Nintendo Switch Sales: Should Sony Be Worried?

Nintendo has nearly sold 20 million Switch consoles in around 15 months; by comparison only 13.56 million Wii U units were sold over four and a half years. The Switch is definitely proving to be a success compared to its predecessor and it’s selling at a similar rate to the PS4 as Sony had sold 22.3 million units over a 15 month period and that was boosted by the fact that the PS4 had two Christmas periods of that time whereas the Switch has only had one.

Over the April to June period, 1.88 million Switch consoles were purchased which is quite an impressive number considering that here haven’t been too many major releases for the console during this period other than Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze, an update of the Wii U game, Mario Tennis Aces and Labo. By comparison, 1.97 million Switch consoles were sold during the same period last year which was buoyed by the release of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

It’s therefore, hard to deny that the Switch is still a roaring success and that Nintendo’s novel console has definitely captured the market where its predecessor and the PSVita, a handheld which attempted to combine the power of a console with portability, failed. Nintendo’s software sales are also doing extremely well and they have doubled in the past year.

There have been 1.4 million Labo units sold since it went on the market, Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze has also sold 1.4 million units since it went on sale in May. Mario Tennis Aces also got off to a strong start by selling around 1.38 million copies in its first couple of weeks on sale.

However, is this the beginning of the end for the Switch? When these numbers were first announced, the value of Nintendo shares dropped but they have since recovered and grown. There’s also the issue that the PS4 is still selling incredibly well; in April more PS4’s were sold than the Xbox One and Switch combined thanks to the releases of God of War.

There also rumours, although they seem rather unbelievable, that Nintendo is going to replace the Switch sooner than anticipated. Perhaps they might launch a lower-spec version to replace the aging 3DS which is suffering rapidly decreasing sales; this may be a version that is just as powerful but is slightly smaller and permanently in handheld form. On the other hand, they might follow the blueprint set by Sony and Microsoft and make a more powerful version since the Switch is already less powerful than the standard PS4 and Xbox One; Titanfall developer Respawn recently laughed off the idea of there ever being a Switch version because of the lack of power.

Hopefully Nintendo’s sales don’t continue to decline and this should be helped by Pokémon Let’s Go! and, of course, Super Smash Bros Ultimate. Especially as they’re both releasing just before the holiday period which should help boost console sales. Only time will tell as to whether the Switch can prove itself against its stiff competition from Sony but based on the fact that Microsoft still elect not to release their sales figures for the Xbox One, it appears that Nintendo is probably second best in this console generation.