如果Switch再次暴死，任天堂会怎么样？

Before anyone gets too upset about a fresh round of Switch pessimism, know that this article is a sequel to one I wrote a few weeks back, where I talked about what it would be like if Nintendo’s dreams came true, and the Switch was a Wii-level hit this generation. How would that change the industry? How would that change Nintendo?

别看了标题就说我又要黑switch。几周前我写的上一篇文章讲的是如果switch火到了wii的程度，游戏界和任天堂将会产生怎样的变革。

Here, I wanted to get to the other side of the coin. This is not a prediction, per se, but I wanted to talk a bit about where things might stand if the Switch is another “failure,” as in, it ultimately sells around what the Wii U sold, or maybe just a little bit higher. It’s hard to know what the cut-off would be for a “disappointment,” but Gamecube and the Wii U are viewed as rather poor-selling, at 21 million and 13 million respectively, while the N64, SNES and NES all fared much better at 33 million, 49 million and 62 million respectively. And of course, the Wii reigns supreme at 101 million.

在这篇文章里，我将从相反的角度聊聊switch。本文不是预测，只是聊聊如果switch失败了，事情将会如何。在这里，我将失败定义为销量在Wii U的销量左右。游戏主机是否失败并没有清晰的界限。GameCube 2100万和Wii U 1300万的销量被认为不尽人意，N64 3300万 SNES 4900万 NES 6200万的销量则好得多。更不要说Wii无人能比的1亿零100万销量.

I think anything under 20 million would be considered not great news, but there’s an additional dimension here that is rarely talked about. If the Switch fails, it fails hard, because it has no new handheld system to prop it up. As such, its metric for what’s considered a success is almost certainly going to have to be higher than normal.

综上，我认为主机如销量不超过2000万那情况就不妙了。但少有人谈到，Switch情况特殊——它并没有掌机市场作支撑，所以如果Switch失败了，任天堂将遭受重创。同样的，人们对这种主机的销量也有较高的期待。

What do I mean? Last generation, even though the Wii U struggled with low sales, Nintendo at least had a piece of hardware that was selling five times as well, the 3DS. To date, the 3DS is at around 65 million sales, and while it’s still being made and supported for the next few years, six years into its life, it’s pretty ancient, even with new variants of it being released over the years. It seems unlikely that, A) Nintendo will continue making the 3DS for more than another year or two, and B) if they do, its sales will be anywhere near what they’ve been in the past.

我的意思是，任天堂上一代的游戏机里，Wii U虽然销量不佳，但至少3DS有其5倍的销量。截至目前，3DS的销量是6500万。但尽管任天堂说未来几年会继续支持3DS并发布了大量的改款，6岁的3DS已然算作生命末期。我觉得任天堂未来几年停产3DS的可能较大，即使不停产，3DS也不太会达到过去的销量高峰。

This is where there’s a lot of pressure not just for the Switch to drastically outperform the Wii U, but to sell enough units so that Nintendo can realize their secret-but-probably-not-that-secret plan to make the Switch both its home console and handheld, merging those divisions together at last.

因此Switch面临巨大压力，不仅要远超Wii U的销量，还要最终实现老任流传已久的“秘密”计划，那就是掌机主机二合一。

But this is the tough part. If Nintendo was considered to be having a couple of rough years when the Wii U and 3DS sold a combined 78 million units, the Switch is going to have to do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of sales unless Nintendo has some under-wraps alternate handheld planned, which seems incredibly unlikely given the portability focus of the Switch and the state of the market. And the Switch does not cost what a Wii U + a 3DS costs. It’s just $300, which Nintendo is reportedly going to be able to sell at a profit at launch, but it’s not like combining console and handheld functionality combines the prices of both pieces of hardware. Good for consumers, sort of tough for Nintendo going forward.

这很难做到。虽然Wii U和3DS的总销量有7800万，但这段时期任天堂并不好过。考虑到如今的市场和Switch的便携特性，任天堂不太可能有其他秘密的掌机计划，这让Switch面临着巨大的销售期待。虽然任天堂并未亏本发售Switch，但其300美元的售价低于Wii U和3DS的总价。掌机和主机融合，而价格并未简单相加，这对玩家是好事，对任天堂则未必。

There’s another question on everyone’s mind if the Switch doesn’t do well. Would another Wii U-like generation be enough to push Nintendo out of hardware entirely?

