Nintendo raise Switch sales forecast as it passes 52 million

Nintendo has increased their sales forecast for the Nintendo Switch from 18 million to 19.5 million for the current financial year.

During the Christmas sales period, Nintendo sold 10.8 million Nintendo Switch consoles, which exceeded the company’s expectations of 9.4 million achieved in 2019. During the first nine months of the financial year, a period ending in December, the company sold a total of 17.74 million Switch consoles. This is an increase year-on-year of 22.5 percent.

So far the Nintendo Switch has sold 52.48 million units since it launched, far surpassing the Super Nintendo. Currently it is the third best-selling Nintendo home console of all time, behind the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Nintendo Wii. While sales numbers are behind the Wii at this point, the console is tracking ahead of the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 2 in the same time frame.

Software sales have also seen a huge improvement. So far this financial year Nintendo has sold 123.13 million games, up by 30.1 percent year-on-year. Pokemon Sword and Shield led the charge over Christmas, selling 16.06 million units, which is just slightly behind the total lifetime sales of the last mainline Pokemon games, Sun and Moon.

Luigi’s Mansion 3 was another big seller over Christmas. The game sold 5.37 million copies, pushing it up to be the fastest-selling game in the series to date. Super Mario Maker sold just over 5 million copies during the same period, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening sold 4.19 million units, Fire Emblem: Three Houses sold 2.58 million units, Ring Fit Adventure sold 2.17 million units, Astral Chain sold 1.03 million units, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 sold 1.02 million units. All in all, this was Nintendo’s most successful Q3 in terms of revenue since 2009.

Nintendo now believes that they’ll sell 140 million Nintendo Switch games in the current financial year, up from their previous forecast of 125 million. Sales for the nine months ending on December 31, 2019 reached $9.2 billion, with a profit of $2.4 billion.

Digital revenue rose by 48 percent year-on-year for this period, making up 28.6 percent of the company’s software and sales revenue. For the same period last year that figure was 21.8 percent, showing a decent increase year-on-year. Nintendo Switch Online, which only became available in September 2018, has been a big contributor to that growth.

Nintendo now believes that their profits for the current financial year will be $2.75 billion, which is a 15.4 percent increase on their previous forecast of $2.4 billion. While mobile is a contributor to Nintendo’s revenue increase, they’re heavily reliant on the Nintendo Switch, with 95 percent of all income coming from the console and the games on Switch platform.

3DS hardware sales continue to fall, reaching 620,000 units sold for the period. This is a drop of 73 percent year-on-year. 4.1 million software units were sold for the device, which is another significant drop ad 63 percent down year-on-year. Nintendo now only expects to sell 650,000 units for the current financial year, instead of 1 million, and software sales expectations have been adjusted from 5 million to 4.5 million.