Nintendo’s hardware sales projection has experienced a boost as the Switch has nearly reached 140 million lifetime sales. For the fiscal year, the business has raised its Switch hardware projection by 500,000 units, to 15.5 million units. Considering that the Switch has sold 139.36 million copies so far, that may seem like a small increase, but it shows how popular the system is still seven years after its release.
Nintendo released a financial report today covering the first nine months of the fiscal year, which runs from April 2023 to December 2023. The report also included a sales update for the Nintendo Switch. As of December 31, 2023, the company’s papers reveal that 139.36 million units of the Switch have been shipped.
Nintendo’s report on Switch sale
Nintendo reported that hardware sales for the Nintendo Switch family as a whole fell 7.8% year over year to 13.74 million units, as reported in their fiscal report for the nine months ended December 31, 2023. However, given that the console is approaching its golden years, Nintendo said these results were expected.
The top 10 best-selling Nintendo Switch games are:
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe-60.58 million
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons-44.79 million
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate-33.67 million
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the wild-31.61 million
- Super Mario Odyssey-27.65 million
- Pokemon Sword/ Pokemon Shield-26.17 million
- Pokemon Scarlet/ Pokemon Violet-24.36 million
- Super Mario Party-20.34 million
- The Legend of Zelda: tears of the Kingdom-20.28 million
- New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe-17.20 million
Nintendo said,
“This breaks down to 3.40 million units of Nintendo Switch, 8.17 million units of Nintendo Switch–OLED Model, and 2.18 million units of Nintendo Switch Lite. Although unit sales decreased year-on-year, sales have been stable given the fact that the platform is in its seventh year.”
If the Nintendo Switch manages to sell more than 154 million units, it will surpass the Nintendo DS, which sold 154.02 million units in its lifetime, to become the best-selling Nintendo system of all time. Nintendo also mentioned that owners of the Switch are still using the device, stating that from January to December 2023, there were over 122 million yearly players worldwide. Nintendo claims that’s a record total.
Super Mario movie’s popularity played a major role
The Super Mario Bros. Movie’s popularity contributed to the 6.79 million units that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which debuted back in April 2017, has sold in the last nine months. So far, 60.58 million copies of the kart racer have been sold globally. Nintendo attributed the increase in purchases “related to Nintendo Switch Online” and the beneficial effects of add-on content for the 11.7 percent year-over-year growth in digital sales, which totaled 346.4 billion yen ($2.33 billion).
The business’s mobile and intellectual property division brought in sales of 75.2 billion yen ($505.6 million), rising 93.4 percent from the previous year, bolstered mainly by the generation of revenue related to The Super Mario Bros Movie. Nintendo reported total sales of 1.4 trillion yen ($9.4 billion) and operating profit of 464.4 billion yen ($3.1 billion), representing increases of 7.7% and 13.1%, respectively, over the previous year. The business has updated its fiscal prediction and is now projecting 1.63 trillion yen in revenue and 620 billion yen in operating profit for the entire year.
