The GameZone community speaks out about Nintendo Switch; Here’s the breakdown

Two weeks ago, I posted a simple questionnaire to the social media platforms of GameZone. It comprised of ten questions regarding Nintendo Switch, as it was clear gamers came down on both sides of the debate. Internally, we posted two completely separate arguments for why we’d think the Switch would either succeed or fail. I personally wanted to figure out what the general consensus was, and the questionnaire produced some interesting results. We had almost 3000 responses on the Google Form. Below I will break down each question and what the responses mean.

Have you preordered a Nintendo Switch?

With this question I wanted to not only see how many people had preordered a system, but specifically which SKU. In addition, if someone didn’t preorder was it because they chose not to or there simply wasn’t any stock available. In terms of preorder vs no preorder, the result was 50/50. However, around 20% of all non preorders we due to a lack of availability rather than simply choosing not to.

Surprising no one, 60% of preorders were for the Nintendo Switch with Gray Joy-Con controllers, and 28% percent were for Neon Red and Blue. I further broke this down into preorders that were placed for a SKU because the other wasn’t available. This was the first surprising revelation, with an additional 12% of Gray Joy-Con Nintendo Switches being preordered because the Neon Red and Blue Joy-Cons were out of stock. This data doesn’t add up, as Gray Joy-Cons were overwhelmingly people’s initial choice. Therefore, we can assume Nintendo did not provide retailers with an equal amount of SKUs and most likely have produced fewer Neon Red and Blue Joy-Con units vs Gray.

If you did pre-order, on a scale of 1 to 10 how do you feel about your decision?

Fortunately, it seems most people are happy with their preorder, with 83.4% of votes scoring a 6 or above. 10 was the highest scoring option with almost 30% of the vote, which meant that even if Zelda was delayed to Holiday 2017 they’d keep their preorder. However, almost 10% of voters are apparently on the verge of cancelling.

Did the Thursday night Presentation convince you not to pre-order?

Whilst I personally was very excited by the Nintendo Switch and the company’s future hardware prospects before the presentation, the reveal of limited online services, tepid third party support and expensive peripherals had me take a sharp turn in the other direction. I wanted to know if others felt the same, so I asked if you had planned on preordering before the presentation, did you follow through? Almost 40% of reader’s minds were changed by the presentation, deciding not to preorder. That’s a huge chunk of sales translated on a large scale.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how do you think Nintendo Switch will rank among the company's consoles in terms of sales?

Readers seem to think Nintendo Switch will be moderately successful, with 7 raking in the most votes at 30%. If we look at the extreme ends of the spectrum, roughly equal amounts of people believe that the console with either be Nintendo’s most or least successful system.

Which titles will you be picking up at launch if you've preordered a Nintendo Switch?

At the time of posting the questionnaire, only five titles were announced for the launch of the system. Overwhelmingly, Breath of the Wild won out with 99.5% of purchasers also picking up the game. However, it seems that for the majority that will be the only title they will be buying. 31.4% of those that preordered also plan on picking up Super Bomberman R, and 1-2 Switch came in third with almost 15%. Seems like most gamers are happy with just adventuring around Hyrule for the time being.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to pay for Nintendo Switch's online services if they cost $50-$60 annually?

A recent article suggests that the online services for Switch will cost around half the price of its competitors, but at the time of the questionnaire posting most assumed it’d be around the same cost. We still don’t know the official pricing, but based on this question it seems most people agree what has been revealed about Switch’s online is not good. 22% of votes went to 1, which meant those gamers would never pay for the online services at that cost. From there, the votes are all over the place, but 62.5% of the votes were unfavorable scoring a 5 or lower.

Do you plan on picking up any accessories for the Switch before Holiday 2017?

As I mentioned before, another controversial aspect of the Nintendo Switch has been its accessory pricing. With this in mind, 43% of voters will not be picking up any additional accessories this year. This slightly beats out the Pro Controller, which around 40% of voters will be picking up. However, it seems the other accessories won’t be receiving as much love.

One a scale of 1 to 10, how important is third party software support?

This is the crux of the debate when it comes to the success of the Switch: does it matter if third parties support this thing or not. In my “doom and gloom” opinion piece, I spoke about how when Wii U was announced there was a similar list of third party partners Nintendo touted which resulted in bupkis. For me, I’m cool with just having my Zelda and Mario titles, but I think for commercial, broad appeal third party support is crucial. And it seems readers agree with me, with almost 65% of voters scoring a 6 or above. If we add the votes for 5, that number shoots up to 81%.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are you third parties will support Nintendo Switch past 2017?

In a follow-up question, I wanted to know how many people expected Nintendo to follow through on their third party promise. The majority scored a 5 or below, with 9 and 10 scoring less than 10% of the vote combined. Seems like most readers are not expecting much in terms of non-Nintendo titles.

Which Nintendo franchise would you most want to receive a Switch game?This question didn’t necessarily have on bearing on the success of the console, but I thought it’d be interesting to find out the answer. Almost 30% of the vote went to Pokémon, which has been rumored to be porting Sun and Moon in some form to the Nintendo Switch. Metroid and Super Smash Bros. came in 2nd and 3rd place respectively and were the only other games to score in the double digits. Based off of this, Kirby is the least popular of Nintendo’s franchises receiving a lowly 1% of the vote.

So there you have it. Make what you will of those numbers. Obviously, compared to the 2 million units Nintendo hopes to sell around launch this is a fraction of those sales. It does give us a good idea of where the GameZone community lies on the subject and an interesting look at what gamers want from this system.