Report: Nintendo has Sold 1.5M Switch Consoles Worldwide

[Lizzy Finnegan]

Report: Nintendo has Sold 1.5M Switch Consoles Worldwide

1.34 million copies of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sold for the Switch.

A report from SuperData (as reported by GamesIndustry.biz [http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-03-14-nintendo-switch-has-sold-1-5m-worldwide-superdata]) states that Nintendo has sold 1.5 million Switch consoles worldwide, most of which were during the first week on the market. According to the report, 500,000 consoles were sold in the US, 360,000 were sold in Japan, Europe "isn't far behind," 85,000 were sold in the UK and 110,000 were sold in France.

SuperData compiled the information from Famitsu and market research firm GfK. The report also states that 89% of Switch owners purchased The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - making for roughly 1.34 million units sold for just the Switch alone, not accounting for Wii U sales.

[gallery=7050]

In other Breath of the Wild news, one speedrunner has already managed to beat the game in under one hour - you can check that out over here [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/169777-Breath-of-The-Wild-Speedrun-Under-One-Hour].






Permalink

 

[Jacked Assassin]

Hopefully Nintendo Switch Consoles will sell over two million before the end of this month.

 

[Covarr]

Early sales numbers don't mean a whole lot. Demand also outpaced supply for the Wii and Wii U at this point in their respective lives. All this really confirms is that they're manufacturing them faster and better keeping up with demand. Once sales slow down, that's when we can begin to tell how successful or unsuccessful the Switch is.

P.S. Thanks

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

I'm just dreading when the cries of "artificial shortages!" are going to crop up like they always do. Anyway, looking pretty good despite a typical launch lineup and being early in the year. Though Splatoon II's Global Testfire is up on the Switch now, so there's a brief distraction for new owners.

 

[Gizen]

Early sales numbers don't mean a whole lot. Demand also outpaced supply for the Wii and Wii U at this point in their respective lives. All this really confirms is that they're manufacturing them faster and better keeping up with demand. Once sales slow down, that's when we can begin to tell how successful or unsuccessful the Switch is.

P.S. Thanks

Early sales numbers actually do mean quite a bit, because one of the major driving factors in determining whether a console will or won't succeed is 3rd party support. Third parties don't want to risk spending money on a console that's not selling. Good early sales can entice developpers to support the system, and their support or lack thereof later down the line will be one of the factors that determines whether the console continues to sell or not.

 

[Bedinsis]

I recall that the initial Wii U launch was also strong. We all remember how that eventually went.

What I'm saying is that things are a bit to early to tell. I'll give it a month; by that point it's probably safer to analyse its performance.

 

[Naldan]

Wouldn't have predicted that, honestly. Their launch sucks in quantity. The consoles has issues, that to me outweigh in severity and quantity the features, actually. It's been released in March. And it's the successor of... of... uh... nobody remembers anymore. (I personally actually would now grab a Wii U over a Switch)

So picture me surprised. Respect to Nintendo, I hope that they iron out those issues.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I'm just dreading when the cries of "artificial shortages!" are going to crop up like they always do.

Maybe not, they did ship 5 million for the worldwide launch. By comparison, PS4 sold 1 million it's first day just in the U.S.

 

[mad825]

Early sales numbers actually do mean quite a bit, because one of the major driving factors in determining whether a console will or won't succeed is 3rd party support. Third parties don't want to risk spending money on a console that's not selling. Good early sales can entice developpers to support the system, and their support or lack thereof later down the line will be one of the factors that determines whether the console continues to sell or not.

The biggest issue though for the Switch is that MS and Sony are pushing developers to pump-up their games with more steroids because of the PS4 pro and project Scorpio and the Switch is so weak and out-date that they die of drinking too much coffee. Christ, Skyrim, SKYRIM (special edition hasn't even been confirmed) was chosen to show-off it's technical prowess.

