Nintendo touts best October ever for US Switch sales

A couple of gaming consoles launched this week, and you may have heard about that. The Nintendo Switch has kept right on trucking, however, with Nintendo of America saying Thursday that the Switch family of systems had its strongest October ever since the console’s 2017 debut.

The raw numbers: 735,926 units of the Switch and Switch Lite sold in the U.S., according to tracking firm NPD Group. Nintendo’s announcement said NPD verified that it’s the second-highest October sales total of any console in gaming history, outdone only by the 807,000 units of the Nintendo Wii sold in October 2008. (NPD has been tracking video game sales data since 1995.)

The Switch has been the best-selling video game console for 23 consecutive months. Its March 2017 debut followed the launches of the PlayStation 4 Pro in November 2016 and the Xbox One X in November 2017. Those were, of course, midgeneration upgrades; the last time Nintendo had the older model among the big three was when the PS4 and Xbox One followed the Wii U’s 2012 launch by a year.

NPD says that Nintendo has sold 22.5 million Switch consoles in the U.S., and Nintendo itself said its own internal “sold-in” data (units shipped to retailers) shows sales of 68 million units around the world.

Nintendo’s big Black Friday offering will be a Mario Kart 8 Deluxe bundle, featuring the console and a code for the game at the standard MSRP of $299.99. It goes on sale beginning Nov. 22.