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Switch Is Nintendo's 'Fastest Selling' System in History
- RubenSandwich 10y agoAs the article alludes to this is in large part due to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Which has a higher than 100% attach rate on the Switch, which is simply amazing.
- berberous 10y agoIf you are not interested in Zelda though, there is almost zero reason to spend the money on a Switch right now.
- rocky1138 10y agoEven if you are interested in Zelda, consider getting the Wii U version and playing it on your PC using Cemu. That's what I'll be doing.
- _ph_ 10y agoThere are a couple of very nice third-party games available on the switch now too (Snipperclips are great!) and the updated Mario Cart is just a week away. But indeed, Zelda would be the main reason to get one right now.
- slantyyz 10y agoBut unlike the original Wii, there's no Wii Sports to get people who would normally not even buy a console to buy in.
- fredleblanc 10y agoTo be fair, the Wii U had these — arguably better versions of all the sports — and that wasn't a large draw for that.
- slantyyz 10y agoTo me, part of the problem was that Wii Sports Club for WiiU wasn't a free pack in.
- drzaiusapelord 10y agoThe Wii and Wii sports was a freakshow level of success. It tapped into a lot of things Nintendo simply is not going to be able to reproduce: aging gamers with few casual gaming outlets, the novelty of motion controls, half the cost of a xbox/ps, etc. It really had no competitors. PS Move, while a nice technical effort, came too late and didn't have the developer support needed. The Kinect failed also for the same reasons on top of lacking a holdable controller so Kinect-games were ultimately forced to be super simple as waving and moving around can only do so much. The Wii U had these types of games and they didn't blow up like the original Wii. I think its fair to say no one expected the Wii to take off like it did and unrealistic to expect Nintendo to follow the same formula and to get the same results. If anything, motion control games died fairly quickly as the fad ran itself out and are only coming back now as a much needed accessory for pricey VR systems.
- slantyyz 10y agoTo a much lesser degree, Brain Age did the same for the Nintendo DS. It expanded the DS market to a lot of non-traditional buyers.
- MBCook 10y agoNintendogs also caused a huge jump in sales.
- Joeri 10y agoThe wii is still really fun and quite different as gaming experience from regular consoles. I booted it up today just for fun and ended up playing mario galaxy for hours with my 5yo cheering me on. Playing my ps4 is also fun, but not as relaxing and definitely not as approachable.
- Apocryphon 10y agoWhat about 1-2 Switch?
- MBCook 10y agoReviews haven't been very friendly to 1-2 Switch. Seems like it should have been a freebie/pack-in or at least very cheap (say $10-20).
- ajmurmann 10y agoThis to me is up there in dumb Nintendo decisions together with calling it "Wii U" and discontinuing the mini NES. Did they really think anybody would pay $50 for that? 1-2 Switch like Wii Sports was a perfect demo of the system and everybody should get it for free to entice them.
- jorvi 10y ago> Mario Cart I'm imaging Mario & Co racing around in shopping carts, grabbing and tossing bananas etc..
- scotu 10y agototally plausible nintendo game. In a good way
- Apocryphon 10y agoNot a bad approach to continue evolving the series
- mathw 10y agoWe need a supermarket battle arena!
- kbutler 10y agoThat's about right.
- city41 10y agoSnipperClips is a fun game, but I can't imagine anyone could say it justifies spending $300+.
- Karunamon 10y agoThis is the boat I'm in. BOTW is the only triple-A game on the platform right now. Even their eshop has a dearth of content available, much of it ridiculously overpriced.
- bphogan 10y agoThis. However, I am having a lot of fun with Graceful Explosion Machine and Fast RMX. They don't have the depth of BOTW, but they are good games that are worth the price tag. If there can be more games like those, the Switch could do well in the long run.
