Admittedly, Nintendo had a lot of work to do after the Wii U failed to grasp the market it was reaching for years ago, only selling 12 million units in lifetime sales worldwide. But fortunately, it looks like it has bounced back in a huge way with the Nintendo Switch– and some new sales statistics from the NPD Group show just how well it’s done in the U.S. alone.
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Our previous report noted that the company had a very good Christmas between sales of the Switch and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate; and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has done fundamentally well also, becoming the second best-selling racing game of all time. But there’s more where that came from.
Additional details from the report, shared by Niko Partners’ Daniel Ahmad, point out specifics about the Switch’s performance. Apparently, the system sold 5.6 million units over the past year in our market. That’s 16 percent up from the previous year; and as a result, the system now has a total install base of 10.5 million in the U.S. as of last month. (Keep in mind that’s not including the European or Japanese regions, which have their own huge numbers.)
That makes it the best-selling platform of the year, with hardware sales increased by 22 percent over the PlayStation 4, and 34 percent ahead of the Xbox One. As a result, Nintendo was able to grasp 55 percent of the hardware market share last month, including the Switch, the Nintendo 3DS and the NES and SNES Classic systems.
In fact, 2.8 million units of all of Nintendo’s combined hardware were sold in December, making it the top publisher of 2018. That’s the first time Nintendo’s been able to boast that statistic since 2009, when it was last in the top spot.
So what does this mean for 2019? Big things. Along with that rumored redesign of the Switch, we’re also going to see a lot of big games from the big “N”. We’ve already received New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, which is already doing well; and there are still a lot of big releases to come including Yoshi’s Crafted World, Luigi’s Mansion 3 and, of course, Animal Crossing. The sky’s the limit!
What do you think about Nintendo’s success over the past year? Let me know on Twitter at @TheDCD!
(Hat tip to Resetera for the scoop!)
