16.95 Million Nintendo Switch Consoles Sold Last Fiscal Year

Nintendo has revealed its Year-End 2018-2019 fiscal year results, and as such we have a bunch of new data. The headline that most gamers are probably going to latch onto is that the Nintendo Switch blew through 16.95 million from April 1, 2018 (a 12.7% increase on a year-on-year basis) through March 31, 2019. This brings the worldwide shipped number of systems to 34.74 million. Perhaps even more exciting is the continued success of software sales on the Switch, with over 118.55 million sold (86.7% increase year-on-year). 23 games on the Switch have sold more than a million copies life-to-date.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has now sold 13.81 million copies and the Pokémon Let’s Go series is now at 10.63 million. Super Mario Party continues to be a big hit with 6.4 million sold since its October 2018 debut. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe continues to hold the number one selling game on the Switch with an addition 7.47 million sold over the last year, bringing its lifetime total to an impressive 16.69 million. New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, which launched this past January, is now sitting at 3.31 million pieces sold.

The 3DS sector has seen a major decline over the past fiscal year with sales of 2.55 million systems (60.2% decrease year-on-year). Software fell to 13.22 million sold (62.9% decrease year-on-year). The NES Classic Edition and Super NES Classic Editions combined sales were 5.95 million. Both of these mini-consoles are no longer in production, so unless Nintendo decides to reissue them expect them to continue to decline.

Nintendo’s mobile business continues to grow with total income from that sector coming in at 46 billion yen (17% increase year-on-year). Digital sales of software has seen a massive increase (95.4%) to 118.8 billion yen.

For the entire fiscal year, Nintendo saw net sales of 1200.5 billion yen (2.5% increase year-on-year), operation profit of 249.7 billion yen (40.6% increase), and ordinary profit of 277.3 billion yen (39.1% increase).

Looking forward to the next fiscal year (April 1, 2019 – March 31, 2020), Nintendo is going to release several high profile games, such as Super Mario Maker 2 in June and Fire Emblem: Three Houses in July. Building on that momentum, more great titles for the Switch scheduled for 2019 include: Pokémon Sword and Shield, Animal Crossing, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, Luigi’s Mansion 3, Astral Chain, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, Daemon X Machina, Dragon Quest XI S, and Dragon Quest Builders 2. Plus there will be a multitude of third party and indie game releases throughout.

In total, Nintendo is forecasting 125 million pieces of Nintendo Switch software sold for its next fiscal year, compared with 118.55 million sold this past fiscal year. As for Nintendo Switch hardware, Nintendo is predicting 18 million sold for the next fiscal year versus 16.95 million sold this past fiscal year. 3DS has been downsized considerably with only 1 million systems and 5 million software expected to sell for the next fiscal year.

Craig Majaski

Craig has been covering the video game industry since 1995. His work has been published across a wide spectrum of media sites. He’s currently the Editor-In-Chief of Nintendo Times and contributes to Gaming Age.