Nintendo Switch Sells Big During Black Friday Weekend

A lot of folks believed that the Nintendo Switch would be a big hit over the Black Friday weekend, [...]

A lot of folks believed that the Nintendo Switch would be a big hit over the Black Friday weekend, particularly with the company's special Mario Kart 8 Deluxe bundle. And they were right.

Nintendo Switch

The company boasted its sales numbers this morning in a press release, announcing that the console had made history with its Black Friday weekend, as a part of its $250 million clean-up during the sales event.

"Strong demand resulted in shoppers buying more than $250 million in Nintendo products from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday," the company noted based on its internal sales figures. This demonstrates "that Nintendo has something for everyone this holiday season.

"That sales total accounts for video game systems like Nintendo Switch and the Nintendo 3DS family of systems, retro systems like Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition and Super Nintendo Entertainment System: Super NES Classic Edition, as well as all Nintendo-produced games and accessories."

The total U.S. hardware sales for the five day period increased 45 percent overall compared to the same period in 2017.

As far as Nintendo Switch itself goes, sales grew a whopping 115 percent over the previous year, and the system now sits at lifetime sales of 18.2 million, though Nintendo erroneously reported the sales number at 8.2 million at first. (The Switch lifetime sales are well over that.) The company also noted that sales of first-party games, including digital downloads, topped one million units between November 22 and 26, beating 2017's numbers by a massive 78 percent.

Pokemon Let's Go! contributed to that greatly, which we'll be noting in a forthcoming report. Meanwhile, Super Mario Party surpassed one million units sold with ease, while Splatoon 2, Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe saw notable increases, as we reported right before the weekend.

Meanwhile, the 3DS family of systems has reached more than 22 million units sold, and the classic NES and Super SNES Classic Editions set records in their own right, with over two million sold apiece.

Congrats to Nintendo on the big weekend. And we'll have details on how the Pokemon games sold very soon!

The Nintendo Switch is available now, just in time for the holidays!