A month before the seventh anniversary of the Switch’s launch, Nintendo has released a new quarterly financial report for the 2023 fiscal year. This report has revealed that as of December 31, 2023, Nintendo Switch sales have hit 139.36 million units globally.
While the metrics in the report make it clear that the console is slowing down, this achievement fundamentally brings it within arms length of not only becoming Nintendo’s best-selling console ever, but taking the top spot as the best-selling game system of all time.
Still in the fight
Considering the sheer amount of speculation over the past several months surrounding what Nintendo’s next system potentially is, this sales report is being viewed through a critical lens by many in the gaming community.
Nintendo’s report shows that hardware sales are down by -7.8% compared to the previous fiscal year, even though both the Nintendo Switch OLED Model and Switch Lite sold better in the most recent fiscal year. But, considering the platform as a whole is just shy of a full seven years old, such trends are to be expected.
Even with this slowdown, the Switch’s performance in this quarter has allowed it to achieve the status of Japan’s best-selling console of all time, surpassing even the likes of juggernauts such as the Nintendo DS. Its sales in the region now stand at 33.34 million units, making up approximately 24% of the system’s total sales.
Looking on the horizon
The final quarter of the current fiscal year will end on March 31, 2024. As Nintendo prepares to go into its next phase, many passionate fans are wondering exactly how it plans to tackle the rest of the year.
The Switch’s currently-announced first-party line-up is relatively light, and there’s virtually no dates for anything past the approaching summer.
While the company didn’t take this particular opportunity to divulge much info on its plans for the rest of the year, Bloomberg did manage to get an applicable statement from President Shuntaro Furukawa. According to Mr. Furukawa, Nintendo sees the current Switch as its “main business” as it heads into 2024, with more details to be shared during its next earnings briefing in the coming weeks.
Such a statement is to be expected considering how the company has bobbed and weaved around even insinuating truly tangible plans to formally move onto another system in the immediate future. Thus, the jury is still out as to whether or not the Switch’s successor will hit store shelves later this year as has been extensively rumoured.
Regardless of what comes of that, there’s no changing the fact that the Switch stands as one of gaming’s biggest success stories. As stated before, at 139 million units sold worldwide, it now formally has the potential to surpass the Nintendo DS’ silver position within the next year or so. If it does, it would simply need 1 million more to then take the golden crown away from the PS2 as best-selling console of all time.
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