Nintendo Switch At 139.36M Units Sold - FY24 Q3 Report
by William Hernandez
The Nintendo Switch is soon to turn 7 years old this upcoming March and it's still chugging along just fine acording to Nintendo's FY24 Q3 financial reports. It has now sold 139.36 million units, up 16.81 million compared to this same time last year. The company as a whole is standing strong with their profits and sales numbers year-on-year actually beating out the previous fiscal year in just about every category. Understandably, though, sales numbers for hardware and software are starting to see a slight decline, but not in any surprising way - according to Nintendo. Everything is still just about in line with their forecasts and expectations. It certainly raises some eyebrows, however, that they felt the need to clarify the system's age. It seems to be the case that they're ready to acknowledge that the Switch is likely on its last legs. Still, it is indeed impressive how stable the sales continue to be. That's probably why they've been so hesitant to announce a successor well in advance...
Significant First-Party Title Performances
It would be very remiss of me to not first mention that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has reached over 60 million copies sold - a mark that puts it in quite the exclusive list. To actually talk about 2023 releases, though, Tears of the Kingdom leads the charge with 20.28 million copies sold, an astonishing figure considering that it took Breath of the Wild a whole 3 years to reach that same number. Super Mario Bros. Wonder was also no slouch in terms of sales, reaching 11.96 million copies sold in just roughly 2 months. Pikmin 4 and the Super Mario RPG remaster have both topped out over 3 million sold copies, the former now being the highest-selling entry in its franchise. Last thing worth mentioning, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet have now become the third-highest selling games in the series, surpassing Gold and Silver. There's likely still time to jump past Sword and Shield as well thanks to the incentive of new DLC, but it'll definitely be a tight race to the end. 2023 was a big year for gaming and Nintendo definitely felt it themselves.
What's next for Nintendo? Well, not too much. In terms of highly-anticipated new releases, there's Princess Peach: Showtime! and then a myriad of remakes and re-releases. That's not to downplay the quality of a game like The Thousand-Year Door, but Nintendo's schedule for the year is pretty dry as of right now. Outside of software, Nintendo has plans to continue expanding both of their theme parks by the end of next year. We are also aware of the fact that they're working hard to get more films out, but there are no new announcements regarding that at this moment. The big question for the Big N is when will we see the successor to the Switch? Everyone's dying to know. While the answer to that may not come for a while, it does seem like we might soon be in store for the last big direct of the Switch era. There's a lot we could potentially learn. We'll just have to wait and see.