- UnoriginalGuy 10y agoThat's my concern for the Christmas period. A lot of Nintendo fans are early adopters, that's why they're buying a console with one significant game in March. For the general public they need to have more on offer than that. Here are new AAA games which we are assured will be out by Christmas: Zelda Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Skylanders, NBA 2K18, Arms, Splatoon 2. There's tons of indie names (e.g. Shovel Knight) or older games (e.g. Skyrim) but those aren't "system movers" as they're already out on every other major platform. Meaning people won't be buying a Switch to play those. No doubt you're moaning about me leaving out Super Mario Odyssey, but at the time of writing SMO has no set release date only a vague "TBD, Holiday 2017." As does Project Sonic 2017. Nintendo games overrun their release date as much as other publishers, therefore one cannot be assured SMO will ship before the big holiday period. If you look beyond 2017, it remains pretty slim pickings for the Switch. Likely until at least summer 2018 we won't see more than perhaps half a dozen exclusive AAA games on the console. We still have no assurance that the mainstream Pokemon franchise will be developed for the console. The Wii U also sold fairly well early in its life, but sales dried up and never recovered with publishers avoiding it due its poor sales performance. The key thing for the Switch to do is to consistently sell, to give publishers enough confidence that when they target the platform that the effort will pay for itself. It all remains to be seen. I'll be paying close attention to Christmas 2017 sales figures because it might be the life or death of the Switch.
- MBCook 10y agoZelda is (supposed to be) amazing (haven't played it), Mario Kart 8 was amazing, and Splatoon was amazing (assuming sequel will be). TONS of gamers didn't get to play any of them because the WiiU sold so poorly, so for a great many people they're 'new' games and worth buying the system for.
- UnoriginalGuy 10y agoAlmost all Wii U games don't have a release date for the Switch yet. If they can get the entire Wii U back catalogue released by Christmas 2017 that would definitely help, but that's a big "if" and Nintendo hasn't claimed that they're trying to.
- dragontamer 10y agoYou gotta try 8-player Bomberman. Its a damn good party game.
- babuskov 10y agoIdk. I watched some videos of it on YouTube and the fun factor it seems to be well below the Atomic Bomberman on PC.
- dragontamer 10y agoThe important bit of party games is to meet your friends face-to-face and sit on the couch together. Its rare to find 8-player party games with simple controls that anybody can get into.
- babuskov 10y agoWe just bring the laptops, set up a LAN game and 7-8 of us sit in the same room. It does involve bringing some hardware along, but it isn't a big deal. We used to do it quite often.
- dragontamer 10y agoHmm... I can name at least 3 people who don't even have a laptop who were enjoying themselves in the last 8-player Bomberman game I played on the Switch. I like LAN parties, but the whole concept of them is kinda limited to the nerdy crowd. I'm totally a nerd btw, I go to conventions and play in those LAN rooms and stuff. But opening up gameplay to my general non-nerd friends only happens through couch gaming. A lot of my friends straight up wouldn't get a chance to play in a LAN-party setup. But they come over and have fun with Mario Kart, Puyo Tetris, Smash, or most recently... Bomberman.
- babuskov 9y agoOk, I'm almost convinced now. I do have friends who come over and don't want to bring their laptops, esp. people with kids. Perhaps I will try it.
- jczhang 10y agoby that logic, everyone should just get Wii U and Zelda instead of switch.
- miend 10y agoI also heard Psyonix was considering bringing Rocket League to the platform. If they do, that would be another very good reason to get it. But I agree that BotW would be the only reason I'm interested in the console at all -- similar to how cooperative Monster Hunter experiences with friends would be the only reason I would consider one of their traditional handhelds.
- lancewiggs 10y agoThis version of Zelda is astonishingly great - very different to others in the franchise. It's a completely free and open world, no grinding required, with simple gameplay yet with challenging layers that appeal to the folks with wanting more, a beautiful environment with amazing weather and climate differences and so on. Above all there is no in-app purchases required. It's a reminder of what games on the iPad could have been.
- JoshTriplett 10y agoOne potential reason for that (apart from the one mentioned in the article): people who went ahead and purchased the game, but can't find a system yet. I know more than one person in that position.
- kbutler 10y agoDid that, then three weeks passed before we finally found one. It's pretty amazing that one game, available on a previous-generation console, is able to drive that many sales of a new console. People are basically spending $360 to play BotW.
- JoshTriplett 10y agoI skipped the WiiU, precisely because the one game that might have motivated me to get one got delayed so long that it was also available on the Switch.
