Nintendo's Down Month Is Still Pretty Spectacular
The Switch is creeping up on the highest-selling console of all time.
The Nintendo Switch might be slowing down in sales some seven-plus years into its lifespan, but the console still doing remarkably well at retail according to Nintendo’s most recent quarterly financial earnings.
The Japanese game company shared its financial results for the first quarter of 2024. The Switch sold 2.1 million consoles during the three-month period of April 1 to June 30. While it's not outpacing the much newer PlayStation 5, which sold 4.5 million units during Sony’s most recent financial quarter, the Switch is still going steady. It’s also impressive since Nintendo’s told the world that a Switch successor is on the way and will be revealed sometime before March 2025.
Still, Nintendo couldn’t escape the general industry downturn that most game companies are experiencing. The Switch’s respectable sales figure is a 46.3 percent decline compared to consoles sold during the same period last year. On the games front, Nintendo sold 30.64 million units of software, down 41.3 percent from a year ago.
The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom proved to be a sale juggernaut that not even Nintendo could outpace a year later.
While the results reflect the industry decline, Nintendo’s drop is skewed a bit due to the back-to-back releases of the mega-successful Super Mario Bros. Movie and The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom during Q1 2023. The two blockbusters resulted in one of the best quarters in the company's 134-year history, and is why the company reported a 70.6 percent decrease in opertating profit compared to the same period last year.
During 2024’s first quarter, Nintendo released Princess Peach: Showtime!, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, and Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD. The sales of the trio have been stable according to the company, but understandably don’t compare to the behemoth that was last year’s Zelda game right out of the gate.
Nintendo also provided some insight into how the Switch models are performing. The Switch OLED sold 1.24 units during the quarter and was the most popular version of the console sold during the quarter. Meanwhile, the standard Switch and the Switch Lite sold 530,000 units and 330,000 units respectively.
The premium Switch OLED model is the most popular variant of Nintendo’s console-handheld hybrid.
As a whole, the Switch is still chugging along towards breaking sales records. It’s currently just 11 million units short of outselling the Nintendo DS, and just around 12 million units sort of outperforming the best-selling console of all time, the PlayStation 2. It shows that despite aging hardware, Nintendo’s ability to deliver games is serving the company extremely well, even as the wider industry wrestles with its current slump.
Sales figures aside, Nintendo has a thrilling Fall season ahead. Games like The Legend Of Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom, a Dragon Quest remake, a new Mario role-playing game andthe long awaited Metroid Prime 4 will give Switch owners plenty to play before the new year. In typical fashion for the Switch, there’s also plenty of niche titles, like Emio - Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club and Ace Attorney: Investigations Collection releasing.
Looking to game sales more broadly, Nintendo had a pretty solid June, according to newly released sales figures from Circana. The aforementioned Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, a remake of a 3DS game, was the eighth highest selling game of June. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door was the 14th on the list, while Switch mainstay, 2017’s Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, was 17th.
