Nintendo Drops Switch Sales Forecast, Nearly Halves 3DS Despite Strong Holiday

By Brian Crecente

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Despite a strong holiday, Nintendo on Thursday lowered how many Switch it believes it can sell for the fiscal year, dropping the goal by three million, down to a new target of 17 million, the company announced in its latest earnings report.

The company also increased its Nintendo Switch game sales forecast by 10 million, saying it will sell 110 million copies of games for the system in the fiscal year, which ends in March. Finally, the company nearly halved its estimates for the sales of the portable 3DS systems, down from 4 million to 2.6 million.

While Nintendo lowered its sales estimates for nearly all of its hardware and software, the company did report a profit jump of about 25% in the quarter that ended in December, compared to the same quarter last year. Nintendo’s third-quarter profit was 104.2 billion yen (roughly $956 million), up from 83.7 billion yen last year. Total fiscal year profit to date equals 168.8 billion yen.

The top game sellers for the quarter were “Super Smash Bros. Ultimate,” which sold 12 million copies and the two “Let’s Go” Pokemon titles which sold 10 million copies combined.

Nintendo pointed to “New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe,” which released this month, and “Yoshi’s Crafted World,” which hits in March, as its major releases for the company’s final quarter.

“We aim to broaden the platform’s user base by adding new titles and strengthening sales of popular titles already in the market,” according to the earnings report. “For Nintendo , we will continue to leverage the platform’s rich software library and its hardware install base to further expand sales of evergreen titles.”

About 32.2 million had been sold as of the end of the year, according to Nintendo. That means it has significantly overshadowed the Wii U, which sold 13.5 million over its lifetime, and the Nintendo GameCube, which sold 21.7 million. The Switch is nearing the lifetime sales of the Nintendo 64, which sold 32.9, but has a ways to go before topping the classic NES system, which sold 61.9 million over its lifetime, or Nintendo’s massively successful Wii, which sold 101.6 million over its life.