You may not be surprised to hear about how wildly popular Switch is, considering how you had to scour the city for a store that still had one in stock before you could nab a console for yourself. But now the official numbers confirm it. According to Nintendo’s quarterly earnings report, they’ve moved over 2.7 million units around the world, making Switch the fastest selling console in the company’s history.
That’s not all. While Switch has received considerable success worldwide, it’s showing in the States is what’s most impressive. The NPD Group reports 906,000 units were purchased in the US in March alone, setting the Switch as the fastest-selling console in America, period, not just for Nintendo.
Yet, in a surprising twist, the console isn’t Nintendo’s true star. Switch’s flagship game has raked in even greater numbers. The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of the Wild sold 925, 000 copies in the month of March on Switch, with another 460,000 on Wii U to make a combined 1.3 million copies sold.
Though unusual, such a discrepancy in numbers may be attributed to the fact that many Zelda fans have purchased special editions of the game alongside the copy they want to play. Nintendo released a limited edition of Breath of the Wild that included some fun accessories, like a soundtrack CD and Relic of Hyrule: Calamity Ganon Tapestry. Check out the full swag list here.
The true test will be to see how long these impressive sales last. Most new consoles and games see a surge when first released before tapering off the longer they stay on the market. Nintendo is doing everything in its power to preserve these sales, as their fiscal report revealed the company experienced a loss of 394 million yen in its first quarter.
They’ll do that by adding new titles to join BotWin its library. With Mario Kart 8 Deluxe already out, and ARMS, Splatoon, and Mario Smash Bros. on their way, there’s a considerable chance the company will be able to hang on to its upswing.
In all likelihood, it will, as Nintendo rolls out updates that fix many of the issues the first players had with the Joy-Cons’ connectivity. With each new update, the de-synching issues while docked become less noticeable. Meanwhile, problems users face with the Switch while taking it around town as a portable gaming device can be solved easily by the addition of a vinyl Switch skin.
These accessories add a thin layer of texturized protection around the console, saving it from the perils hiding inside your backpack. The crew behind dbrand skins have made their vinyl add considerable grip to the Joy-Cons, so you can keep a handle on the Switch wherever you take it. You can see the latest dbrand skins on their build-a-skin feature that lets you choose the color or texture of your Switch skin.
Now that E3 is just around the corner, we won’t have to wait very long to see what other titles we’ll be able to play on the Switch. Though Nintendo has opted out of an official press conference at the expo (as they have since 2012), we expect the games on demo will be more than enough to support the Switch into the next quarter.
