Nintendo’s business is now almost entirely reliant on the Switch

Nintendo has a very good reason to walk into work with a smile on its face today. Or to be more accurate, many millions of reasons as the company is doing obscenely well as of late. For a brand that was in utter doldrums during the era of the Wii U, the Nintendo of today is stronger than ever thanks to the lacklustre response to that console lighting a fire under their backside and pushing them to think more outside the box than ever before.

The end result was the Nintendo Switch, everyone’s favourite handheld console that happens to be perfect for home gaming or on the go distractions. Top tip: Don’t play it while you’re in a car because your hands are supposed to be on the steering wheel. With the numbers now flowing in, Nintendo has posted results which saw their recent 2019 silly season push paying off.

The Nintendo Switch is now Nintendo’s third best-selling console of all time, trailing behind the SNES and Wii. In addition to Pokémon Sword and Shield selling over 16 million units at the tail end of 2019, the rest of the year also looked fantastic:

• 10.81 million Nintendo Switch units sold, bringing the total to 52.48 million consoles sold
• 5.19 million of these lifetime sales were Switch Lite consoles
• This makes the Switch a better seller in 34 months than the Xbox One was in 74 months
• Luigi’s Mansion 3 sold 5 million copies
• Luigi’s Mansion 3 is currently expected to surpass the 6.16 million sales of Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon
• In 2019, Super Mario Maker 2 sold 5.04 million units
• The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening sold 4.19 million units
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses sold 2.58 million units
• Ring Fit Adventure sold 2.17 million units
• Astral Chain sold 1.03 million units
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 sold 1.02 million units

The biggest revelation out of all this is that the Nintendo Switch hardware, software and accessories now accounts for 96% of the company’s entire revenue in the third quarter, with the age of the Nintendo 3DS and other classic consoles barely making an entry in the company’s ledgers (via Niko Partners’ Daniel Ahmad):

Overall, Nintendo is healthier than ever as they saw their legacy titles propel hardware sales to heights not seen since 2009. The mobile frontier is apparently still a tough nut to crack for the brand and while it is worrying that Nintendo’s entire existence now relies on a single console, they are aware that they’ll need to diversify their offerings in the future to provide a more stable foundation.

Last Updated: January 30, 2020