- PopsiclePete 10y agoThe new Zelda is amazing. Not only the best Zelda game ever made, I think it's just one of the best 3rd person open-world adventure games ever made, for any system, period. Definitely a system seller. I'm interested in nothing else right now though - the rest of the available games seem like Indie shovel-ware or re-releases. Shovel Knight. Come on, that's like 2 years old by now. I'll still buy every Nintendo game they make for this, but highly unlikely I'll end up with a sizable 3rd party collection on it. Got a PS4 Pro for that.
- johnchristopher 10y agoI was ready to throw money at it until a friend of mine told me I had to farm some sticks to get weapons because it wears out. Can you confirm ?
- pyi 10y agoNot sure what your friend is doing, since weapons are extremely plentiful and disposable. You're also encouraged to find other ways of killing enemies, usually by using your Sheikah Slate powers to manipulate the environment to kill monsters. Think of the weapons as an analogue to ammo in a shooter.
- Jasper_ 10y agoThere is a weapon durability system, but it's actually a super well-designed thing to keep the pace of the game active and frantic. Basically, it's the game's way of making sure you experiment and play around with new weapon types, give you more of an interplay during combat by picking up enemy weapons and using it against them, and giving you overpowered weapons without letting you just find "the best weapon" and keep it forever. At this stage in my playthrough, I often have to explicitly toss out weapons because I have too many -- very rarely do I run out of weapons and have to farm.
- Nadya 10y ago>There is a weapon durability system, but it's actually a super well-designed thing to keep the pace of the game active and frantic I actually disagree with it being well designed. The weapons are too common and break so frequently I feel like I'm playing a weapon changing simulator. They have never been a limitation and I have never worried about finding a new weapon to use. However I do find myself constantly having to bring up the menu to change weapons. I have 12 weapon slots and pretty much every slot is a knight's claymore or guardian weapon. Once you get to the point of farming the world minibosses you'll never find yourself wanting of a good weapon. Hinox and Lynel have good weapon drops and they drop pretty frequently. I feel as though weapons should have been made more rare but more durable so that there were times when you wouldn't have a weapon because they were rare to come across and you'd second guess yourself about using your weapons on lesser mobs like red moblins or keese. I find myself needing shields more often than weapons - since I like to go Guardian hunting and I kill them exclusively with shield parries. One or two missed parries and my shield is destroyed. While I rarely miss the parry anymore, it does still happen.
- ZeroGravitas 10y agoThough that game was also released for their previous console, which you think would take some level of pressure of the sales of the newer platform.
- jsgo 10y agoI ordered BotW on the last day of Amazon's 2 week 20% off thing for prime members thing. Would've liked to ordered w/ a Switch, but unfortunately that wasn't going to pass. Luckily, a few weeks later after searching various stores' stock, I lucked out and was able to get the Switch as well (Amazon as well, actually). So depending on when these stats were put together, I could be part of the group putting Switch BotW sales above the Switch console and I imagine there are others who ordered similarly.
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoI'd argue this statistic is easy to manufacture when Nintendo console sales are generally artificially limited by their production rate. Is it that the Switch is the most immediately desirable system in Nintendo's history, or just that it's the most quickly produced one in history?
- freehunter 10y agoEven if the headline was "Switch is the fastest produced console in Nintendo's history" it'd still be a headline. As you mentioned, they're notorious for slow production of their systems.
- douche 10y agoPossibly it's that the last Wii was such a dumpster fire, and people are desperate for a Nintendo console that is close to modern capabilities.
- vlunkr 10y agoThe fact that you called it "the last Wii" is a testament to how poorly it was marketed.
- josho 10y agoWhile playing the wii-u titles I don't recall ever saying 'this game would be more fun if only the graphics were better'. The hit Nintendo took by selling an underpowered console was loosing 3rd party support, as it was reportedly too much effort for folks like EA to support a platform that was so far behind their other supported consoles. I wonder if history will repeat with the next generation of xbox/ps around the corner. If switch sales continue at this pace, I suspect not.
- delecti 10y agoThe Wii U was reportedly also somewhat difficult to develop for (especially compared to the reboxed PCs that are the PS4 and XBox One), and the second screen also didn't help matters in that regard. The Switch will benefit from a fairly standard set of inputs and outputs: the buttons on the Joycons map pretty easily to the XBone and PS4 controllers, and it's just a single display (though the difference in power levels between docked and undocked is a slight hitch there).
- agumonkey 10y agoHa the big N still has some cards up its sleeves. Fun.
