Switch Sales Reach 80 Million Consoles, Break Nintendo 3DS Record

GAMEFINITY.ID, Jakarta – Nintendo confirmed that its flagship console, the Switch, has now sold around 80 million consoles worldwide. Thus, the record sales of the Switch have now sold more than the Nintendo 3DS’s 76 million sales. As described in the company’s latest financial statements for the three months ended December 31, 2021, currently only the Wii (101.6 million), Game Boy (118.7 million) and Nintendo DS (154 million) have recorded more sales.

During the nine months ending December, Nintendo shipped 24 million Switch units (16.7 million of which were normal Switch consoles), of which 11.5 million consoles shipped during the three months ending December 31. In total in 2021 Nintendo managed to sell 27.3 million console units. Nintendo has increased its hardware sales target for this year from 24 million consoles to 26.5 million at the end of March, and its estimated revenue to 15 billion USD.

According to Bloomberg, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa told investors that the company has sufficient supply of components for now even though there is currently a shortage in the console industry, as experienced by Microsoft (Xbox) and Sony (PlayStation). The Q3 period (Oct – Dec 2021) was Nintendo’s second best Q3 record in terms of revenue and profit, with operating profit hitting 2.2 billion USD. This figure only lost to the record Q3 in 2008, when the era of the popularity of the Wii and DS.

Software sales reached 176 million units, an increase of 43 percent compared to the same period in the previous year. Super Mario 3D All-Stars became a new game with significant sales, selling 8.32 million copies. Followed by Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (3.5 million), Paper Mario: The Origami King with 3.05 million and Pikmin 3 Deluxe with 1.94 million.

In total, Nintendo said the Switch now has 29 games that have sold more than 1 million, including 20 games by Nintendo and 9 games by other publishers. Animal Crossing: New Horizons continued its impressive sales run with 5.14 million copies sold in the three months ending December 31, taking it to cumulative sales of 31.18 million. Only Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has cumulatively sold more on Switch, with sales of 33.41 million (an increase of 4.42 million over a three-month period).

As Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad notes New Horizons figures show that the game actually outperformed Nintendo Switch hardware sales in 2021. Up to 39 percent of Switch users own the game.

Nintendo also noted digital sales accounted for $806 million during Q3 (and $2.4 billion for the fiscal year). This figure increased by more than 50 percent year on year. The figures also include DLC content, Switch Online subscriptions, and software downloads. Digital sales accounted for 32 percent of total software sales.

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