Nintendo is outperforming itself without making noise. Last Christmas it managed to exceed the sales of the legendary SNES, and now the Japanese company has indicated ( PDF ) that in the first quarter of 2020 it has sold another 2.39 million Nintendo Switch consoles.
That brings the total number of units sold to 55.77 million. With that number, the Switch has already sold more than what the Nintendo 64 (32.93 million) and the GameCube (21.74 million) sold together. The next challenge is to beat the NES, and it is more than likely that it will be done before the end of the year.
Nintendo continues to roam freely
The Nintendo Entertainment System has sold 61.91 million units since it went on sale in 1983, and at the rate, the Switch is selling it seems difficult for the console to fail to outperform it before the end of the year.
In the fiscal year from April 2019 to March 2020, Nintendo managed to sell 21.03 million Switch, even exceeding its goals of selling 19.5 million units.
The coronavirus pandemic may have favored this manufacturer now that people and especially children need to be entertained while they are at home for so many hours. That factor, together with releases with overwhelming success like ‘ Animal Crossing New Horizons ‘ has made the console once again a safe bet.
That game has already sold 11.77 million copies – for now it’s the seventh best-selling Switch game in its history – but confinement due to the coronavirus pandemic could make those numbers soon higher: it launched on March 20. In fact, so we are likely to notice that success even more palpably during the second quarter of 2020 .
It remains to be seen how sales of this and other games and its Switch are progressing, but it seems clear that at this rate Nintendo can continue on its own: it is clear that the Japanese firm is in another war and does not need (for now) a successor , something that both Sony and Microsoft will offer on their platforms with the new PS5 and Xbox Series X before the end of the year.
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