Christopher Dring Head of Games B2B Tuesday 14th March 2017 Share this article Share

Companies in this article Nintendo

Nintendo has sold 1.5m Nintendo Switch consoles worldwide, SuperData says.

Using data supplied to it by both Famitsu and GfK, SuperData says that 500,000 consoles were sold in the US, 360,000 were sold in Japan while Europe 'isn't far behind'. The data tracker observes that 85,000 units were sold in the UK while France managed 110,000.

Most of those figures were for the first week on sale, so the number will now be higher. Nintendo says its aim was to sell 2m Switch consoles by the end of March - these figures suggest it is well on its way to hitting that target. Furthermore, Nintendo's financial reports count 'sell in' to retailers (and SuperData's estimates are sell-through), so it's possible Nintendo has already hit its target for the quarter.

If anyone was unsure as to what is driving the performance of the hardware, SuperData says 89% of Switch owners have bought the new Zelda game - which amounts to 1.34m in sales (and does not include sales of the Wii U version).

Switch has had a solid start to life, but the challenge now is to maintain momentum. Launch week sales, although important, neither make or break a console. 3DS enjoyed a very strong start to life, but sales faded away rapidly after release - hurt by a lack of game releases - forcing Nintendo to accelerate its development pipeline and drop the price of the machine within six months.

However, the platform holder says it is confident it can avoid a repeat performance with Nintendo Switch due to some significant first party products including Mario Kart 8 Deluxe next month.