Despite its outward success, Nintendo has had a bit of an upward battle in marketing the Switch over the last year and a half. Winning fans back after the sub-optimal performance of the Wii U and dealing with fierce competition from Microsoft and Sony, as well as the ever-growing PC gaming market, has required some shrewd strategies. Today, though, Nintendo can give themselves a quick pat on the back, because the Switch has managed to exceed a another sales milestone: with a confirmed 22.86 million units sold, the Switch has officially outsold the Nintendo GameCube.
However, this is only the beginning to Nintendo’s real battle. The GameCube and the Wii U were Nintendo’s lowest selling consoles in their history, with 21.74 million units and 13.56 million units sold, respectively. The next milestone to exceed will be the sales of the Nintendo 64, which stand at a respectable 32.93 million units. This is to say nothing of the king of Nintendo’s hill, the original Wii, which sits atop a mighty throne of 101.63 million units.
Nintendo hopes that the upcoming holiday season will give another good shot into the Switch’s arm. “While the 20 million goal is not an easy target to achieve, the year-end holiday season is when we get the largest revenue,” Nintendo’s current CEO Shuntaro Furukawa commented. Upcoming games like Pokemon Let’s Go: Pikachu and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate have some sizable hype surrounding them as well as options for console bundles, so we’ll see how much work they put in for the company.
