Nintendo sells 10 million Switch consoles in 9 months

FTC Statement: Reviewers are frequently provided by the publisher/production company with a copy of the material being reviewed.The opinions published are solely those of the respective reviewers and may not reflect the opinions of CriticalBlast.com or its management.

As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. (This is a legal requirement, as apparently some sites advertise for Amazon for free. Yes, that's sarcasm.)

From Forbes:

Nintendo announced today that the Switch had broken 10 million sales. An astonishing number, given the Wii U before it, analyst projections being much lower, and the holiday season still to come. The Switch has been a hardware success story only equaled by Nintendo’s software success stories between The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey both released this year.

To put that sales figure in context, I wanted to go back and see how it stacked up to other current and former consoles. As it turns out, it’s among some of the best in recent memory, as you might expect.

  •     With a March 3rd, 2017 launch, the data on December 10th, 2017 says that it took the Switch 9 months and 7 days to sell 10 million units.
  •     In contrast, the PS4, launched on November 15th, 2013, took about 8 months and 29 days to sell 10 million units, almost identical. The difference being that Sony had a full holiday sales window while Nintendo hasn't had that with the Switch yet.
  •     The Wii also took about nine months to sell 10 million units, and that was when it was a worldwide, non-gamer craze unlike anything the industry had seen.
  •     The Xbox One took about a full year to ship 10 million units, not sell-through, and we don’t have the data for those exact figures.
  •     The Wii U, Nintendo’s last console, took 2 years and 7 months to sell 10 million units, and it ended its run at 13.5 million units. It is entirely possible, if not likely, that the Switch could outsell the Wii U in totality in its very first year on the market.

Source: Forbes

Commentary: The Switch has had a terrific first year. LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD and SUPER MARIO ODYSSEY were both Game of the Year candidates.  ARMS introduced a surprisingly good new IP to the Nintendo stable, and SPLATOON 2 ended up being a huge success too.  Even third party games like XENOBLADE CHRONICLES 2 and SKYRIM have shown strong sales.  After the Wii-U's tepid sales, Nintendo needed a big win here, and I don't think anyone expected the Switch to perform as well as it has.

I would be real curious to see if it can maintain this momentum next year.  There have already been some strong games announced for 2018 including METROID PRIME 4, a Pokemon RPG, YOSHI, and KIRBY.  I am hoping we get an announcement about a new SUPER SMASH BROS soon.  And with the success of the system, maybe we will see more developers willing to take a shot on the Switch.  Also next year, people will have to start paying if they want to play games online.  So far, Nintendo's online performance has always been questionable.  Voice chat requiring using your cell phone and Nintendo's continued reliance on an annoying code system to add friends.  Asking people to pay for that without upping the quality seems crazy to me. 

And we've still seen no signs of a Virtual Console coming anytime soon.  Nintendo seems to have decided to put that on the backburner while they see strong sales on the NES Classic and SNES Classic.

2018 is definitely going to be the make and break point for the Switch, but so far so good.

On a personal note, I absolutely love my Switch.  I have already bought 8 physical games for it and several more digital.