Nintendo’s squeezing one last holiday out of the Switch as sales plunge
Sales are getting blue-shelled without a fresh console.
The Nintendo Switch, heading into its eighth holiday season, is selling like whatever the opposite of hot cakes are. The console’s sales fell 31% from last year in the video-game-maker’s latest report.
Nintendo said its net profit over the past six months sank 60% from last year. It also slashed its Switch sales expectations and now expects to sell 12.5 million of the consoles by the end of March — 1 million less than it previously estimated. Nintendo’s revenue slumped 17% from last year and its net profit dropped 69%.
Slowing sales will probably throw a wrench in the Japanese game-maker’s lofty goal of selling a Switch to every individual (not just every household). As of September, it’s sold 146 million Switches since its 2017 debut — good enough to be the third-best-selling console of all time (behind Sony’s PlayStation 2 and Nintendo’s own DS).
Despite all of this, Nintendo is still not planning on announcing the Switch 2 earlier than it’s already said it will: at some point before or around the end of March 2025. One analyst told Reuters that making an announcement in the middle of the critical holiday shopping season could cause problems for the Mario maker.
Still, the lack of announcement is becoming a bit confounding for a company that first said its Switch 2 announcement was on the way back in May.
Since that time, Nintendo has released an alarm clock and a music app. Other non-Switch 2 revenue streams include future films based on Mario and “The Legend of Zelda,” and the planned 2025 opening of Orlando’s Super Nintendo World within a new area at the Universal theme park.
