The Switch is still doing well for Nintendo, but apparently not well enough for the company to maintain its forecasts for this financial year.
Nintendo announced during its latest earnings release that the Switch has been selling incredibly well, with the 2018 holiday season — greatly contributing to the console-handheld hybrid’s best quarter ever — leading the charge. To be specific, the Switch has sold 32.27 million units in total since it’s launch in 2017, with 9.41 of those sales coming in the period between October through December, a 30 percent improvement on a year ago.
Yet despite the strong hardware sales, along with impressive software sales to match (Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Pokémon: Let’s Go were at 12.08 million and 10 million units sold respectively), Nintendo opted to reduce its forecast of 20 million unit sales during the fiscal year to 17 million.
Why? Probably because it wasn’t too likely to begin with. Nintendo has sold nearly 15 million units in the current fiscal year, meaning it would’ve needed 5 million more sales within the span of three months to hit that estimate. Really, had it not made that overambitious estimate to begin with, this article would likely just be another one about how the Switch made history or reached another milestone.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that the Switch’s future isn’t bright. The console now has 20 one million sellers in its library — eight of which are third party titles — and the impending releases of Animal Crossing and Pokémon this year means that even more titles would be making that list too. Unfortunately, one title we’re sure won’t be joining them in the near future is Metroid Prime 4, as Nintendo recently announced it had been delayed due to development issues.
