Yesterday, video game giant Nintendo announced a 22% drop in sales of its flagship Nintendo Switch console in its latest fiscal year — a trend that the company expects to continue as the console enters its endgame.
Before the release of the Switch in March 2017, Nintendo had been through a tough few years. The company posted its first loss as a video game company in 2012, and then released its worst-selling console ever, the Wii U, in the same year, which was hoped to replace the fading 3DS. However, the Switch — played as a handheld console or on a TV — finally nailed the hybrid format, selling more than 14 million units worldwide in its first year. Today, the Switch stands as the third best-selling game console of all time, only behind the DS and PlayStation 2, with over 125 million units sold, accounting for 95% of the company's sales last year.
Consoling
However, with President Shuntaro Furukawa saying that selling 15 million units this year “is a bit of stretch” — and with limited information known about potential successor consoles — investors in Nintendo will have to place blind faith in the company pulling off a big platform pivot at some point. For any other company that might be a leap, but for Nintendo — which has pulled off a similar switch 7 or 8 times in its history, with video game credentials dating back to the NES in the 1980s — it feels possible, if not even likely.
In the shorter term, the company will be hoping that the much-anticipated release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, a sequel to the smash hit Breath of the Wild, will sustain demand for the platform… for one more year at least.
