The Nintendo Switch continued its 2017 sales charts dominance in October, but it was joined at the top by another Nintendo console. GamesBeat reports that Switch was October’s top-selling console followed by the SNES Classic Edition, according to NPD sales figures.
NPD Analyst Mat Piscatella credited Nintendo and Sony with growing the games market from 2016. “Year to date, hardware spending has grown 19 percent versus 2016 to $2.3 billion,” he said. “Consumer spending on Nintendo Switch, plug-n-play devices such as the Super NES Classic, and the PlayStation 4 continue to provide growth.”
Nintendo Life reports that consumers purchased over a million games consoles last month, with at least 666,000, or two-thirds of those consoles, being Nintendo products. That includes Switch, Super NES Classic, and 3DS consoles.
Since its March 3 launch, the Switch has enjoyed the sort of success predecessor Wii U never approached. An argument could even be made that it’s on a path to meet Nintendo’s lofty goal of reaching similar levels of success to the 100-million-plus-selling Wii. As of Sept. 30, Nintendo had sold 8 million Switches and was on pace to sell 17 million by the end of its fiscal year on March 30, 2018. In fact, the console has been in such high demand that Nintendo is reportedly upping production to at least 25 to 30 million units annually starting with its next fiscal year in April 2018.
It isn’t the only console Nintendo has had to up production for in order to meet rising demand, either. The company has been producing and shipping more SNES Classic Editions than it did with predecessor NES Classic Edition. The company even decided to extend the console’s availability into 2018 after initially planning only to sell it this calendar year.
The company has enjoyed robust software sales this year too, and October was no different. Nintendo claims Super Mario Odyssey was the top-selling game for the month. This despite the title not having launched until Oct. 27.
Nintendo’s competition certainly hasn’t stood idly by, however. The PlayStation 4 wrestled away the title of top-selling console from Switch during May and June. And although it ceded that position back to Nintendo, Sony’s platform is still far and away the market leader, with the console having passed 60 million units sold all the way back in July. Released in November 2013, the console had a three-and-a-half-year head start on the Switch.
Steadily entrenched in third place in monthly sales and slowly but surely losing its grip on second place is the other console launched in November 2013: the Xbox One. But Microsoft followed Sony’s 2016 lead in releasing a mid-generation upgrade to its console on Nov. 7. American sales figures aren’t yet available for the system, but appears to have enjoyed strong debuts in the UK and Japan at least.
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