Nintendo Continues Strong Switch Sales

Nintendo has now sold 36.87 million Switch consoles after moving 2.13 million units in the April-June quarter, a 13 percent increase year on year.

Operating profit for the three month period was down 10.2 percent year on year to 27.4 billion yen ($252 million), while revenue was up 2.4 percent to 172 billion yen ($1.58 billion). Nintendo has reason to be optimistic about Switch hardware sales over the next few months. August sees the release of a tweaked model with longer battery life, while in September Nintendo is launching the Switch Lite, a significantly cheaper handheld only version, with seemingly no detachable joy-cons.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The Switch Lite is important to the company because there is currently no entry level up to date Nintendo device; Nintendo only sold 200,000 3DS’s last quarter.

Nintendo’s big game releases this year include the following; Pokémon Sword and Shield, Luigi’s Mansion 3, and a remake of the classic Legend of Zelda title Link’s Awakening. If Nintendo can match its sales pace from the second half of last year, the Switch will end 2019 having sold more units than the SNES, which many people will know as one of Nintendo’s most beloved consoles of all time.