人们还想知道，如果Switch和Wii U一样失败了，任天堂是否会彻底退出硬件市场。

As bad as that would be, and knowing it’s often impossible to predict Nintendo, my guess would still be no. Though Nintendo has shown willingness to adapt to the market to some degree, developing games for mobile phones and tablets and such, it’s hard to imagine them ending its hardware production. Maybe the tech changes drastically. Maybe they get out of the home console game and focus only on handhelds or their own tablets. Maybe they resign themselves to only making mobile games and then do a different type of home console that isn’t a hybrid next time. But as much as it might make sense to many outside observers, it is very tough to see a situation where the next Mario game is on PlayStation or the next Zelda is on Xbox, signaling an era where Nintendo simply becomes a software publisher. Yes, this is exactly what happened with SEGA, but Nintendo is Nintendo, and I don’t believe even two hardware misses in a row would be enough to make them cease their ambitions in that regard, even if they get to a point where they probably should. Nintendo, if I had to guess, will fight on.

尽管情况可能这样糟，尽管任天堂是家很难预测的公司，我依然认为其不可能退出硬件市场。我无法想象放弃硬件市场的任天堂，尽管它展示了进入新平台的意愿，开始为手机和平板开发游戏。也许科技会剧烈发展，也许任天堂会放弃主机市场并专注于掌机或自有平板，又或者任天堂会继续开发手游并研究新的非混合主机。但总之，任天堂不会成为一个单纯的软件发行商，我们也不会看到ps版马里奥、Xbox版塞尔达。

世嘉这样了，任天堂则未必。我认为，即使任天堂两代主机都扑街了也不会浇灭其硬件野心。

Still, it wouldn’t be pretty, and I don’t think anyone relishes the thought of the Switch bombing, outside of die-hard fanboy camps. The problem here is that the definition of “failure” is really ambiguous as Nintendo heads into the combined console/handheld era, not to mention making money as a mobile publisher as well. It’s entirely possible that even with hardware declines, through licensing and publishing on other platforms like mobile, they might manage to remain healthy regardless.

除了死忠粉，其他人恐怕并不会在意Switch是否成功。Switch的“失败”极难定义，不仅因任天堂进入了“二合一”的时代，也因任天堂能从手游赚钱。就算硬件销量下降，手游等平台的授权和游戏发行也能弥补，让任天堂稳健发展。

My actual prediction? The Switch will be neither a Wii-level hit, nor a Wii U-level failure. My guess is that the Switch may do at least as well as say, the Xbox One, which is estimated to have sold about 26 million units so far, and perhaps the Switch might get to 30-35 million when all is said and done. I do not know what that means, whether that’s “good enough” or if again, a lack of handheld support in the background will mean that’s a scenario even worse than the Wii U/3DS era, but ultimately, who knows? I would have never predicted the Wii’s blinding success while Nintendo did not foresee the Wii U’s failure, so anything’s possible. I believe the Switch will have a very strong launch thanks to Breath of the Wild and hopefully a good first year of games. After that? A year or two from now? It’s tough to know what shape the console will be in, and that’s when these “success/failure” narratives will really start to mean anything or take shape.

我的预期如下——Switch不超Wii，不弱于Wii U.数量上讲，不低于Xbox One如今的2600万，最终大约在3000-3500万。这个数字既可以看作还行，也能因“二合一”被看作比Wii U/3DS时期表现还差。不过谁知道呢？我没猜到wii的成功，老任也没猜到Wii U的失败，一切皆有可能。因为荒野之息和首发年的游戏，我预测Switch的首发会相当成功，这之后的一两年就不好说了。但也只有那时，判断主机的成败才有意义。

Two more days until it all begins.

再有两天，一切就将开始。

译注：本文写于Switch2017年2月首发前2天。

译注：这个月刚好是switch首发1年。switch仅去年9个月就超过了1400万台。在其发售之前，媒体普遍呈悲观态度，ign仅仅给了7.0分，而最终的结果也确实谁都没有预料到，包括老任。这篇文章给出的3000万预测很保守——等于Wii U加PSV的总销量。但好在，仅仅一年已经没人会再怀疑switch了。