如果Switch再次暴死，任天堂會怎么樣？

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?

別看了標題就說我又要黑switch。幾周前我寫的上一篇文章講的是如果switch火到了wii的程度，游戲界和任天堂將會產(chǎn)生怎樣的變革。

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.

在這篇文章里，我將從相反的角度聊聊switch。本文不是預測，只是聊聊如果switch失敗了，事情將會如何。在這里，我將失敗定義為銷量在Wii U的銷量左右。游戲主機是否失敗并沒有清晰的界限。GameCube 2100萬和Wii U 1300萬的銷量被認為不盡人意，N64 3300萬 SNES 4900萬 NES 6200萬的銷量則好得多。更不要說Wii無人能比的1億零100萬銷量.

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.

綜上，我認為主機如銷量不超過2000萬那情況就不妙了。但少有人談到，Switch情況特殊——它并沒有掌機市場作支撐，所以如果Switch失敗了，任天堂將遭受重創(chuàng)。同樣的，人們對這種主機的銷量也有較高的期待。

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，任天堂上一代的游戲機里，Wii U雖然銷量不佳，但至少3DS有其5倍的銷量。截至目前，3DS的銷量是6500萬。但盡管任天堂說未來幾年會繼續(xù)支持3DS并發(fā)布了大量的改款，6歲的3DS已然算作生命末期。我覺得任天堂未來幾年停產(chǎn)3DS的可能較大，即使不停產(chǎn)，3DS也不太會達到過去的銷量高峰。

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面臨巨大壓力，不僅要遠超Wii U的銷量，還要最終實現(xiàn)老任流傳已久的“秘密”計劃，那就是掌機主機二合一。

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.

這很難做到。雖然Wii U和3DS的總銷量有7800萬，但這段時期任天堂并不好過?？紤]到如今的市場和Switch的便攜特性，任天堂不太可能有其他秘密的掌機計劃，這讓Switch面臨著巨大的銷售期待。雖然任天堂并未虧本發(fā)售Switch，但其300美元的售價低于Wii U和3DS的總價。掌機和主機融合，而價格并未簡單相加，這對玩家是好事，對任天堂則未必。

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?

人們還想知道，如果Switch和Wii U一樣失敗了，任天堂是否會徹底退出硬件市場。

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.

盡管情況可能這樣糟，盡管任天堂是家很難預測的公司，我依然認為其不可能退出硬件市場。我無法想象放棄硬件市場的任天堂，盡管它展示了進入新平臺的意愿，開始為手機和平板開發(fā)游戲。也許科技會劇烈發(fā)展，也許任天堂會放棄主機市場并專注于掌機或自有平板，又或者任天堂會繼續(xù)開發(fā)手游并研究新的非混合主機。但總之，任天堂不會成為一個單純的軟件發(fā)行商，我們也不會看到ps版馬里奧、Xbox版塞爾達。

世嘉這樣了，任天堂則未必。我認為，即使任天堂兩代主機都撲街了也不會澆滅其硬件野心。

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，其他人恐怕并不會在意Switch是否成功。Switch的“失敗”極難定義，不僅因任天堂進入了“二合一”的時代，也因任天堂能從手游賺錢。就算硬件銷量下降，手游等平臺的授權和游戲發(fā)行也能彌補，讓任天堂穩(wěn)健發(fā)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.

我的預期如下——Switch不超Wii，不弱于Wii U.數(shù)量上講，不低于Xbox One如今的2600萬，最終大約在3000-3500萬。這個數(shù)字既可以看作還行，也能因“二合一”被看作比Wii U/3DS時期表現(xiàn)還差。不過誰知道呢？我沒猜到wii的成功，老任也沒猜到Wii U的失敗，一切皆有可能。因為荒野之息和首發(fā)年的游戲，我預測Switch的首發(fā)會相當成功，這之后的一兩年就不好說了。但也只有那時，判斷主機的成敗才有意義。

Two more days until it all begins.

再有兩天，一切就將開始。

譯注：本文寫于Switch2017年2月首發(fā)前2天。

譯注：這個月剛好是switch首發(fā)1年。switch僅去年9個月就超過了1400萬臺。在其發(fā)售之前，媒體普遍呈悲觀態(tài)度，ign僅僅給了7.0分，而最終的結果也確實誰都沒有預料到，包括老任。這篇文章給出的3000萬預測很保守——等于Wii U加PSV的總銷量。但好在，僅僅一年已經(jīng)沒人會再懷疑switch了。