Nintendo Switch Surpasses Wii with 103 Million Units

Nintendo Co., Ltd. has released their hardware numbers for the third fiscal quarter (October 1 to December 31) of the 2021-2022 fiscal year.

Switch sold 10.72 million in the quarter and is now at 103.54 million lifetime-to-date. The hybrid platform has surpassed the Wii (101.63 million) and is now the 3rd best-selling platform from Nintendo. The next piece of hardware to surpass is the Game Boy at 118.69 million. The breakdown for the Switch family of systems was 5.39 million for the original model, 1.34 for the Lite, and 3.94 for the newly released OLED model.

Due to the continued chip shortage, hardware sales are slightly down. Nintendo notes that unit sales declined for hardware resulting in 18.95 million units (a decrease of 21.4% year-on-year). Last fiscal year, Animal Crossing: New Horizons was a huge factor of hardware sales and it was not a year old yet. Still, the Switch family reached the 100 million mark, as Nintendo mentions that sales are “rising to the second-highest level ever, despite scarcity due to delays in production and distribution (especially in North America) since Black Friday”. Speaking of Black Friday shopping, software sales were at 179.29 million (1.8% increase). Notable software sales include Mario Kart 8 Deluxe selling another 7.96 million (43.35 LTD), Mario Party Superstars selling 5.43 m, Pokemon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl selling 13.97 m, Metroid Dread selling 2.74 m, and WarioWare: Get It Together! selling 1.24 m.

Other details of note include mobile and IP related income at 39.8 billion yen (a decrease of 5.2% year-on-year) and digital sales at 255.0 billion yen (a decrease of 0.4% year-on-year). Due to the ongoing pandemic and semiconductor shortage, Nintendo has once again modified the forecast for hardware sales from 24 m to 23 m; however, software forecast was increased to 220 m from 200 m.