Half of all Switch owners purchased Nintendo’s three biggest games, according to Nintendo of America president and COO Reggie Fils-Aime.

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“ That's never happened in U.S. video game history.

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Speaking to IGN about Switch’s success following The Game Awards last week, Fils-Aime said the attach rate for Super Mario Odyssey The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild , and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe represents a record in the United States.“Those three games continue to attach to hardware at better than 50 percent,” Fils-Aime told IGN. “Just think about that. For everyone who owns a system, more than one out of every two have bought Zelda, more than one out of every two have bought Kart, more than one out of every two have bought Odyssey. That's never happened in U.S. video game history.”Fils-Aime said Nintendo aims to continue a solid cadence of big releases in order to keep up the momentum Switch has seen so far, which included a new record over Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend “We've launched many systems, we've seen what works in driving a system forward,” he said. “We've seen where we've lost momentum, and a critical component is having a great cadence of launches, and as you highlight, we have a number of key franchises teed up for next year. partnering with the Institute of Play , and leveraging the STEAM elements of those experiences, these are all part of the grand plan to continue making Nintendo Switch With the massive success of Wii and a relative stumble for Wii U, I asked Fils-Aime how Nintendo measures success. Given the Switch’s March launch timing compared to the holiday window of previous systems, that comparison isn’t quite apples to apples.“Nintendo looks at historical performance of past systems. Not only our own, but also competitive platforms. As you note, because of a March 3rd launch, lining it up in terms of number of months on the market, the number of holidays really is a key element to seeing how you're stacking up.“So from my perspective, the right time to look at our performance against history is going to be as we come out of that holiday time frame. That way we'll be able to say after roughly 21 months, how do we stack up against all of the systems that have launched here in the U.S. and what the sell-through looks like. And that'll be a nice moment for us to consider where we are, and also to think about how do we continue driving momentum. As you stated, we've already outsold the GameCube, we've already outsold the Wii U. How we continue to track against past systems will be something that we look at.”Looking ahead, Fils-Aime says the recent momentum for Switch is something Nintendo expects to continue through the holidays, and he’s optimistic about 2019.“We're exceptionally thrilled with the momentum that we have with the Nintendo Switch. How we see the holidays shaping up, certainly from the Americas standpoint, it really is going to be a strong holiday for us. With the games that we've announced for the first calendar quarter, we think that momentum will power through. Certainly whether it's when Mr. Furukawa speaks to the analyst community in January or when we share our full fiscal year information in April, we'll be sharing even more of what our calendar looks like to continue driving the momentum.“But we feel really good about where we are. We feel good about how we're tracking against...let me call it ‘historical norms.’ In the end, as long as we continue to have this really strong cadence of software, as well as strong support from the third-party community, big or small, we're thinking we're going to be really well positioned.”For more from our interview with Fils-Aime, read why some big multi-platform games aren’t on Switch how Joker is emblematic of Smash Bros. Ultimate’s DLC approach , and why E3 is still important to Nintendo

Andrew is IGN’s executive editor of news and has put many hours into all three of these games. You can find him rambling about Persona and cute animals on Twitter