted to get ahead of leakers? Giving third-parties leeway to announce games?

But rather than micro-analyze in excruciating detail, let’s make some higher-level commentary on Switch 2 as a platform. Here’s the full version of some big-picture thoughts I had for an IGN ‘analyst comments’ piece on Switch:

• Given the success of Nintendo Switch, and the movement of platforms like Steam and Xbox into the 'portable game playing machine' space, it makes a lot of sense to emphasize continuity but upgraded tech power for the Switch 2.

• This is absolutely 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' for Nintendo, something the company hasn't always believed in the past. Part of the reason behind this is that Nintendo finally feels comfortable expanding its IP beyond games - see theme parks, movies, etc.

• So if Nintendo can innovate with the reach and type of experiences they can give their fans that way, perhaps it doesn't make sense to 'swing for the fences' with overly complex evolutions of their core video game machine.

• The most interesting questions on the Switch for us are around how old and new game catalogs are integrated. Will previous gen games be fully integrated into eShop charts and browsing, or partly segregated, for example? This may make a big difference to both discoverability and how Switch 2-exclusive games sell.

Beyond that, the big questions are probably: a) how quick will the Switch 2 installed-base get big, and b) how much will developers and publishers be able to cash in on this with third party games?

On a), Bloomberg notes an analyst report: “Nintendo has prepared a supply chain network that will allow the company to sell more than 20 million units in its first year.” And, per Pierre485: “Switch shipped 14.86m units during its first year on the market”, and 3DS shipped 15.03m; PS4 13.8m; PS5 13.3m; Wii 13.17m units. So, Nintendo’s ‘official’ Switch 2 estimates could be at >10 million in Year 1 - perhaps towards 15 million?

As for third-party games: Switch 2 dev kits seem pretty ‘closely held’ right now, though there’s a lot of good current-gen PlayStation & Xbox games being worked on for Switch 2 launch. And the backwards compatibility will blunt new purchases a bit. So don’t expect early Switch-like ‘release any game, sell 50-100k’ bonanzas.

But getting a Switch 2 release out in the first 6 months is going to be the best time in the cycle to do it for your ‘average’ game. Which is why everyone is beating down Nintendo’s doors for those extra dev kits about… now.

Game discovery news: Sony’s live service offramp

Before we switch to the GDCo Plus-exclusive analysis of this week’s Steam debuts - spoilers, there’s some big guys in there - let’s check some discovery news analysis:

• Per Jason Schreier at Bloomberg: “PlayStation has canceled two more live-service games, from subsidiaries Bend and Bluepoint… Fans have long wondered what Bluepoint has been working on for the last couple of years. I can report it was a live-service God of War game.” The de-Jim Ryan-ization of Sony’s live service game push continues?

• Stream Hatchet’s analysis of the most-streamed new games in 2023 and 2024, by hours watched in the first 30 days, reveals a chart topped by lots of sequels (Diablo IV, Path Of Exile 2, multiple Call Of Duty games) and obvious hits (Palworld, Black Myth). Still nice to know about it, though!

• The Information ($, but excellent) has a closely reported piece on Microsoft’s games business, noting that Satya Nadella had a ‘go big or shut it down’ choice for Xbox/cloud gaming in 2021 and “took the first path”. But an internal goal of “over 100 million Game Pass subscribers by 2030” looks far away at this point.

• Metaverse trumpeter Matthew Ball unleashed a gigantic, stat-filled ‘state of video gaming in 2025’ slide deck upon the Internet. And GameDeveloper.com was kind enough to do a ‘five takeaways for game developers’ article summarizing some key takeaways. (It’s good data, Brent, but there’s a lot of it.)

• Looking at GDCo’s Switch eShop charts ($, recent, paid, third-party, U.S. by download #), a discounted Just Dance 2025 tops the charts, in the Top 60 for all 14-day downloads, while MySims Cozy Bundle is at #68. Elsewhere, Sonic X Shadow Generations Deluxe and Yakuza Kiwami sag into the #100s - it’s been pedestrian.

• Future Friends’ Thomas Reisenegger has a very useful thread on how indie devs should think of a possible TikTok U.S. ban, “with data and hot takes from a game that mastered TikTok and is now doing well on TikTok-clones and potential life savers: Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.” (Yes, there are other short-form video options.)

• European PC and console game sales (via GSD, which tracks most physical but not all digital data) were up 1% to 188.1 million in 2024, and there were “only six new games in the top 20 for 2024 (last year, there were 10).” A related disappointment: “Star Wars Outlaws and Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth only just scraped [into] the Top 50.”

• On the physical consoles side in Europe, it ain’t so good either, per Chris Dring, “down 21% overall across tracked European markets. PS5 sales dropped 20% year-on-year, Switch sales were down 15% and Xbox Series S/X sales were down 48%. Lack of big games had an impact. 2025 will be better.”

• Media site Nintendo Life is trying to make a better-filtered web version of the eShop, adding to other offerings like OG king DekuDeals. (And you probably can do it better than Nintendo’s current shovelware and bundle-fest, but as the update to the original Nintendo Life announce shows, it ain’t always easy.)

• 2025 Independent Games Festival nominations are out, with “darkly funny coming-of-age- story”Consume Me leading with 5 noms, Ecuadorian soccer adventure Despelote getting 4 noms, and Game Of The Year noms also including UFO 50, Thank Goodness You’re Here!, Indika, and Caves Of Qud, all great titles.

• How about the Japanese physical-only console market in 2024? Per Famitsu (via Serkan Toto), it “cratered -25.4% to US$1.9B year-on-year. Hardware -30.3% to US$1.2B vs software -17.9% to US$700M. Switch 2 cannot come soon enough! (2024's best selling game was Super Mario Party Jamboree with 954,000 boxed copies sold.)”

• Microlinks: PlayStation Plus’ Game Catalog for Jan. 2025 includes God of War Ragnarök & Like a Dragon Gaiden, with Medievil for PS1 on PS+ Premium; some mobile game marketing predictions for 2025; Footprints.gg’s weekly ‘trad media’ coverage is headed by Switch 2 and Marvel Rivals, perhaps predictably.

This week on Steam: swords, cars, and dungeons!

We’re excited to note that the first major set of releases of 2025 arrived on Steam this week. And three new games got >10,000 CCU (concurrent users) on the PC platform, with a whopping ten managing >1,000 CCU. Let’s examine the three that topped 10k CCU, for starters:

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