Nintendo’s latest quarterly financials show the Japanese manufacturer in rude health, with the Nintendo Switch selling faster than ever before. Not only that, but Pokémon Sword & Shield continued to sell like hotcakes, putting to rest any notion that vocal fans could boycott the game.
Let’s look at the stats.
The key takeaway is that the Nintendo Switch Lite that released in September didn’t see the main Nintendo Switch lose any of its sales momentum. Instead it seems to have opened an overlapping, but fundamentally different market thanks to its increased portability and lower price. Combined they sold 10.82 million units in the last three months of 2019, making for a yearly total of 17.74 million units, which was a 22.5% increase year on year.
With 52.48 million consoles sold in total, the Nintendo Switch has now passed the SNES (49.1m) and has the NES (61.9m) in its sights for some time later this year.
A bit part of the Switch’s appeal is with its string of exclusive first party games. Pokémon Sword and Shield overcame the odds to become the fastest selling Switch game at launch, and continued that momentum to sell 16.06 million units through the end of December. Meanwhile, Luigi’s Mansion 3 was a bit of an unexpected hit for the company, selling over 5 million copies despite having largely had niche appeal through the first two games in the series, and Super Mario Maker 2 also passed the 5 million mark. In total 21 games on Nintendo Switch sold over 1 million copies in 2019.
We can probably expect things to quiet down a little now, with the biggest Switch game on the horizon being Animal Cross: New Horizons, while many core gamers will be turning their attentions toward the next generation of consoles looming at the end of this year. Can Nintendo keep up the momentum that they’ve built with the Switch? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Source: Nintendo
