Nintendo Switch has surpassed 100 million sales at the fastest pace as a home console. Nintendo isn’t done either. The real news from this milestone shows that the hybrid approach has been stupidly successful. The Wii found a ton of success in the US, where it previously established the record as the best-selling home console for Nintendo. Only the legendary Game Boy and DS lines have managed to surpass that, selling nearly 280 million combined units across their entire life cycle. And with the Switch now selling 103 million units all on its own, it shows that there remains serious demand for the hybrid console.
And speaking of the Wii, there was a lot to overcome, despite not being as popular in regions like Japan, the USA was a huge market for Nintendo. The console helped introduce many older and younger generations alike to gaming. And it’s pretty clear that the same thing has happened for the Switch with entries for iconic franchises like Mario Kart and Animal Crossing. I’d be willing to bet that pretty much anyone reading this has a relative who bought a Switch to play Animal Crossing: New Horizons or another game.
The console previously surpassed the 3DS in sales of consoles just one year ago. This gain of more than 20 million units in just one year is incredible. Despite the ongoing chip shortages, Nintendo has managed to keep pace with demand somewhat. Sure, shortages remain a thing in many areas, although scalpers aren’t targeting the console as heavily it would seem. Prices on third-party sites like Ebay have come down a lot from a peak of ~$500 USD a year ago. That would suggest that a lot more consoles are out there in circulation than even just last year. In the peak of gaming mania in 2020, the console was even harder to find, and Nintendo managed to clear the logjam a little bit.
The push to get the Switch OLED onto the market also likely helped out a bit. When combined with the Switch Lite. there’s a console for every pricepoint and usecase. But it’s not all rosy. But now, the overall production outlook for new Switch OLED consoles has been cut, for the second quarter in a row. The company now expects to sell 23 million Switch units in the fiscal year ending March, down from the previous 24 million. During the first nine months of the 2022 fiscal year, Nintendo sold 18.95 million Switch consoles, which is down by 21.4% compared to the previous year.
11.79 million sales were of the standard dock hybrid model. The Switch Lite accounts for 3.99 million sales, and the new OLED sold 2.17 million units.
One thing that gamers and fans are curious about is how Nintendo and the Nintendo Switch plan to approach the recent spate of major acquisitions in the industry. The recent response by Sony—acquiring Bungie for $3.6 billion—to a Microsoft/Activision Blizzard merger drew questions for the Japanese gaming company. The outlook on Nintendo buying into other companies isn’t too positive.
When asked about its policy around mergers, Nintendo chief Furukawa said: “our brand was built upon products crafted with dedication by our employees, and having a large number of people who don’t possess Nintendo DNA in our group would not be a plus to the company.” That suggests that the company won’t be buying Western companies anytime soon. Nintendo has previously expanded into buying studios for first-party development. Certain companies like Monolith Soft are majority-owned by Nintendo, while the likes of Next Level Games and others work under contract. It seems as though Nintendo has no interest in changing this arrangement.
