Both new and updated sales numbers for the Switch are finally coming in and, as expected, they’re pretty impressive. Game Industry reports that 500,000 consoles were sold in the US and 360,000 were sold in Japan. In total, 85,000 units were sold in the UK, and France alone saw 110,000 Switches sold. With these reports already showing high numbers, it appears as though Nintendo will be reaching its goal to sell 2 million consoles by the end of March– which is roughly two weeks away.
Not surprisingly, the reason behind so many of the sales is the same: People wanted to play Breath of the Wild on the new Switch, a fact that leads us to another interesting statistic that’s come in: nine out of ten people who picked up the new system also bought Zelda. A whopping 89% of buyers purchased the game, accumulating to 1.34 million sales. (Keep in mind that this doesn’t include the Wii U version of Breath of the Wild.) With the newest Zelda title claiming first place in Nintendo’s launch history, all of these stats aren’t exactly shocking– and they sure are welcome.
We greatly want the momentum for the Switch to remain strong, and we truly believe this is possible. Nintendo’s been making rapid changes to its business motto and practices over the last two years: Development of the first Nintendo theme park is underway at Universal Studios, a new film is in the works (we can’t forget Detective Pikachu), the company’s already made an imprint in mobile gaming history after releasing multiple new apps for devices in the last year alone, and third party developers have been raving about Nintendo’s newfound support for their games (quite possibly the most relevant change)– the latter of which could very well catapult the Switch into successful territory.
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Written by Lauren Ganos
Creative Director, Managing Editor
Designer and writer by day, gamer by night, Lauren dreams big when it comes to creative endeavors. Perhaps that's why she's taken on the roles of creative director and managing editor for Nintendo Wire. If she had a video game superhero alias, it might just be The Visionary, a true keeper of imaginative order.
