Nintendo Posts Massive Switch Console Sales Over Holiday Quarter

A strong holiday season gave a boost to sales of Nintendo’s family of Switch consoles as the Japanese gaming giant on Thursday revealed in its latest financial filing that hardware sales have topped 17.7 million units over the nine-month period ending Dec. 31.

When subtracting the 6.9 million consoles the company reported it had sold to date in its previous quarterly report in October, more than 10.8 million units were sold over the holiday season.

The news is unsurprising, given previous reports that the Switch consoles (which include the original Nintendo Switch released in 2017 and the mobile-only Switch Lite, launched in August), posted record sales of 830,000 units over the week of Thanksgiving in the Americas, the best-ever week of U.S. sales for the Japanese company. 

Total global sales of the Nintendo Switch have now topped 52.4 million, making it Nintendo’s third-best-selling console ever, behind only 2006’s Nintendo Wii (101.6 million sold) and 1983’s Nintendo Entertainment System (61.9 million).

On the software side, sales reached 123.1 million units over the nine-month period (a 30 percent increase year-over-year). Once again, subtracting the numbers from the previous quarterly report (58.5 million software units sold) reveals that 64.6 million units of software were sold over the holiday quarter.

Software sales were driven by such hits as Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield (both released in November), which sold a combined 16 million units, as well as Luigi’s Mansion 3 (released Oct. 31) and Super Mario Maker 2 (launched back in June), which both have sold over 5 million copies. 

Overall, Nintendo’s sales topped 1 trillion yen ($9.2 billion) over the nine-month period ending Dec. 31, a 2.5 percent increase year-over-year.