Nintendo released their financial results for the first quarter of the 2024/25 fiscal year, revealing that Switch hardware sales now amount to 143.42 million of sold units (as of June 30, 2024).
That’s up from 141.32 million reported in May, where Nintendo sold 2.1 million consoles in the Switch family between April 1 and June 30, a 46.3% year-over-year decline. .
Switch software sales saw a similar decline with 30.64 million units sold, down 41.3% compared to the same quarter last year.
The company cites the remarkable success of both The movie Super Mario and Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which were released in April and May 2023 respectively, as the primary factor in this year’s decline. The ‘Zelda effect’ has already been seen in the wider industry context after software sales weakened year-on-year in May.
With the Switch now in its eighth year on store shelves, demand is to be expected to drop, but the sales success of Zelda and a weak yen have dampened year-over-year performance on Nintendo’s reports. The company notes that hardware sales are flat compared to the previous quarter when 1.96 million Switches were sold.
The OLED model remains the favorite, with 1.24 million units sold, compared to 0.53 million for the regular Switch and 0.33 for the Switch Lite.
Here’s how things stand as of June 30, 2024 on Nintendo’s overall hardware sales chart:
| Console | Total sales (millions) |
|---|---|
| DS | 154.02 |
| Switch | 143.42 |
| Game Boy | 118.69 |
| Wii | 101.63 |
| Game Boy Advance | 81.51 |
| 3DS | 75.94 |
| Family computer / NES | 61.91 |
| Super family computer / SNES | 49.10 |
| N64 | 32.93 |
| GameCube | 21.74 |
| Wii U | 13.56 |
With the release of its latest quarterly reports, Nintendo announced that news of a “Switch successor” would arrive before the end of the current fiscal year, and while the ‘Zelda effect’ is certainly responsible for the sharp year-over-year decline here, interest in the current console is clearly waning as gamers eagerly waiting to hear about ‘Switch 2’.
Then a few million more on total hardware — but is there enough momentum for the Switch to overtake the DS and PS2 at the top of the hardware sales charts? Will Echoes of Wisdom inject some Zelda flair when it launches in September? We’ll see.
