In just ten months, the Nintendo Switch has surpassed its predecessor’s lifetime sales. More Switch consoles have been sold than the Wii U managed to sell in five years on the market. While that undoubtedly speaks to the apathetic response to the Wii U, it’s also a sign that the Switch is exactly what Nintendo needed it to be.
According to the BBC, Nintendo sold 7.23 million Switch consoles last quarter, which brings the total sales to around 14.86 million. Between November 2012 when it launched to its death in 2017, Nintendo sold 13.56 million Wii Us.
In addition to rebounding on the hardware side, Nintendo has been selling software at an impressive clip as well. In an earnings report released on Wednesday, Nintendo announced that its software sales volume totaled 47.1 million units. Unsurprisingly, Super Mario Odyssey was the biggest hit of all.
“For the Nintendo Switch software, Super Mario Odyssey was released in October and has been a big hit, with global sales reaching 9.07 million units,” Nintendo revealed in the report. “Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, released in April, has sold 7.33 million units, and Splatoon 2, released in July, has sold 4.91 million units, bringing to 8 the total number of million-seller titles for this fiscal year including the titles of other software publishers.”
Beyond its disastrously undercooked hardware, the Wii U collapsed because of its lack of support from both Nintendo and third-party developers alike. Thankfully, Nintendo appears to be prepared to rectify that issue this generation, as a ton of games and DLC are planned for this year and developers are actually excited about the Switch.