- themaninthedark 10y agoDon't worry, I'm sure that the gaming press will still come out with an article that tells us how Nintendo is dying and should just release games for the iPhone.
- maxpert 10y agoGood to see Nintendo back in the game. They have been a different breed of gaming company for quite some time now. I really missed the known gaming faces. I mean Zelda, Mario, Kirby, Metroid etc. are like the EPIC franchises and what I was getting on XBOX or PS4 was nothing but alternatives. With switch I can totally see Sony or Microsoft taking up a page in their next console.
- mercer 10y agoI've only gone as far as the Xbox 360, and while I agree that Nintendo remains special (re-playing Metroid Prime and Zero Mission for the umpteenth time on my recently-bought WiiU while the new Zelda is right there and jealous of my lack of attention), there are a number of amazing non-nintendo games that I played on my 360 and laptop: Shadow Complex (metroidvania style game, and actually pretty good), Metal Gear Solid V, Red Dead Redemption, Far Cry 3, Rayman Legends, Fallout 3, Prison Complex, Device 6... and that's not including PlayStation exclusives that I am almost certain to love, like Ico/Shadow Of The Colossus. There's plenty of amazing 'different breed' type games outside of Nintendo, is what I'm saying. At the same time I agree that Nintendo remains special: out of all the games I've played in recent years, Metroid Prime, Wind Waker, Breath of the Wild, Zero Mission, Mario Galaxy, Animal Crossing (GameCube), etc. are equal and often better in my book than all the other great stuff. I guess my point is that as a gamer dipping in and out of the 'scene' alongside figuring out what React Router decided to break on this update and dealing with adult life stuff, there's been plenty of great stuff outside of Nintendo, but nonetheless Nintendo has remained a consistent source of gaming joy that, in other places, is harder to find.
- SimeVidas 10y agoNintendo has a real chance of dominating Christmas this year, if they get Mario Odyssey and Zelda DLC right. For that reason, the latter will be pure fan service, I think. Do we know already what AAA games will be released on PS and Xbox during that period?
- bitshiffed 10y ago"Zelda DLC"? Really? Even Zelda now? Ugh.
- haswell 10y agoI don't think calling it DLC is fair. Back before the DLC craze, this would have simply been an "Expansion". The core game is so good, so expansive, that it doesn't bother me in the slightest that there's upcoming "DLC". Don't get me wrong - I hate the trend in general, but in this case it's not a bad thing. Edit: Ok, I realize that they even call it DLC on zelda.com, but my point still stands: these are expansions. The kind gamers used to get excited about.
- delecti 10y agoWe barely know anything about it at this point. Unless you've got an uncle at Nintendo, your assertion that it's an "expansion" is unfounded. Now don't get me wrong, I'm very optimistic, and have already bought/pre-ordered it (it's a gray area which to call it, because it unlocks some things immediately, but the bulk of it isn't available for a few months), but my optimism is mainly based on the Mario Kart 8 DLC, not what they've announced about the BotW DLC itself.
- SimeVidas 10y agoGiven how BotW is the most profitable thing for Nintendo since the Wii, I’m sure they’ve got every available developer and their mother working on the holiday DLC. Getting this one DLC right is a make-or-break situation for Nintendo, if they want the Switch to compete with the other consoles in the next few years.
- apozem 10y agoThe Switch is a huge hit among Nintendo fans, but it's no surprise they turned out for the best Zelda game in years. The real test of the Switch is if Nintendo can keep it stocked with more first- and third-party games than the Wii U had. If the Switch has a robust library in a year, then it'll be a real contender.
- brightball 10y agoI'm going to get one because ever since my kids have discovered the old Super Mario Brothers Super Show on Netflix they've been completely hooked on all things Mario. Super Mario 3D World for the Wii U was such a great family game that we've been playing it for close to 3 years now. It had such a good cooperative experience that we could even play with my 4 year old pretty quickly. We even had a big night out for dinner after we finally beat the crown world. :-)
- Taek 10y agoWow that sounds awesome. What a great way for a family to bond :)
- atom-morgan 10y agoI'm 26 now but I can say that some of my greatest memories as a kid are the times I spent gaming with my brother and dad. I simply cannot think of SNES without thinking about the three of us working our way through all of the old Donkey Kong games. I'm sure your kids will be the same :)
- j2bax 10y ago33 and SNES games still give me a nostalgia kick to the face. So many warm happy memories of that system and time of my life.
