Another financial update from Nintendo only makes it more apparent it’s quietly preparing a Switch 2 launch for next year.
The Nintendo Switch will be eight years old in March, so it’s not surprise that it’s sales are not quite what they were back in 2017. During its last financial results, this past August, Nintendo said it was aiming to sell roughly 13.5 million Switch consoles by the end of the 2025 fiscal year, which is March 31, 2025.
It turns out this was too optimistic an outlook though and it’s had to lower its forecast after sales dropped by a greater than expected 31%.
As such Nintendo has trimmed its sales forecast, although only by 1 million to 12.5 million for the financial year. That also means it’s not expecting to make as much money either, cutting its operating profit forecast from 400 billion yen (around £2 billion) to 360 billion (around £1.8 billion).
These figures come from Nintendo’s latest financial results, covering the second quarter of the fiscal year (July to September). Nintendo also acknowledges both hardware and software sales are down compared to last year; the former by 31% and the latter by 27.6%.
This doesn’t mean its 2024 line-up has been selling poorly, though. Despite launching at the tail end of September, The Legend Of Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom has already racked up 2.58 million sales, making it the best-selling game of that quarter. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe also continued to make money (surely everyone has a copy by now?), selling 2.31 million units.
We’re personally pleased to see the Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door remake do well, having sold 1.94 million units, meaning its already outperformed the original GameCube title, which reportedly sold 1.91 million units in its lifetime.
Nintendo even sounds pleased with the sales performance of Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, which is the company’s fourth best-selling game of the quarter at 1.57 million units, despite being a remaster of an 11-year-old 3DS game.
How many Nintendo Switch consoles have been sold?
As for console sales, Nintendo sold 4.21 million units in the first half of 2024, bringing the Switch’s lifetime sales up to 146.04 million.
If Nintendo does meet its target of 12.5 million hardware sales by the end of March, it’ll bring the total to 158.54, meaning the Switch would surpass the lifetime sales of the Nintendo DS and PlayStation 2, cementing it as the best-selling console ever.
In a statement to VGC, however, analyst Dr Serkan Toto feels Nintendo’s adjusted forecast is ‘still too optimistic,’ pointing out how the company is clearly saving its next heavy hitters for the Switch 2.
He’s not wrong. Nintendo is ending the year with only Super Mario Party Jamboree (which could certainly benefit from Christmas sales) and Mario & Luigi: Brothership.
As for 2025, it so far only has two more remasters: Donkey Kong Country Returns and Xenoblade Chronicles X. However, there are rumours of more remasters, including from third party publishers, which Nintendo is supposedly using to keep the Switch alive long enough to reach the Switch 2 launch – whenever that may be.
2025 will also see the releases of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and Pokémon Legends Z-A and while it’s widely believed both games are planned for the Switch 2 they are assumed to be cross-gen Switch titles as well. Not that assumptions usually work with Nintendo…
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