The Nintendo Switch had everything to lose when it launched in March of last year. The reason for this is the huge flop that its predecessor, the Nintendo Wii U, was in terms of sales. So a lot of people were hesitant about the Nintendo Switch. While the Wii U failed because of a poor marketing strategy, the Nintendo Switch didn't hold any punches and got rid of everythign that was wrong with the marketing campaign of the Wii U. From the get-go, Nintendo knew exactly what to do with their new console and how to sell it to the audience and last year's sales proved that they learnt from their mistakes.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild , although releasing on the Wii U and the Switch, was a huge success since launch. As of February of this year, the Nintendo Switch version alone had sold 6.7 million units. But
The Legend of Zelda wasn't the only title Nintendo released in 2017 since the highly anticipated
Super Mario Odyssey was released in late October. In only 3 months
Super Mario Odyssey, which is a Nintendo Switch exclusive that didn't come out for the Wii U, managed to sale a staggering 9 million units that also propelled the sales of Nintendo Switch consoles.
The Nintendo Switch was clearly a success as it managed to outsell the Wii U's entire lifetime sales, in less than a year, by selling almost 15 million consoles. The Wii U was barely able to make it to 14 million sales in 5 years.
GameStop CEO Michael Mauler thinks that Nintendo will keep selling games and consoles at the same rate. During a GameStop financial call, one of the investors asked if these numbers in sales will keep trending and, according to
Comicbook.com, Mauler had this to say:
"
Yeah, I think that’s a fair question with Nintendo. I mean we know kind of what happened with Wii U. I’d say this is definitely a whole different platform than we saw in the past. We have visibility to the software. So last year was a tremendous year for the software, as well as hardware between Zelda and Mario Odyssey and all the games that they had really drove a lot of hardware sales, as well as software."
Mauler also mentions the slate of games that have officially been announced for the console, as well as those games who still haven't been announced, and reckons this year looks very, very strong for Nintendo.
"
I think this year when we look at the slate of titles, many of which haven’t been announced yet, this year looks also very, very strong. So I think, at least, for 2018, we’ll continue to see the strong software slate drive additional installed base on the hardware and increase attach rate. We don’t have really visibility for 2019 yet, but for 2018 it should play out that way."
What Mr. Mauler says is true. There are some strong titles that Nintendo has announced that will likely keep those console sales going up. Plus, there are some other titles that have been announced but have not yet been given a release date so we don't know if those will come out in 2018 or not. One of the games officially anounced to come out this year is
Super Smash Bros. which is considered to be a console-seller. Among the titles that have been hinted at we have a new core-RPG
Pokémon title, which is also a console-selling game, and an official announcement that
Metroid Prime 4 is in development.
While
Super Mario Odyssey and
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild are not the only two games on the Nintendo Switch, those two games were definitely the ones that were able to bring life to the console. If those two could do that, it is safe to say that
Super Smash Bros. with the help of that yet-to-be-anounced Pokémon title, will surely keep that trend in sales intact.