In brief: Nintendo's Switch continues to sell like gangbusters despite the handheld console having recently entered its fifth year on the market. As it turns out, there are a couple of reasons for the system's sustained success, and Nintendo's favorable forecast for the current fiscal year ending March 2022.
In a Q&A session during Nintendo's recent financial results conference call, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa said Animal Crossing: New Horizons drove hardware sales in the first half of the previous fiscal quarter, adding that Nintendo believes they "need to take this temporary effect into consideration."
Furukawa also pointed to strong hardware and software sales during the January - March period of the previous fiscal year as another indicator to help with its guidance. But it was the executive's comments about repeat buyers that were arguably the most interesting.
In the previous fiscal year, Furukawa said, household demand for multiple systems accounted for roughly 20 percent of Switch sales. Given that Nintendo sold 28.83 million systems last year, a fifth of that works out to roughly 5.8 million units.
Nintendo said in 2019 that some households had already purchased multiple consoles, but this is the first time we've heard any solid figures.
Nintendo's Switch is arguably one of the better success stories in recent memory. Despite the rise in popularity of smartphone gaming as well as Sony's and Microsoft's focus on powerful home consoles, Nintendo believed there was a market for a hybrid home / portable console and launched the Switch in March 2017. Ever since, sales have impressed, thanks in part to solid hardware and a very strong catalog of intellectual property.
Image credit Dr. Victor Wong, BlurryMe