Numbers being crunched on the Switch’s potential lifespan over the next couple of years suggest it’s becoming likely that the console will outsell Nintendo’s last big splash, the Wii. The Switch is already on course to overtake SNES lifetime sales of 49.1 million units by March.
Though the Switch is still only hovering at around 42 million sales and the Wii has sold over 101 million units, the portable aspect of the Switch could boost its staying power.
“This is typically where sales begin to peak out, but it looks like the Switch may have a longer life cycle,” said Kazunori Ito, analyst for Morningstar Investment Services in Tokyo. “With a desktop console and a portable player in a single machine, Nintendo has a very effective platform for selling game software.”
Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter added “The Switch can sell 20 million units annually for the next three years. So it should easily get to 100 million.”
Nintendo has zero plans to lower the price of Switch hardware to boost sales in the meantime, however.
“We want to maintain the value of our products and sell them at their current price points for as long as possible, so we have no plans to reduce prices at this time,” confirmed Nintendo boss Shuntaro Furukawa a few weeks back. “We want to improve profitability by increasing the number of units sold and selling the Nintendo Switch family of hardware for as long as possible.”
Nintendo will be examining global Christmas sales this year very closely to get a feel for how the marketplace is responding to both the Switch and the Switch Lite as 2020 approaches.
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