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Nintendo Releases Sales Numbers For Games And Switch In Earnings Report
Early this morning, Nintendo released its earnings report for the last financial year, which covers the entire lifetime of the Switch and every game released on it. As such, the company has provided numbers for their games, which includes a few surprises.
Note that in the context of this article, selling is shorthand for a combination of shipping to retailers and digital sales, as most companies consider a copy shipped to retailers as one sold from them to the retailer.
Worldwide, the best selling title on the Nintendo Switch has been Super Mario Odyssey, selling just over ten million copies since its release last October. To put this into context of other Mario games, Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii, the current best-selling 3D Mario title, sold 12.75 million copies as of last year.
The next best selling Switch game was Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, coming in at over nine million units sold. In combination with the Wii U version of the game, that puts Mario Kart 8 at about 17 million copies. It also makes Mario Kart 8 Deluxe one of the most successful remasters of all time, second to Grand Theft Auto V.
Following up is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which sits at 8.48 million on Switch and 1.5 million on the Wii U, combining to make the game the best selling Zelda of all time. The Switch version alone has outsold both versions of Twilight Princess across the Wii and Gamecube, though Twilight Princess narrowly comes out on top if you include the Wii U remaster. Ocarina of Time similarly sells more than all of them when adding in Ocarina of Time 3D on the 3DS.
Fire Emblem Warriors has sold a million copies worldwide, quietly becoming one of the best selling Warriors games over time. Arms has sold nearly two million copies, making the game a surprising success. Xenoblade 2 has sold 1.31 million copies since its release in December, marking it as the best selling "Xeno" game, including Xenogears, any of the individual Xenosaga games, or Nintendo's two previous Xenoblade titles.
Splatoon 2 has also beaten the first game's sales, with Splatoon 2 selling six million and the original topping out at just under five million.
The Switch itself has sold 17 million units since its release in in March 2017, above Nintendo's at one time incredibly lofty prediction of fifteen million units sold in the first year. Nintendo predicts that the next fiscal year, which runs from April 1 2018 to March 31 2019, will sell 20 million Switch units and 100 million units of software.
[Source: Nintendo]
Our Take
Twenty million units this year is a lot, but I also scoffed at fifteen last year and they beat that handily. With a new Super Smash Bros. game coming this year and almost assuredly a new Pokemon title, Nintendo is likely confident that Switch sales will be spurred on by new software.
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