Nintendo expects to sell 14 million Switch consoles by the end of its fiscal year, an upward revision that would surpass the entire lifetime sales of the Wii U.
As it is, Nintendo has already sold 7.63 million Switches, more than half of the 13.56 million Wii Us sold from its launch to the end of Nintendo’s last fiscal year concluding in March 2017. The Wii U’s production ended in early January.
The sales numbers were part of Nintendo’s quarterly financial report to investors today. The second quarter of Nintendo’s fiscal year was dramatically better in 2017 than in 2016, buoyed by sales of the Switch and first-party software for it. Nintendo almost tripled its sales revenue, $3.29 billion for the September quarter this year as opposed to $1.2 billion last year
That helped Nintendo report a $351.6 million operating profit for the quarter as opposed to a $52.3 million loss for the quarter in 2016 (USD amounts given at current exchange rates).
In sales, Nintendo boasted four million-selling titles on Nintendo Switch: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (4.7 million units); Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (4.42 million); Splatoon 2 (3.61 million); and Arms (1.35 million). Those totals are from April 2017 to September 2017.
The robust performance has caused Nintendo to revise its sales estimates to investors upward by 28 percent for the fiscal year, and its operating profit upward by 84.6 percent for the fiscal year, as the company heads into the holiday sales quarter.