Nintendo Switch Crosses 111 Million Units Sold, But Overall Sales Are Down

Nintendo released its latest round of financial results, this time for Quarter 1 of the Fiscal Year 2023, which makes up the months of April, May, and June of 2022. While hardware sales of the base Switch, the OLED model, and the Switch Lite have surpassed 111 million units sold, sales are down nearly 23% overall. 

This quarter, Nintendo hardware sales have fallen 22.9%. In summary, sales of the base Switch are down 60% and Switch Lite is down 48.4%. OLED model Switch sales were not reported by Nintendo, perhaps because the OLED model is grouped with the base Switch. Nintendo blames the semiconductor shortage for this quarter’s decline in hardware sales. 

The Nintendo Switch’s unit sales declined by 22.9% over the past year to 3.43million units. This compares to last year’s 4.45 million units. While titles published by other publishers drove hardware sales in Japan’s first quarter last fiscal year (particularly in Japan), unit sales for hardware fell year-on-year due to shortages of semiconductors. 

With software falling 8.6% in the last quarter, Nintendo’s sales of software are also down. It hit 41.41 million software units sold in Q1 of FY23, which is down from 45.29 million units this time last year. 

“In terms of software sales, Nintendo Switch Sports & Mario Strikers Battle League are both off to an excellent start. Sales of classic titles like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe also continued steadily, however, total software sales didn’t keep up with last quarter’s strong quarter and totaled 41.41 millions units. This is 8.6% less year-on-year. 

Nintendo has stated that it will not change its fiscal year end March 31, 2023 consolidated financial projection, despite declines across the board. This announcement was made on May 10, 2022. 

The results stated that “Due to delays with the procurement of components like semiconductors this year we haven’t been able to carry out production as planned.” However, we anticipate that the procurement situation will gradually improve between late summer and autumn. We have a clearer view of production in the remainder of the calendar year. As we prepare for the holidays, we’ll use appropriate shipment methods and try to get as many Nintendo Switch devices to as consumers as possible in each region.

It has sold more units than any of the previous Nintendo consoles, having already sold over 111,000,000. Nintendo revealed its most recent financial results before today, revealing that the Switch had sold 103million units. That surpasses Wii’s lifetime sales. The Switch’s 111 million sold units are still below the Game Boy’s 118.69million and the DS’ 154.02million. Although the DS seems far off, it’s likely that the Switch will surpass the Game Boy in some time.