With the Switch currently carrying Nintendo toward bountiful financial success, many fans and market eperts alike have wondered how the company will proceed in the years to come. While many Nintendo fans are used to the company releasing consoles with wild gimmicks such as glasses-free 3D or motion controls by now, other observers view the Nintendo Switch as something that could stick around for much longer…

Speaking to Bloomberg, Toan Tran of investment manager 10 West Advisors has suggested that Nintendo can leverage on the massive popularity of its Nintendo Switch console in a vastly different way than its previous platforms: by releasing new and improved iterations of the Switch every few years, instead of completely throwing out the concept just to introduce a completely different console. Just like Apple’s iPhone, this would allow Nintendo to sustain its huge customer base for a long time to come:

“With every console generation, the install base resets to zero and their earnings power essentially resets to zero…[Nintendo] can continuously have an install base of say 100 million consoles out there, that just moves along over time.”

Ryan O’Connor, portfolio manager of Kansas City-based investment firm Crossroads Capital, likewise doubted that the Switch was merely Nintendo’s latest hardware cycle – stating that it had the potential to be Nintendo’s perpetual platform:

“The million dollar question here is, is Nintendo the hits-driven cyclical that defined its history pre-2017?”

Of course, Nintendo’s driving philosophy might deter it from rehashing the Switch platform over and over with more powerful models. As the videogames company has stated numerous times in the past, it is usually more interested in giving players new and unique gaming experiences (such as the Wii) – so it’s hard to imagine a Nintendo that simply sits on its laurels while the Switch rakes in cash for them.

What do you think? Should Nintendo stick to the Switch and release better models every year, like Apple’s iPhone? Feel free to share your thoughts below