Nintendo Announces Switch Has Sold-Through Over 48 Million Units as of December 2019 - Sales
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 March 2020 / 3,153 Views
Nintendo announced during their latest financial results briefing the Nintendo Switch has sold over 48 million units worldwide as of the end of December 2019.
"Nintendo Switch sales during the holiday season were robust for both hardware and software, and surpassed the results for the same period of the previous fiscal year, which were also good," said Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa.
"We estimate that the global sellthrough for the Nintendo Switch family of systems has grown to more than 48 million units, and its install base continues to expand. Nintendo Switch remains on a growth trajectory coming out of its third holiday season, with a solid business foundation in all major markets."
Sales for the Switch for the first nine months (April to December 2019) of the current fiscal year grew 23 percent year-over-year in Japan to 3.53 million units. Sales in North America during the same period grew 16 percent to 5.98 million units and increased 15 percent in Europe to 4.32 million units.
The Switch sold over 800,000 units Black Friday week in 2019 in the US and around 600,000 units in Europe. The Switch also sold more than two million units in the US in December. This is the best month for a Nintendo platform since the Wii.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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I'm happy with mine. It's my main gaming system and I already have a backlog.
Same. I'm buying games for the Switch that I skipped on PS4, even, like Witcher 3. Looks "good enough" on Switch and plays just fine. And Dragon Quest XI S is amazing.
the most impressive figure to me is the 600k in Europe during black friday, that's actually huge.
So it was over tracked on VGC?
so right around 50 million by now
Is the switch a home console or a handheld? I know everyone will say both or hybrid, but what i have found is that the switch is mainly being used indoors in handheld mode. So this tells me it's a handheld that can connect to the tv. Nintendo have no new handheld on the market that replaced the 3ds and their handheld market is almost at a zero now. In the past Nintendo had a home console and a handheld with combined sales. Going out on a limb here but i say the combined sales of wii and Nintendo ds and transition to 3ds were extremely higher than what we are seeing with switch and now what remains of 3ds. Take this gen numbers according to this site, 3ds sits at 75.1 million with zero chance of getting to 75.2 million. That's half of what Nintendo ds achieved at 154million. Then with the 101 million of the wii , you have Nintendo combined sales of 255million sales. This gen Nintendo combined sales is 125million, half of last gen and while there will be considerably more switch sales in the upcoming years (we can argue that next gen consoles could hinder switch sales) Nintendo still would be far behind last gen.
So i suppose what im saying is that the switch is really the handheld that gamers have wanted and being so has helped the switch. If Nintendo had announced a new handheld 2 years ago it would in my opinion hinder switch sales, plus wouldn't make sense i know unless the switch wasn't so but a more traditional home console.
The point of the Switch was to unify Nintendo's handheld and console development, as well as that of third parties, under one umbrella, with people able to play as they please. I primarily use mine docked as a console, and in addition to the usual Nintendo staples, I also have a great deal of third party software including games like Dragon Quest XI S, Mortal Kombat 11, Doom, and The Witcher 3. As such it has replaced the PS4 as my primary console. The Switch Lite is an option for those who do want a traditional handheld, and are willing to sacrifice TV functionality for a $100 lower price, but other than one or two games that use Joycon functionality, it still has the same pool of developers and plays the exact same games. That is what Nintendo should be doing going forward. Development tools and hardware have progressed to the point where we don't need two separate Nintendo ecosystems splitting their base.
Well that's interesting, on the other sites I read they say sold not shipped, I'll have to look around more. Also I've been watching the total global totals on the front page be adjusted up then down, then up then down and then up and now down again, in the last week... And no adjustments to the other consoles kinda interesting.... Just wondering what that means?
Other consoles have been adjusted, just not as much. NPD figures for america were leaked which caused all consoles to be adjusted. Then Nintendo announced shipment figures for the Switch which caused Switch to be adjusted up to reduce the gap. Now Nintendo have released these consumer sales figures showing a higher difference between shipped/sold-through than expected so it's been adjusted down again. The official figures are:
52.48m shipped to retailers as of December 31st 2019.
"Over 48m" sold-through as of December 31st 2019.
48.8m sold-through for December 31st 2019 is the current figure VGC is using. Over 48m but under 49m.
Sites will regularly just say "sold" for shipped units so care has to be taken. Shipped to retailers = "Sold-In", Sold to consumers = "Sold-Through"
So now your not accounting for the switch lite??? which has sold 5 million +, seriously? its 52 and a half million. not 48 million. If your not including the switch lite you better add another global hardware total to your front page.
