Nintendo had a lot of ground to cover following the lackluster reception to the Wii U, which meant that they needed a new system to challenge the dominance of the PlayStation 4, as well as the growing reach of the mobile gaming market.
The Nintendo Switch console originally seemed like it was going to follow in the Wii U's footsteps, but it has captured the hearts of gamers across the world and is attracting the casual market in droves.
Nintendo had set out to sell twenty million units throughout 2018, and Nintendo Of America President Reggie Fils-Aimé feels confident that they will achieve that goal.
Reggie Fils-Aimé is the current president and CEO of Nintendo of America and he has become one of the most famous faces associated with the company. He recently spoke to Forbes about the goal of the Nintendo Switch hitting twenty million sales and how he feels it will be accomplished.
"We’re feeling confident in our momentum and it’s not just a stellar launch of Pokémon, it’s not just what appears to be a stellar launch for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. That Black Friday through Cyber Monday time frame was critically important to us, the remaining shopping days now through Christmas are critically important to us. More days right after Christmas as consumers receive gift cards or take unwanted gifts and monetize into things like Nintendo Switch are important to us. So, this is going to be an ongoing effort to make sure that we drive our business forward through the balance of this holiday season but also the first calendar quarter as well."
The most recent financial report released by Nintendo (as of September 30th) listed the Nintendo Switch as having sold over twenty-two million hardware units since the launch of the console, which means that it has already beaten the lifetime sales of the GameCube.
The 2018 holiday season is still going strong and there are several weeks of Christmas shopping left to go, so we won't know well the Nintendo Switch has fared until next year.
Nintendo's stock dropped after E3 due to a lack of new announcements and release date for the remainder of 2018, which made it seem as if Nintendo was banking its entire holiday season on two games - Pokémon Let's Go Pikachu & Let's Go Eevee and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
It seems that Nintendo was smart to rest their holiday dreams on those two games, as initial reports have determined that the Let's Go games are attracting a huge portion of the Pokémon Go audience, while Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is already breaking records for the series in the United Kingdom.
We shouldn't take Reggie Fils-Aimé's words as gospel on the matter of the Nintendo Switch's sale success throughout 2018, but the strong performance of the two big holiday hits for the system, as well as the initial reports about the Fortnite and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe bundles selling extremely well suggest that Reggie has every right to be optimistic for the future of the Switch.