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Nintendo Switch Outsells Wii U In 10 Months (variety.com)
In less than a year, the Nintendo Switch has earned the designation of the fastest-selling U.S. console of all time. It has outsold the company's previous flagship Wii U just 10 months after its introduction. "Altogether, Nintendo has sold more than 14.86 million Switch units since its debut in March of 2017," reports Variety. "The company sold around 12.5 million Wii U's between 2012 and 2017." From the report: For Nintendo, this is a remarkable turn-around reminiscent of the introduction of the original Wii back in 2006. In fact, earlier this month, news broke that the Switch had become the fastest-selling game console in the U.S. to date, handily outselling original Wii with 4.8 million vs. 4 million units moved over a ten-month span after each device's introduction to U.S. consumers. Nintendo sold 7.23 million Switch units during the holiday quarter alone. The company adjusted its financial guidance for Q1 in light of continued demand for the device upwards by 33%, and now expects to bring in an operating profit of 160 billion yen ($1.47 billion), as well as revenue of around 1 trillion yen ($9.38 billion).
This comes as no surprise to me really. The Switch bridges the gap that has been hurting consoles in more mobile markets, by giving people a system that can be played on the go and put into a console mode when at home. I suspect they wanted to try this with the Wii U but the tech wasn't quite there yet and instead they ended up with a gimmicky screen controller.
The game library for Switch is a fraction of what the Wii and Wii U have. Why would you buy one? It's not even significantly better graphically.
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I would have bought one myself, if it could play my Wii games. My Wii is mostly defective, so I could certainly justify it if it did. But, alas, it doesn't.
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... it combined the gameboy with the console. Without the mobile element I have doubts it would have been as successful. Nintendo was largely saved by the gameboy it allowed their consoles to weather the storm. But they still have tanked some of their own properties like starfox and F-zero stupidily.
The only conclusion I can come to is Nintendo's unique titles are driving this. The console as a mobile gaming option is cumbersome and battery inefficient, meanwhile Nintendo continues to release amazing content that stands out far more than other consoles content, most of which is available on every other platform.
I've wanted Nintendo consoles to fail for over a decade now because I want them to become strictly a game developer. Sadly, I don't see that happening any time soon so I'll probably buy a switch in the near future.
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are due to Nintendo fans who sat the Wii U Gen out. It's good for Nintendo that their core customers are back, but I suspect the sales will slow once they've saturated their existing market. e.g. this won't be a repeat of the Wii.
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I am glad to hear it. The last Nintendo console I bought new was the Gamecube, I bought a Wii eventually and view it only as a retro/kids toy. I may buy a second or third generation Switch after they fix the warping and other problems the console had at launch so I can check out the first party titles (Zelda, Mario, Metroid).
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now get off of my lawn.
Although Nintendo discontinued the original Wii in 2013 it sold well over 100 million units through its seven year lifetime.
I doubt the Wii U or Switch will ever catch it. Neither one encourage any of the split screen multiplayer games that made the Wii so popular for party gamers.
Lawns are for idiot rednecks.
Now get off my AstroTurf.
Why buy either one when those games will end up on Steam?
It was all about the games, Wii U promised so much, but it never had a Zelda or major Mario title.
The controller was never used much by the games, because the other makers are cross-platform, and work to lowest common denominator. None of the other consoles had the funny controller, so none of the games used it.
Switch launched with a really major/beautiful Zelda game, and the preview of another major innovative Mario game at launch. So we bought it, played through Zelda the first few months, filled summer with Splatoon, and then into Mario, and still playing the second half of Mario now, (with the cube unlocked moons to find).
My teenage daughter and four of her friends all begged for (and got) Switches for Christmas, for the reason that they can gather at one of their houses and all play them together. For them, that's where the handheld mode is important. As adults we might criticise the Switch because the battery wouldn't last a transatlantic flight etc etc, but that's not at all important to them. They just want to be able to put it in their bags for when they hang out after school.
I suspect they're not unusual in this.
The Wii U main feature is that you can play on the Wii U gamepad screen instead of using the TV screen, but it's not really portable since it still needs the console. It essentially created a feature that has no practically use while other console Nintendo made were better. Why would anyone use the small gamepad screen at home when you could use the large TV screen? If gamers wanted living room TV gaming experience, they get a Wii. If they wanted it to be portable, they get a 3DS. Even the numbers explain it.
