Here's How Nintendo Switch And Its Recent Exclusives Are Selling

Nintendo has shared its latest financial earnings results, giving us a much better look at Switch hardware and software sales during the fiscal year ended March 31. Despite being a comparatively slow year in terms of marquee game releases, causing Nintendo to fall short of its hardware sales estimates, the company’s most recent spate of exclusives have moved some impressive numbers.

As of March 31, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has sold more than 13.81 million units worldwide since launching back in December 2018, surpassing the lifetime sales of the series’ best-selling entry, Super Smash Bros. Brawl for Wii, in a little under four months. Switch’s first proper Pokemon games, Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee, have likewise been a huge sales success; since November, the pair have sold a combined 10.63 million copies, overtaking the series’ final 3DS installments, Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, which stand at 8.37 million copies.

This past fiscal year also saw a handful of new Mario games hit Switch, and these too are already off to a strong start for Nintendo. Super Mario Party has surpassed six million copies, while New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, which launched this past January, has sold 3.31 million. That puts it above the standalone Wii U version New Super Luigi U and roughly two million units shy of the original New Super Mario Bros. U’s lifetime sales. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe also continues to sell remarkably well; it moved an additional 7.47 million units in the previous fiscal year, bringing its lifetime Switch sales up to 16.69 million and moving it to the top of the company’s 10 best-selling Switch games.

Thanks to these strong software sales, Nintendo sold 16.95 million Switch consoles in the fiscal year, a 12.7% year-on-year increase, bringing the console up to 34.74 million units worldwide. Nintendo also says that 118.55 million software units were sold during the fiscal year (up 86.7% YoY). According to the company, “Combined with steadily-growing sales of titles released during previous fiscal years and titles released by other software publishers, the total number of million-seller titles during this fiscal year recorded 23.”

Nintendo has a number of big exclusives lined up for Switch this year, including Pokemon Sword and Shield and Super Mario Maker 2, which recently received a release date, so it’s likely the console will only continue its upward trajectory. Nintendo also reportedly has a cheaper Switch model on the way “by the end of June,” according to Bloomberg, although Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said the company has “no plans to announce” any new hardware at this year’s E3.