Nintendo Switch has been an extraordinary success, but it couldn’t last forever. As the hybrid handheld approaches its eighth birthday, Nintendo said that Switch hardware sales had fallen 30% compared to last year, while game sales were down 24%. Nintendo was forced to cut its forecasts for the second quarter in a row; it now predicts that it will sell 11 million Switches in its current fiscal year (which ends on March 31), down from an original estimate of 13.5 million. It also lowered its profit forecast for the year.
There’s no mystery to these tumbling numbers. Although Nintendo held back the announcement of the Switch 2 as late as it could, it has been apparent for a long time that the Switch was nearing the end of its life. Eight years is a long lifespan for any video game console, leaks and rumours about the Switch 2 have been rife, and Nintendo’s software support for the Switch has been getting notably thin.
The Switch’s exhausted sales slump shouldn’t detract from the huge scale of the success it has achieved over its lifetime, however. Nintendo has now sold 150.86 million Switches — only just shy of the 154 million tally of the Nintendo DS, the second-best-selling gaming device of all time. Even bearing the release of the Switch 2 in mind, the Switch is all but certain to beat that number at some point this year and become Nintendo’s most successful console ever.
To become the best-selling console of all time, however, the Switch would have to beat the PlayStation 2’s lifetime sales of over 160 million units. That ultimate accolade is probably — if only just — out of reach.
