Nintendo Doubles The Number Of Switch Consoles In Production
It's official: the Switch is a hit. Coming off of the best debut that a Nintendo console has ever had, the Kyoto-based game developer has doubled the number of Switch consoles it plans to manufacture in fiscal year 2018, raising the projected number of Switch units on the market from eight million to 16 million, the Wall Street Journal reports.
As Ars Technica notes, that's a very good sign for the Nintendo faithful. Nintendo's previous console, the Wii U, only sold 17 million units total in its four-and-a-half years on the market. Meanwhile, the Nintendo Wii (the company's best-selling console) moved about 17 million units in its first year, en route to more than 100 million total sales.
Before release, estimates from video game market research firms like SuperData and IHS predicted that Nintendo would sell somewhere between four million and five million Switch machines in the first year. Either those predictions are going to be way off, or Nintendo is supremely overconfident following the strong launch of the Switch. Either way, a year from now, someone is going to be very, very embarrassed.
Naturally, the markets responded positively to Nintendo's good news. Shares of Nintendo stock jumped up three percent immediately following the Wall Street Journal report, indicating that investors share Nintendo's enthusiasm for the handheld-console hybrid.
Ars Technica observes that Nintendo's bullish attitude towards the Switch might help sway third-party developers, who have largely said positive things about the device but have yet to back up their words with actual games, to pay a little bit more attention to Nintendo's latest console. The sparse launch line-up for the Switch has been one of the biggest complaints levied against the machine, and while Nintendo has a number of first-party and indie games currently lined up, the company is probably going to need other big franchises on board if it wants to keep the momentum from the Switch going.
On the other hand, the dominance of the Wii led to a flood of quickly produced, poorly made motion-control games (not to mention some truly baffling accessories) as companies rushed to capitalize on the unexpected success. With any luck, history won't repeat itself. Lots of games isn't the solution. Lots of good games is.