Nintendo Switch Sales Slide As Console Enters Its Eighth Year

The Nintendo Switch is entering its eighth year of existence, and while sales remain somewhat steady, overall sales of both hardware and software on the console declined year-on-year from fiscal year 2023 to 2024. That’s according to a recent financial report from Nintendo, which broke down the company’s performance on a number of levels.

As one slide of the presentation shows, sales of Nintendo Switch hardware declined by 12.6% year-on-year from 17.97 million to 15.70 million, driven primarily by a 37.1% decrease in the amount of vanilla Switches sold. However, the OLED Nintendo Switch slightly increased its sales by 1.1%. Software sales also declined from 213.96 million to 199.67 million, a decrease of 6.7%.

The lifetime sales for the Switch are 141.32 million consoles sold, along with 1.235 billion games sold.

The report states that new games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and Pikmin 4 all contributed strongly to software sales, as well as the success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Thirty-one titles sold more than a million copies on the Switch during that period, and that includes titles from non-Nintendo publishers.

Despite the sales slide, Nintendo displayed improvements in key categories like net sales, operating profit, and net profit, which increased by 4.4%, 4.9%, and 13.4% respectively. However, the company forecasted large drops in most categories for fiscal year 2025, including a 19.3% drop in net sales and a 38.9% drop in net profit, largely driven by declining sales for the Switch.

Earlier this month, Nintendo confirmed that it will announce the successor to the Switch sometime this fiscal year. The company also said that it will host a Nintendo Direct in June, but it confirmed that its next console will not be mentioned in that presentation.