Today, Nintendo announced a major new sales milestone reached by its Nintendo Switch console, which has surpassed 150 million units sold. To be precise, the Japanese company said 150.86 million units of the hybrid handheld/home console had been sold as of 31 December 2024. Total software sales are now 1.359 billion units.
In the last quarter, the Nintendo Switch sold 4.82 million hardware units and 53.7 million software units, with The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom selling 3.91 million units and Super Mario Party Jamboree selling 6.17 million units. Nintendo admitted that the overall performance was below expectations and lowered its full fiscal year forecast as a result:
Although Nintendo Switch hardware and software sales through the third quarter were below expectations, Nintendo Switch continues to be enjoyed by many people. Going forward, we will continue to release new offerings so even more consumers keep playing Nintendo Switch. Looking at software, we released Donkey Kong Country Returns HD in January and plan to follow up with the release of Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition in March. Other software publishers also have plans to release a wide variety of titles, and we will strive to invigorate the platform by continually introducing new titles in addition to the existing titles.
We have revised the financial forecast originally published on November 5, 2024, in consideration of the sales trend through the nine months ended December 31, 2024, prospects for the remainder of the fiscal year, as well as a reevaluation of the assumed exchange rate. We have also modified our Nintendo Switch hardware and software unit sales forecast for the fiscal year.
Considering that Nintendo is about to unveil the Switch 2 with the dedicated Direct scheduled for April 2, it’s not hard to imagine the original Switch’s sales performance continuing to trend downward. Still, the 150 million hardware unit milestone is huge, and it means the Switch is only four million units away from Nintendo’s best-selling console, the DS. The best-selling console of all time, Sony’s PlayStation 2, is still further away with over 160 million units sold.