Nintendo has overestimated how many people still want a Switch (Nintendo)
The president of Nintendo says Switch sales will continue as long as there’s demand, but dwindling sales suggest that won’t be for long.
It’s been apparent since last year that Nintendo is winding down support for the original Switch and saving its most exciting games for the Nintendo Switch 2, which is due to launch sometime later this year.
Switch owners do have Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and Pokémon Legends Z-A to look forward to this year, but those are commonly assumed to be cross-gen releases for the Switch 2 (though insider claims say this might not be the case for the new Pokémon game).
The likes of the new Mario Kart and an expected new 3D Mario platformer will no doubt be exclusive to Switch 2. Yet this doesn’t mean Nintendo will abandon the original Switch straight away.
Nintendo recently shared its financial results for the third quarter of its fiscal year (October 2024 to December 2024). This is the first of these to follow the Switch 2’s reveal, although for the time period in question the new consoles remained a secret.
When speaking during an earnings call with investors, president Shuntaro Furukawa, via Japanese outlet Sankei, said that the original Switch will still be sold ‘as long as there is demand.’
Furukawa apparently didn’t mention anything about the original Switch continuing to receive new games, but comments he made in 2023 suggested this could be the case.
It would make sense for Nintendo to keep supporting the original Switch even after the Switch 2 launches. Not everybody will be able or willing to transition to the newer console and after nearly eight years on the market, the Switch has too big of an audience to completely abandon.
Lifetime sales for the Switch now exceed 150.86 million units. As such, it wouldn’t be surprising if Nintendo released cross-gen titles that can be played on the original Switch but offer some performance or visual benefits when running on Switch 2.
It’s certainly going to be interesting to see how much more demand for the original Switch there could be. For the current fiscal year, Nintendo hoped to sell roughly 13.5 million consoles by the end of March 2025, but was forced to trim that forecast to 12.5 million last November, thanks to a 31% drop in sales.
It turns out that was still too optimistic as Nintendo’s latest hardware forecast has cut that estimation down again, to 11 million units. For the first three quarters of the fiscal year (April 2024 to December 2024), it has sold 9.54 million consoles, which is 30% less than what Nintendo managed in the same period the year before.
If Nintendo does meet its target, that will put the Switch at roughly 152 million units, which means it still won’t quite surpass the Nintendo DS’ 154.02 million sales to become the second best-selling console ever (first place is the PlayStation 2 at ‘over 160 million’).
You’d think the dwindling sales would be partially attributed to anticipation for the Switch 2, but Furukawa disagrees. ‘We don’t think the impact of refraining from purchasing [because of Switch 2] is that great,’ he told investors, but didn’t provide any alternative explanation.
Furukawa also described the year so far as ‘solid’, despite the need to revise Nintendo’s targets. Super Mario Party Jamboree has been the company’s best performing game of the fiscal year, having sold an estimated 6.17 million units by the end of December 2024 following its October launch.
People are somehow still buying Mario Kart 8 Deluxe too, with an additional 5.38 million units sold. In third place was The Legend Of Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom at 3.91 million units.
Surely everyone owns a copy of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe by now, right? (Nintendo)
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