February 7th, 2023 at 6:01 p.m. by Oliver Jäger – The now almost six-year-old switch from the Japanese company Nintendo has now been sold over 122 million times, which puts it in third place among the best-selling consoles worldwide. When the quarterly figures were announced, Nintendo also had to state that hardware and software sales fell compared to the previous year.
After some big tech companies, it was recently the turn of Nintendo from Japan to read out the business figures from the past quarter. There was good news on the one hand and less good news on the other. The good news includes the sales figures for the Nintendo Switch, which has been on the market since 2017 as a hybrid model and has received two further iterations with the Switch Lite and OLED.
Nintendo Switch: Lower sales figures, but still on top
According to Nintendo, the Switch has now sold over 122 million units worldwide, making it the third most sold console of all time. It surpasses both Sony’s Playstation 4 with 117 million worldwide sales and its own retro handheld Game Boy with 118 million sales. In front of the Nintendo Switch are only the Nintendo DS, which was also developed in-house, with 154 million sales and before that the Playstation 2 with almost 159 million sales.
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The bad news also relates to sales figures, which have fallen compared to the previous year in both the hardware and software divisions. According to the quarterly report, the Nintendo Switch was sold almost 15 million times between April and December 2022, which corresponds to 21.3 percent less than in the previous year. Nintendo explains this declining development with the lack of semiconductors and delivery bottlenecks. As a result, the company is lowering its expectations for the number of Switch consoles sold in the coming fiscal year from 21 to 18 million units.
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At the software level, a similar but less drastic picture emerges. Sales of Nintendo Switch games are said to have fallen by seven percent, although this includes a slight increase in Nintendo’s first-party games. The new Pokémon editions Crimson and Crimson played their part in this, as they are said to have been delivered over 20 million times since their release in November 2020. The third part of Splatoon also now surpasses the second part and has broken the 10 million mark.
Not too many confirmed first-party console games coming out this year: Kirby’s Return to Dreamland Deluxe launches on February 24th. This is followed by Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon on March 17th. The highlight of the year will probably be The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which Nintendo plans to release on May 12th. On top of that, Pikmin 4 is supposed to be released this year, while Metroid Prime 4 and Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp are still waiting for a release date.
Those: Nintendo via Eurogamer