- hkmurakami 10y agoI fondly remember being unable to beat Vargas in FF6 (FF3 in the States I think?) with the Left-Right-Left Sabin command, and my dad trying to do it for me (and failing as well). :)
- brightball 10y agoStill my all time favorite console game to this day.
- pimeys 10y agoI had so much fun with Super Mario 3D World that the new Mario is definitely THE reason to buy Switch. I bought the Zelda for my old WiiU just because I had the console and the game is basically the same as it is for Switch. I watched some trailers from Super Mario Odyssey, where Mario was in a sandbox looking for adventures, like in Mario 64, but the sandbox was an actual real city and that really sold the game for me. The proper Mario games have always been massively fun which I can't always say about the Zelda games; the last Zelda before BotW I truly liked was Wind Waker. And there are rumors for a new Super Mario Galaxy game to the new console. But all in all, these games are so far away in the future I can surely buy the new console in 2018 when I've finished BotW and its DLC's.
- Ultramax 10y agoIt seems like a combo: Zelda BotW is part of it, but the hardware is also fun. The build quality and kit is fantastic, it reminds me of an iPad designed by a gamer for gaming. In my case it's also nostalgia. I've been working on my own apps and games, not to mention a day job, so this is the first console I have owned since the N64. Never got into console titles that seemed to be just as good on the PC. That's 3 reasons right there... I ended up buying the Special Edition ($100 gets you the game, a music CD, a hard traveling case and a collector's coin) in March before I found a Switch in April. I prefer the Pro Controller and using it as a standard console, but the mobility is great if needed. Sticker shock hasn't been a factor, since I remember buying 3 extra controllers for the N64. The hunt for the Switch is as much as the hunt for the Classic was. Of course, now the Classic is going for 4-5 times as much... more than the Switch! (Note: skip the Classic and skip RetroPie. You need a mac or PC anyway to load up the SD card... better to spend $60 on a nice XBone controller and play games in a better emulator on your computer. Just my 2 cents.)
- bpicolo 10y agoThe sticker shock on the non-pro controllers is much worse because without the charging grip, charging for 4 controllers is a massive pita. That's really my biggest complaint with the unit, the difficulty of charging the joycons. Taking off the wrist straps each time is really bad UX.
- mercer 10y agoNot to mention accidentally inserting the wrist straps the wrong way!
- khedoros1 10y ago> Note: skip the Classic and skip RetroPie It seems like a different set of tradeoffs. RetroPie (if you're running on a Raspberry Pi, and not on a PC) will have fewer game systems that it can support, of course. But it's also cheap enough to just buy one as a dedicated game system that you leave connected to a TV, so the kids aren't grabbing your laptop to play retro games, or something. For a little more money, you could set up an NUC or something, of course. > You need a mac or PC anyway to load up the SD card A lot of kits come with NOOBS loaded on them. You can load RetroPie directly into Raspbian by using a setup script that they provide. You could also boot into Raspbian via NOOBS and use a USB adapter to flash a microSD with another OS. You could even take a blank SD, extract NOOBS onto it with your phone, and boot the Pi off that (NOOBS and Berryboot just need to be unzipped onto the SD; they don't require images to be flashed).
- ProfessorLayton 10y agoI'm one of those that bought Zelda without owning a Switch (yet) since Amazon sold it %20 off those who preordered it. The console itself has been frustratingly difficult to find since I missed the preorders. I'm hoping Nintendo can pull it together before all my friends finish BoTW.
- mhink 10y agoHave you been keeping up with the stock trackers? I had some luck this weekend with istocknow.com: at 10pm on Saturday night, it was reporting that a Walmart about an hour away from me had gotten a shipment about three hours earlier. My girlfriend and I thus went on a late-night trip and managed to snag one. I was thoroughly surprised, but the guy working electronics confirmed that yup, that information was accurate.
- eric_h 10y agoI got one in a GameStop bundle - admittedly it came with BoTW and some lego game so I overpaid a bit for it - nevertheless Zelda is an awesome game; I think it's the best Zelda yet.
