The Nintendo Switch is on track to beat the all-time sales of its last console - in just a year
- Nintendo is projecting sales of 14 million units for its Switch console in its first year.
- The projection is a revision upward from a previous estimate of 10 million in year one.
- That puts the Switch on track to outsell the console it replaced, in entirely, in its first year of sales.
Nintendo's last console, the Wii U, was a flop. Nintendo's new console, the Switch, is a hit.
This fact is plain to see in Nintendo's recently revised sales projection for the Switch: The Japanese gaming giant is expecting to move 14 million Switch consoles by March 2018. And, with just over 13 million Wii U consoles sold across its lifetime, that means Nintendo's going to outsell its previous console with its new console in the first year of sales.
To put that in perspective, the Wii U was available for five years as Nintendo's main home game console. In that time, Nintendo only sold around 13 million units - less than one-tenth of the lifetime sales of its previous console, the Wii.
The Switch, notably, went on sale in late March 2017. It arrived with one huge launch game, "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild," and Nintendo followed that huge launch with a regular cadence of major games.
That strategy is paying off, as the Switch is now on track to outsell its predecessor in year one.
Between "Breath of the Wild" launching alongside the Switch in March, "Mario Kart 8 Deluxe" in April, "Splatoon 2" in the summer, and "Super Mario Odyssey" just last week, the Nintendo Switch now has a mess of great games. More than just great games, these are games that you can only play on Switch - which makes a huge difference.
There are no other considerations to make when you decide you want to play Nintendo's latest big games - they're available in one place.
Additionally, the Switch itself is inexpensive ($300) and comes with a unique hook: The ability to play games anywhere. The Switch comes with a dock that you slot it into when you're at home, so you can play it on your TV; it also comes with two gamepads that slide onto each side of the console, turning it into a handheld game system. In reality, that means you can easily play games at home or on-the-go.
Though there aren't any other huge games coming to the Switch in 2017, the future is bright for Nintendo's latest console. New entries from franchises like Pokémon, Yoshi, and Kirby are all in the works, some of which are planned for 2018. In the meantime, though, it sounds like fans are already eating up what Nintendo is offering.