Nintendo Switch sales are slowing, but there's still plenty of fuel left in the tank

Shawn Knight

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TL;DR: The glory days of record Nintendo Switch sales appear to be firmly in the rear view. In its latest earnings report, Nintendo revealed it sold 17.98 million Switch handhelds for the year ending March 31. That's down 22.1 percent from the 23.06 million units sold last year, and the forecast for next year isn't looking any better as Nintendo expects to sell 15 million consoles through the end of March 2024.

Nintendo's handheld launched on March 3, 2017, at a time when home consoles from Microsoft and Sony were all about power and smartphones were dominating mobile gaming. The gamble paid off as Nintendo has sold 125.62 million systems (as of March 31). The Switch is Nintendo's best-selling console to date and the third best-selling console overall behind the PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo DS.

Despite slowing sales, the Switch still has a lot of fuel left in the tank thanks to a strong lineup of existing and upcoming games. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom launches on May 12. Metroid Prime 4 is also in the pipeline and if Microsoft is able to acquire Activision Blizzard, Call of Duty could breathe new life into the Switch.

To date, the Switch has 35 million-seller games including 22 in-house titles.

Nintendo released a mid-cycle refresh of the Switch in late 2021. The revised version features a larger OLED screen, better battery life, and a few other perks but did little to quell rumors of a Switch Pro upgrade. According to the rumor mill, Nintendo was indeed planning to launch a more powerful version of the handheld but ultimately abandoned the project.

Does the Switch have enough momentum to eventually overtake the DS and the PS2 to become the best-selling console of all time? Perhaps. Nintendo hasn't announced a successor to the Switch yet, so there's still time. You also have to consider residual sales such as those replacing broken systems, and multiple console homes. A price cut could also help spur sales near the end of its lifecycle.

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Make a F***ING 4k switch. Everyone wants one, everyone will buy it. like, wth nintendo
 
Make a F***ING 4k switch. Everyone wants one, everyone will buy it. like, wth nintendo
why would they do that? the switch is weak and rakes in money, ninty is smart and ignores the graphics chase and relies on well made games instead.

look at mariokart 8, its a relic yet no one has beaten it, and its 9 years old.
 
Make a F***ING 4k switch. Everyone wants one, everyone will buy it. like, with nintendo

Has NVidia even made a plausible replacement.

They are conservative - plus they need to have their flagship games all ready - I would imagine they are quite far along - hopefully they go with AMD on one of the smaller nodes - with tessellations and graphic tricks that should be good for 10 years
 
why would they do that? the switch is weak and rakes in money, ninty is smart and ignores the graphics chase and relies on well made games instead.

look at mariokart 8, its a relic yet no one has beaten it, and its 9 years old.
BoTW doesn't even at Anti-Aliasing, most streamers emulate it on a PC to up the graphics quality. These are basic features. And while the switch is cool as a "portable console" I have never used it as such. Literally, I've never taken my switch out of the Dock.
 
BoTW doesn't even at Anti-Aliasing, most streamers emulate it on a PC to up the graphics quality. These are basic features. And while the switch is cool as a "portable console" I have never used it as such. Literally, I've never taken my switch out of the Dock.
oddly I play my 90% of the time in Handheld, the dock is more for charging for me.
 
Switch 2 is coming and I wouldn't even be surprised if it is out this year, but it will probably be next year. Honestly, Nintendo only needs to improve on some minor things along with a spec upgrade of course. Those would be screen resolution, joycon sticks and joycon stops need to be metal. The OLED version really updated most of the other issues with the system. Haptic Feedback triggers like the PS5 would be a nice addition too.

From a specs perspective, I think they need to at least shoot for 4X Switch, but hopefully they can do a little better than that, maybe 6X.
 
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