- gkfasdfasdf 10y agoI got mine from walmart.com fairly easily - just entered my email in the 'alert me when back in stock', got an email a few days later, ordered, and got the switch delivered 5 days later. The only hitch was I had to order a bundle (switch + zelda). And zelda, strangely, came a few days after the switch.
- aphextron 10y agoIt's absolutely amazing to me how Nintendo continuously holds such a high bar for themselves in terms of first party content. They've been pushing out the same formula for console releases for 30 years now, and it works every time because the games are just so undeniably great. I don't understand why the other console manufacturers can't replicate this.
- EpicEng 10y ago>They've been pushing out the same formula for console releases for 30 years now, and it works every time because the games are just so undeniably great. I don't understand why the other console manufacturers can't replicate this. The Wii U was a massive failure, precisely because of a lack of third party titles. Nintendo has great ip, but they don't push out enough games. No real Metroid in quite some time and Mario won't even hit the switch until end of year. Other console manufacturers have been far more successful than Nintendo recently. Edit: to clarify, I love Nintendo, have since the 80's. It's not true that they've been killing it for decades though, Sony has been eating their lunch off and on since the PSX.
- derefr 10y agoMeanwhile, the Nintendo [3]DS continues to be the #1 "game console" when you disregard form-factor, and has had nonstop YOY growth since its introduction. The Wii U was essentially a failure because Nintendo thought there was still a market for a chained-to-a-TV console—and there is, but only in the "hardcore gamer" segment that don't care for Nintendo's games lineup. The segment who are interested in Nintendo games, have shifted to being far more interested in mobile games than TV-console games (even if they would enjoy playing those games on a TV once in a while.) The Switch is an acknowledgement of this, and that's why it's succeeding.
- Dan_Nguyen 10y agoI think a part of it has also been Nintendo's terrible naming scheme the past few years. I don't follow gaming news closely, so when I heard of the Wii U I thought it was a hardware revision not unlike the Xbox One S to the Xbox One. It took me over a year after launch to learn that the Wii U is an entirely new console. The same thing happened with the 3DS. When I finally looked into getting one this past holiday season, I was confused by the 3DS vs 3DS XL vs New 3DS vs New 3DS XL. I was hesitant to buy since I wasn't sure if the New 3DS was a hardware revision or an entirely new console like the Wii U. On top of that, the marketing wasn't there for me. I learn of my gaming news when it hits the front page of Reddit. When the Switch was announced, there was massive hype behind it. I didn't see the same for the Wii U.
- dep_b 10y agoGreat news! Can I have my Nintendo Classic now?
- 086421357909764 10y agoSadly I gave up and went back to RetroPie.. I'm not paying those crazy scalper prices either.
- ashark 10y agoTry Lakka. Better performance (especially on menus) and generally better UX than RetroPie or any other emulation frontend I've seen. Several common controllers, including (what I use) bluetooth PS3 controllers supported out of the box, with sane auto-mapping for all supported emulators (no more manually mapping controls unless you just like that kind of thing). Only tricky bit is that you have to have blessedly-pure ROMsets for automatic per-system playlist generation to work (it's hash-based), but that's a minor hurdle (and going through it will encourage you to clean up any "messy" sets you have, which isn't really a bad thing). There's a stickied post on their forum that'll give you the names of what you need. And you can always manually create playlists or launch individual ROMs, regardless. Not affiliated with it, just a big fan of what Retroarch/Lakka and related projects are doing for emulation.
- 5_minutes 10y agoI bought it, and love it. I also bought an xbox 360 and xbox one and never really fell in love with the console. It's hard to pinpoint "Nintendo magic". And reading all the reactions here, many people feel the same, a strong passion with the brand.
- wiremine 10y agoMy 11 year old son and I have been playing through Zelda Breath of the Wild, and we both absolutely love it. He thinks it's a great game, and it reminds me a lot of the original Zelda I played as a kid (which dates me).
- pohl 10y agoMy 7 year old son and I just got a Switch for BotW and we're both loving it, too.
- sotojuan 10y agoDefinitely getting it once it gets more JRPGs. I'm also interested in its Virtual Console library. Sadly Konami is dead so no more Castlevania games in the style of the DS ones :-(
- Sunset 10y agoHow long before they decide to discontinue it right as everyone's buying units?