Nintendo sets up Switch’s first holiday with 7 million sales

Image: AFP/Toshifumi Kitamura

Over seven million Nintendo Switch consoles have been shipped during its first six months, with the company predicting the same again by the time its home and portable hybrid console reaches one year old.

Some 7.63 million Switch consoles were shipped worldwide by Sept. 30, 2017, according to Nintendo figures published during an earnings report.

That’s good news after an underwhelming reception for its previous home console, the Wii U, and appears to be on a par with the PlayStation 4, even though the Switch launched much further away from the end of year holiday season when console spending would be expected to rise.

Sony’s PlayStation 4 debuted in North America on Nov. 15, 2013, internationally on Nov. 29, and in Japan on Feb. 22, 2014, and sold 7 million units of 7.5 million the company had shipped by April 2014, five and a half months into its lifecycle.

By November 2014, the PlayStation 4 was on 14.4m million sales, with shipments confirmed at 19.9 million by the end of the year.

Less forthcoming with its sales figures by comparison, Microsoft announced the Xbox One had shipped 3.9 million units towards the end of January 2014, its second full month of availability.

By mid-November, approaching its one-year anniversary, the console had reached a shipment total of 10 million, after which Microsoft stopped reporting sales figures.

So while Nintendo’s Switch might not be on pace to match the Wii, which galloped to 9 million after half a year and 20 million after 12 months, it appears to be keeping pace with its contemporaries, and radically outperforming its predecessor, the Wii U.

In fact, the Wii U’s lifetime sales, achieved over a five-year period, stand at 13.96 million units; Nintendo just raised its one-year estimate for the Switch, originally set at 10 million, to 14 million units worldwide by March 2018. JB

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