Also, Nintendo's attempt to put games on Wii U were mostly failure. This is not because the games on Wii U were bad, but the use of the gamepad (main feature) is still an impractical turd for most of those games. So any gamers who got the chance would buy the Wii or 3DS version game, skipping the Wii U version completely. To step right onto the Wii U gravestone, the rise of mobile game market didn't help drive Wii U sales at all. At worst, the mobile game market further reduced Nintendo overall potential new customers.
Switch on the other hand main feature is a portable console that can also be played using the TV screen. At the very least, this feature is a plus compare to the Wii and the 3DS. Here Nintendo did two things right.
Number one is drive up hype with the new game, Breath of the Wild, released on the Switch first. This works well because the game itself is good and game is what drive console sales after all.
Number two is console support for developers. For the first time, Nintendo made it easier for developers to make games on their console. This at least creates a level ground on par with the mobile game market which already has devices support for developers, and it quickest flooded the Switch store with a lot of games for gamers. Now all Nintendo needs to do is to keep up with the flow of game hypes with their exclusives, and they will continue to success.
I ended up trading some old computer equipment for a practically new Wii-U that someone got bored with and I love it. I wouldn't want it as my main console (I have a PS4 for that) but I like it for all the exclusive games it had. Towards the end of its life I picked up a ton of exclusives cheap and I've been slowly playing through them all (Tokyo Mirage Sessions FE is my current favorite). I see that some of the better exclusives have been ported to switch (Bayonetta 2 for example) but there are still tons of Wii-U exclusive games that make it worth owning like Xenoblade Chronicles X and Super Mario 3D World.
I'll end up getting a Switch eventually, but right now I'm not seeing much worth playing other than Mario Odyssey and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (BotW is on Wii U as well). I'm sure this will change but for right now the Switch isn't particularly compelling.
of the exclusive in-house titles, namely Zelda breath of the wild. Having played the NES, SNES, GameCube & Wii versions, I was really up for another zelda experience. And for the new Mario Kart (local multiplayer). But for games that's it, that is all there really is (after a year!), except for mario odyssey, all the other titles in the store are ports of PC games, a lot of them indie titles (not bad per se, but none are in the genre i like), none which i wanted on steam, so even less on this platform. The games are all heavily overpriced, at $70 for the nintendo titles. There is switching noise on the headphone output. The kick-stand is sketchy and breaks easily, and the angle it stands in is useless. The screen scratches on insertion in the dock without a protector. The "Joy Cons" are way too small for someone with bigger hands, the buttons, the analog stick, all too small and positioned too close together and underneath eachother (as opposed to all other game controllers ever), the controllers themselves are hard to hold because they're so small. HDMI out is possible with the dock only, doesn't recognize my DELL monitors, only allows 480p on them. Bought LA Noire because I loved it when it came out on PC, and thought it would be nice to play again while flying and waiting for boarding etc, but there's a lot of slowdown to just a few fps in some scenes, controls don't make sense, draw distance is minimal, .. And there have been other quirks. So far Zelda was ok, but nowhere near the experience of even twilight princess on the wii. I would not recommend this console atm, wait for more titles to come out first.
When my Wii crapped out it was about 3 months after the Wii U launch, rather than buy another Wii I decided to invest in the new console with the expectation that I'd be able to keep playing my Wii games and pick from the selection of new games for the Wii U...
New titles were few and very far between, titles that were expected to drop in or around launch ended up taking far longer to get out the door or were just outright cancelled. There was hardly any 3rd party support and the online experiences it offered were fairly weak.
The only titles that really stood out were Splatoon and Mario Maker both released near the end of life of the console.
The Switch on the other hand has so far done everything right, the first year saw two absolutely colossal hit games drop from Nintendo as well as ports or sequels of Wii U games that were pretty good. On top of that there's been far more 3rd party support, with some fairly big titles getting ported over. The eShop has a good selection however the pricing is unbelievable (in most cases it's actually cheaper to just buy the physical cartridge) nothing really off the wall there except they DO have a good selection of games. And that's what it comes down to, buy this thing and there's a library of games to play right off the bat. The Wii-U was a solid system but the trickle of games was inexcusable and in my opinion the real killer.
Of course Nintendo hasn't launched it's online services (or the pricing model) yet so who knows how that will impact the future...
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Hahah still using apps? I do all my gaming via REST APIs in the cloud! With Autism, it's never been easier to write deeply-nested XML formatted calls on my on screen keyboard.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned how unNintendo like it is for them to build a battery into the console. It's relatively easy to replace compared to an iPhone but certainly not without risk. And of course Nintendo sells a battery replacement service. looking at the tear down, it's clear that there's room for a swappable battery but Nintendo opted out to keep the cost down.