Since Sony’s industry changing entry into the home console market in the mid 1990s, Nintendo hasn’t been able to recover its pre Playstation market domination. Nintendo was surprisingly successful with the Nintendo Wii. That said, Nintendo’s motion controlling wonder system was popular with elderly homes and younger kids. Nintendo lost a lot of core gamers in that generation and the Wii U’s embarrassing crash (13.56 million units sold in its lifetime) showcased this.
Enter the Nintendo Switch in 2017. Nintendo -through the hard times – never lost domination of the handheld market, and with the Switch the company doubled down on what it did great, and quietly left the home console market without making it seem like it did because of …”docked” mode.
Regardless of the technical details that allows gamers to play the regular and OLED Switch on their TV displays, Nintendo can now claim sales domination in two different generations. The Switch has out sold the PS4 (117.2 million units sold) by more than 20 million units, and has a nearly insurmountable lead over current generation leader the PlayStation 5 (61 million units shipped).
With 7 years on the market – and counting – the Nintendo Switch has overlapped two different home console generations while maintaining its popularity.
The Switch Sells 140 Million Units
Nintendo is swimming in money. The Switch has not really received any discounts as the lite version continues to sell at $199, and the larger “Switch” handhelds at $299. And yet, the system keeps selling like hot cakes. It is Nintendo’s most successful home console (if you consider it that), and in terms of handheld sales, it is only second to the Nintendo DS (154 million units). Being that the all time leader (Handheld or other wise) is the PlayStation 2 (155 million) it would seem that Nintendo is only about 15 million units shy of breaking S0ny’s record, and of finally sitting atop the video game hardware Mount Rushmore. A place the company has not been in since the SNES days three decades ago.
But can the Switch sell 15 million more units in a year? Without a major discount before the arrival of the “Next Switch”, which is rumored to arrive sometime in 2025, I am not quite sure. However, some projections do have the Switch selling over 160 million units by 2026. Last year, despite its age and antiquated hardware, the Switch sold a whooping 19 million units. Keep in mind, that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom launched last year, and it was one of the quickest selling first party titles for Nintendo in its history.
Without a killer app, the Switch sales have slowed down considerably this year. Not only that, but the rumors of a Switch successor next year will also hurt the system’s sales on the upcoming holiday season. This is likely the reason Nintendo hasn’t officially unveiled the new system, as the company wants to ride out the Switch success wave as long as it can.
Well that, and it likely doesn’t have a “Breath of the Wild” type of ‘system moving’ hit in good shape for unveiling as of yet.
Nintendo Might Not Get Over the PS2’s Record Next Year…But An Argument Can Be Made That it is Already More Successful Than Sony’s Biggest Hit in Terms of Profit
The PS2 was selling for $99 at the end of its run. The Switch has yet to receive a discount. Nintendo, as usual, has been making a profit on the machine’s less than cutting edge hardware since launch. At this point, 7 years into its lifecycle, it is likely that Nintendo if swimming in the sea of profits that the machine keeps churning out, as the development costs for the hardware are much lower now but Nintendo keeps selling it for the same price point.
Let’s add to this successful run the fact that 1.2 billion games for the system have been sold. Most of these games were made by Nintendo, and in typical Nintendo fashion have been sold at full price, no discounts. The type of success train that Nintendo has embarked on since 2017 makes Phil Spencer’s talk of Microsoft (who is struggling to move Series X/S consoles) acquiring the Japanese giant seem like a ridiculous pipe dream.
At this stage, Nintendo is in a good position to outlast Microsoft, at least gaming hardware wise, for the foreseeable future. Microsoft is moving further away from the Xbox console as a primary focus, and into Game Pass and publishing games as its true north. But that’s a topic for another day.
As it stands, Nintendo seems to have captured its former crown, and there will be plenty of Mario to go around for the foreseeable future.
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