Joypad controllers for the Nintendo Switch are seen for sale in the gaming section of a shop in Tokyo on January 16, 2025. As of late September, Nintendo had sold 146 million Switch machines since the gadget’s launch in March 2017. — AFP
TOKYO: Gaming giant Nintendo unveiled on Jan 16 the successor to its phenomenally popular Switch console, promising more details in April.
Here are four things to know about the Switch:
146 million sold
As of late September, Nintendo had sold 146 million Switch machines since the gadget’s launch in March 2017.
That makes it the third best-selling console in video game history behind Sony’s PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo DS.
Nintendo estimates it has sold a colossal 1.3 billion games that run on the console.
The biggest hit by far was Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (64 million copies sold), followed by Animal Crossing: New Horizons which became a must-play during Covid (46 million sold).
Initial indifference
The arrival of the Switch – a hybrid console that can be played on the go or at home connected to a television – revolutionised the video game world.
But plans for the console were unveiled in 2015 to overwhelming indifference after the successor to Nintendo’s popular Wii device, the Wii U, flopped commercially.
The Switch was at first seen as pricey, lacking games and with little to no chance of competing for consumers’ wallets with Sony’s more powerful PlayStation 4.
“Console games had lost ground to mobile games, and were seen by investors, media and the general public as no longer having any utility,” said analyst Hideki Yasuda of Toyo Securities.
“Expectations for the Switch were very low,” he told AFP.
“But once it started selling well, opinion quickly changed.”
‘Lateral thinking’
The Switch was “kind of the apotheosis of Nintendo’s savoir-faire” from the previous 40 years, said Florent Gorges, an author of books on the Kyoto-based company’s history.
On a technical level, the console was anything but cutting-edge.
But Nintendo’s knack of creating appealing games, combined with the console’s portability, made it a winner.
“The Switch perfectly respects Nintendo’s DNA, which is ‘lateral thinking with withered technology’,” said Gorges.
“This means to succeed in making something new out of something old,” he explained.
It was the philosophy of Gunpei Yokoi, the father of Nintendo’s Game & Watch electronic games, which sold tens of millions of units in the 1980s.
Reorganisation
The success of the Switch prompted Nintendo to combine its home and portable consoles divisions into one unit.
“Nintendo had two activities, with totally different prices, totally different software development,” said Serkan Toto from Tokyo firm Kantan Games.
But since 2017, thanks to the Switch “there has been a constant and very reliable flow of games developed directly by Nintendo, and that has helped them enormously”, he said. – AFP
