The Switch is in its eighth year. Thatâs longer than any Nintendo system has gone without getting a successor. But the company is still bullish on the hybrid consoleâs future even as fans wait to hear about a Switch 2 as soon as this September. Nintendo is planning to sell over 12 million new Switches this year and everyoneâs asking the same question: how?
Nintendoâs latest earnings report running from April through June was bad. Really bad. People expected it to be bad but it was somehow even worse than that. With no major first-party game like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and no massive pop cultural splash in the form of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, profits for the Japanese console manufacturer were down over 70 percent.
Here are some other interesting takeaways from Nintendoâs latest financial report:
Remasters of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and LuigiÊŒs Mansion 2 HD 1 both sold over 1 million copies each
The breakdown of digital sales to physical sales jumped from 47.3 percent in the same period the year prior to 58.9 percent this time around
Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom sold more last year than all first-party games combined this year
But only sold an additional 1.3 million copies in the last nine months
Zelda: Breath of the Wild actually sold more than TOTK last quarter
The Switch has reached 128 million individual players
The 3DS is dead but Nintendo still sold 60,000 games for it last quarter
Can the Nintendo Switch still outsell the PS2?
The big news though is that Nintendo still plans to sell 13.5 million Switches this fiscal year. Itâs already sold 2.1 million last quarter, which means it somehow needs to sell 11.4 million more this summer into the holiday season and beyond. If achieved, that would put it in spitting distance of the lifetime sales of the PlayStation 2, the best-selling console ever, known to have sold 155 million as of 2012. Maybe thatâs why former Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryanâs parting gift was to move the goal posts by announcing that the PS2 (which he helped market) ultimately went on to sell 160 million units.
Itâs still possible the Switch could hit that number years into the lifecycle of a successor like a Switch 2, but analysts are skeptical given the lack of officially announced big sellers in the pipeline and the fact that total Switch sales the year that both Zelda: TOTK and Super Mario Bros. Wonder came out were barely 15 million. âI really wonder how Nintendo wants to achieve their hardware sales target,â Tokyo-based analyst Serkan Toto told Bloomberg today. âI am skeptical if Nintendo still has enough fuel in the tank, especially if they plan to get to the target without hardware price reductions.â
A price cut is indeed one way that Nintendo could spur on new sales. While the company released the cheaper Switch Lite at $200, the stronger seller continues to be the Switch OLED at $350. Knocking $50 off of that hardware, which is running on several-year old specs at this point, would be a big deal. Itâs also possible that Nintendo is still holding one or two big surprises up its sleeve for the fall and winter. And we shouldnât underestimate the power of Super Mario Party JamboreeâSuper Mario Party remains the seventh best-selling game on Switchâand The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom could be a system mover despite its more old-school look.
But without a new PokĂ©mon game this year, it seems more likely that 2024 will be the Switchâs weakest since 2018. Maybe there are a few more special edition Switches laying around. The gold one for Echoes of Wisdom does look sharp, and convincing players to buy newer limited edition models while passing their older ones down to younger family members or friends is traditionally how Nintendo juices its handheld metrics. Weâll see if thatâs the case this time around and the Switch threatens the PS2 for best-selling console of all time or stalls out like everyone expects.
