Rage for Nintendo Switch is over? Its sales are falling, and a successor is not yet in sight.

Sales nintendoswitch there has been a sharp drop, and a further drop is expected. This was confirmed by the Japanese during the presentation of the results of the 2023 financial year, which ended on March 31. The company sold almost 18 million units your console for the aforementioned period – 17.97 million to be exact -, 22.1% drop compared to 23.06 million in fiscal 2022.

This means that Nintendo was far from the Switch’s original sales target of 21 million units. But it also fell short of the revised target of 18 million consoles announced later. Although the story does not end there: the company hopes that sales drop to 16.5% more in the current fiscal year ending March 31, 2024.

This makes it clear that the Nintendo Switch The peak of sales has already been passed. and started the process of logical deceleration. Not only because it is a product that is now in its seventh year on the market, but also because there is less and less room for growth. Let’s remember that with over 125 million units, this is one of the best-selling game consoles in history. Anyway, sales will fall faster than the manufacturer expected.

Shuntaro Furukawa, president of Nintendo, called the 2022 holiday season “disappointing”. In this sense, the CEO indicated that equipment sales were negatively impacted by financial uncertainty caused by high inflation rates, as well as the slow reopening of various parts of the world following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Like the other side, games like platoon 3 And Pokémon Scarlet/Purple, released in September and November 2022 respectively, were a huge sales success. A situation that suggests Nintendo Switch marketing will suffer due to market saturationand not because of a lack of interest on the part of the players.

In fact, next Friday the 12th will be launched The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdomone of the most anticipated Nintendo Switch games of 2023. Her commercial expectations are huge, but this is expected to have little impact on the sale of more units of the console.. Even despite the recent launch of a special version of the device, something quite ordinary to celebrate its most high-profile premieres.

Nintendo Switch sales have already peaked

Of the nearly 18 million Nintendo Switch sold between April 1, 2022 and March 31, 2023, model with OLED screen was the most successful. 9.22 million units were stockpiled, up nearly 59% from the previous fiscal year. The standard variant was in second place with 6.14 million vehicles sold, down 54.7% from fiscal 2022; while 2.62 million Switch Lites were sold, down 29.2% from last year.

Thus, these figures only confirm the downward trend that we began to observe between April 2021 and March 2022. As a reminder, Nintendo Switch hits its peak in fiscal 2021, between April 1, 2020 and March 31, 2021. During this period, 28.8 million handheld console units were sold worldwide – 20.3 million standard models and 8.5 million Switch models. It’s been the best year for the device since it hit the market in March 2017.

The following table clearly shows the change in sales by fiscal year. It is worth clarifying that the figures have been rounded for practical purposes:

Shuntaro Furukawa himself assured in a conversation with investors that do not plan to release a new version or console update in the current fiscal year. This will shatter the rumors about the Nintendo Switch 2 we’ll supposedly see in the coming months.

Those from Kyoto know that it is a big challenge to keep their console as an attractive product, although it is not easy given the time it has already been on the market and the penetration already achieved. They also said that it was not their intention to install one system in every house, but several; ideally one for each family member. However, they spoke about the difficulties ahead.

“Sustaining the pace of Switch sales will be difficult in its seventh year of existence. Our goal to sell 15 million units this fiscal year is a little over the top.. But we will do our best to boost demand before the holiday season to reach the target,” Furukawa said.

If Nintendo does indeed sell 15 million Switch units by March 31, 2024, that would still be a 16.5% drop from FY 2023. But the fall will be observed not only in hardware sales, but also in software.

In fiscal year 2022, Nintendo Switch software (game) sales were 235.07 million units. Meanwhile, in fiscal 2023, they closed at 213.96 million; that is 9% less. The forecast for fiscal year 2024 puts them on 180 million units15.9% less than the figures obtained through March last year inclusive.

Given these predictions, it’s impossible not to think that Nintendo might announce a Switch successor in fiscal year 2025 (April 2024 to March 2025). Actually the sources Nikkei Asia ensure that their development “Seems to be going well”. Although it has already been clarified that the hypothetical launch will take place no earlier than next spring, as the earliest date.

Today’s statistics paint a picture that seems to be paving the way for Nintendo to make the expected leap towards next-gen consoles sooner rather than later. Which doesn’t mean the Switch doesn’t have a thread on its reel anymore, especially given the loyal following the Asian firm has.

However, despite major releases in development, the new Zeldamost immediate, Nintendo Switch sales are clearly past their peak. And there is nothing that would indicate that they are able to achieve the same results as two financial years ago.