The Nintendo Switch has become the fastest-selling video game system in the company's history according to a press release from Nintendo.
Over 900,000 Nintendo Switch consoles were sold in the month of March alone in the US according to market research company The NPD Group. What makes these numbers particularly astonishing is that they were achieved in a month when video game software & hardware sales typically do not perform strongly. (Consoles & software tend to sell best in the fourth quarter as exemplified in the graphs in this Ars Technica article.) This puts the Switch at second place overall in console launch sales history in the US with the PlayStation 4 taking first place.
The Switch did well, but it wasn't the only Nintendo product to break company records in March: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has sold over 1.3 million units. 925,000 of those units were for the Switch and 465,000 were for the Wii U edition of the game. This makes Breath of the Wild the all-time fastest-selling launch title for the company to date. Interestingly, they've sold more copies of the game for Switch than they have for the console which puts the attach rate at over 100%. The press release states that this may be attributed to people purchasing a collector's edition to save and a standard edition to play.
Daniel Ahmad, Industry Analyst at Niko Partners, had an interesting fact to add to the story: the console sold more in its first month than the Wii U did during any holiday season (the months of November & December). The Wii U did not perform as well as Nintendo had likely hoped; going strictly by the numbers, it's the company's worst selling console. A contibuting factor to the lower sales may have been confusion due to the name as compared to the predecessor console.
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Although the Switch has been doing quite well in sales, Nintendo has nonetheless had difficulties with supplying consoles to customers. Thankfully, it doesn't seem to be as bad as the shortages in the Wii launch; that may be because the Japanese video game company is responding quickly to potential shortages. They announced that they will be doubling production of their latest video game console in mid-March.
What do you think is the reason for the Nintendo Switch's record-breaking success in sales? How do you think Nintendo is handling the launch of this console as compared to their previous hardware releases? Do you know anyone who owns a Switch but doesn't own The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild? Let us know in the comments below!