Even if Switch can get good sales the only thing it has going for it is the mobility, it will have the huge difficulty of proving to (other than Nintendo fanbois) that it can still provide good quality gaming similar or equal to the main 2 without having to sacrifice the graphics and the mean to use VR.

So yeah, good sales only mean that they've overcome one hurdle.

 

[Gizen]

The biggest issue though for the Switch is that MS and Sony are pushing developers to pump-up their games with more steroids because of the PS4 pro and project Scorpio and the Switch is so weak and out-date that they die of drinking too much coffee. Christ, Skyrim, SKYRIM (special edition hasn't even been confirmed) was chosen to show-off it's technical prowess.

Even if Switch can get good sales the only thing it has going for it is the mobility, it will have the huge difficulty of proving to (other than Nintendo fanbois) that it can still provide good quality gaming similar or equal to the main 2 without having to sacrifice the graphics and the mean to use VR.

I don't think you realize how big a deal mobility IS. While mobile phones did take a bite out of the market, there is still a sizeable market for portable gaming. REAL portable gaming, with actual games with actual buttons rather than infinite runners, candy crush clones, and ports of old good games tarnished by shitty terrible phone control schemes. This is a not-insignificant market which Nintendo pretty much has uncontested domain over and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The 3DS, while it started slow and lost some market share to mobile, was most definitely NOT a failure and was widely adopted by people beyond just 'Nintendo fanbois', and this happened despite the fact that the 3DS was undeniably sacrificing graphics compared to the Vita, which floundered and failed. So, yes, Nintendo does have to provide good quality gaming (which strong early sales can at least help with), but it absolutely can sacrifice graphics and especially VR to do so. Hell, VR itself isn't doing particularly good right now and so sacrificing that is no loss at all.

As for the 'more powerful' games of the PSPro and Scorpio... those two consoles themselves are weak as a baby and out-dated as all hell compared to a PC, and the Scorpio isn't even out yet, which is itself evidence that graphics and power are not nearly the end-all/be-all that many like to claim.

The Switch may fail, and there are many possible reasons why that may happen, but being too weak isn't one of them unless everyone buying the Switch just neglects its primary selling point in favour of making it a home console only thing.

 

[Avnger]

Let's wait and see how this pans out...

The PS4 has sold roughly 1.4 million units per month from release through Jan 1, 2017.

The Xbox 1 sold 10 million units from release through Nov 2015 (when Microsoft gave up with hardware sale numbers because Sony was killing them) which is roughly 830 thousand per month.

My overall guess is that the first year sales won't surpass the Xbox 1. Even if it does manage to do that, there's no way in fucking hell it'll match the PS4.

edit: forgot my sources
https://www.microsoft.com/investor/Events/Presentations/2014/ShareholderMeeting2014.aspx?eventid=151407&Search=true&SearchType=0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_One#Sales
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_4#Sales

 

[Karadalis]

So a Wii 2.0? Tons of sales and then gathering dust in everybodies home till they decide to take it to gamestop for a trade in only to find out that the amount of trade ins made the console pretty much worthless?

Sounds about right.

 

[Kahani]

1.34 million copies of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sold for the Switch.

I think this is probably the most important part of the news. Nintendo haven't sold lots of Switches, they've sold lots of Zelda Machines. The majority of buyers didn't look at the Switch, weigh up its pros and cons, and decide that on balance it was a good gaming machine that would serve them well in years to come, they simply bought whatever would let them play the latest Zelda game in its shiniest form, and would have done so pretty much regardless of the hardware Nintendo actually released.

It's all very well to say that good early sales might entice third party developers to release games for the platform, but as things stand that support is not there. What is going to happen to sales when everyone who wants Zelda already has it, but no new games are being released yet?

 

[MonsterCrit]

Big whup. We all knew Nintendo was going to sell a boat load of these. WMost everyone can tell this is what the next Pokemon games are going to be on. The big question is, how well will it be doing in 2 years, how much third partiy support will it have.

 

[Eric the Orange]

Is that good? Bad? I honestly have no reference to measure that by.