The launch of the Nintendo Switch in China was always going to be a winner. As we recapped in our initial coverage of the Switch launch in China, there’s a huge amount of market potential in the country. Gamers in China really like portable and mobile gaming, so Nintendo definitely had lightning in a bottle in this case. And now, it looks like we were right on the money.
Market research and consulting firm Niko Partners estimates that the Nintendo Switch has sold approximately 50,000 units on its launch day in China. That’s an incredible amount of day-one sales, especially considering the limited launch lineup of games. The estimates come from Niko’s senior analyst Daniel Ahmad. According to these estimations, it appears that the Nintendo Switch will take over as the market leader in China by 2022, usurping the PlayStation 4. This of course assumes market trends hold, which is not the assumed thing you might think it is.
So how did they do this? China is obviously a notoriously restrictive country. Gaming consoles and devices were banned in the year 2000. The country revised the ban in the year 2014, with companies across the globe rushing to take advantage of the new market opening up. And there’s a good reason to do that, the 2017 gaming market in China was worth an estimated 235.5 billion yuan (33.4 billion USD). And it’s safe to assume that it has only grown in value since then.
The console itself was on sale for 2,099 yuan, with a couple different bundles also available. . A trial version of New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe is included in a special bundle. Super Mario Odyssey, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee are all coming to China in the future.
