Nintendo’s newest console, the Switch, has been out for a little over a month now. After its first couple of weeks on the market, Nintendo said that it is already their fasting-selling console of all time, even beating out the Wii, the best-selling Nintendo console. However, despite Nintendo’s claims, we haven’t had any hard sales numbers until now.
According to Kotaku, about 906,000 Switch units were sold last month in the United States alone. In Nintendo earnings report, it was reported that the Wii sold 1.25 million units in both North and South Americas in its first month. Once the numbers come in for North and South American countries aside from the U.S., we’ll be able to see if the Switch really has been outselling the Wii.
Furthermore, Kotaku also stated that the Wii U sold about 890,000 units in the U.S. in its first six weeks on the market, so the Switch is at least on track to outsell Nintendo’s worst-selling console. The Switch’s numbers become even more impressive when considering that both the Wii and Wii U came out during holiday seasons, when sales of all kinds of products are expected to be high, whereas the Switch came out in March, well after the last holiday sales peak and well before the next one.
Additionally, Kotaku reports that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the best-selling non-bundled launch title in Nintendo’s history, has sold a total of 1.3 million copies in the U.S.: 925,000 for the Switch and 460,000 for the Wii U. Interestingly, that means more Switch versions of the game have been sold than Switchs themselves. While that is a terrific statistic for the game, one has to wonder what those 19,000 people who bought the game for the Switch but not a Switch are doing. Maybe multiple people per family wanted their own copy of the game for playing on a single, family-owned Switch.