The Nintendo Switch is on track to be the company’s fastest ever selling console and could even surpass the cultural phenomenon that was the original Wii. Earlier this month it was confirmed that the unit has sold over 1.5 million units already which is a remarkable achievement given that the limited choice launch titles has general received a frosty reception with a significant delay before the availability of Splatoon 2, Mario Kart, or Super Mario Odyssey.
Gaming is currently an intensely competitive economic market after the emergence of mobile games, gaming PCs, laptops and consoles leaving the consumer with a multitude of options.
Nintendo’s strong suit has always been the marketability and reputation of their licensed first party assets (including Zelda, Mario, Donkey Kong and BomberMan). This has meant that in general they have been able to sacrifice processing power to save production costs, while working closely with in-house developers. For the first time in generations, the hardware looks capable of taking advantage of markets for third party titles, with games such as Skyrim (Bethesda) and Dark Souls (From Software) already on board.
Future outlook
There is no doubt these figures make impressive reading but the question is: could the console kick on to become Nintendo's best? Whether the current sales trend will hold up may well be dependent on the release schedule and success of new headliner games, in addition to the implementation of virtual console capability, which will bring N64 titles to the Switch.
Rumours of a new major Pokémon game are interesting given the portable nature of the console and could provide another healthy boost to sales in the future. Nintendo will be all too aware of the dangers of reading into early statistics - as the 3DS started with equally strong figures but fell away quite rapidly forcing a reduction to the retail price and an acceleration of game development period well ahead of schedule. Whether history will repeat itself is still a matter for speculation.