Nintendo: Switch was more popular than Switch Lite during holidays

The Nintendo Switch was more popular than the Switch Lite in the holiday quarter, although the Lite version came out at the end of the summer. The figures also show that Europeans are not enthusiastic about Nintendo’s smartphone games.

Nintendo delivered about 11 million new consoles in the quarter that includes the holidays, according to the quarterly figures. With about 7.5 million copies of the regular Switch, Nintendo delivered about 3.25 million copies of the Switch Lite. The cheaper version came out in September and it is the first quarter in which both versions were available throughout the period. Nintendo also supplied 250,000 3DS handhelds.

Shipments of Switch consoles grew 13 percent from the 2018 holiday quarter. Some of the growth came from the Switch’s release in China via Tencent, Nintendo claims. The number of Switch consoles delivered since its release in 2016 so far is 52 million. This means the Switch has sold more than the SNES. Nintendo has delivered more than 100 million of the Wii.

The most popular new games were Pokémon Shield and Pokémon Sword, together selling about 16 million copies. Both Super Mario Maker 2 and Luigi’s Mansion 3 also sold more than five million copies.

The figures also show that Nintendo gets little turnover from smartphone games and royalties in Europe. Revenues in Europe amounted to 12.5 million euros in the quarter. In Japan and the Americas, Nintendo earns seven to eight times as much from mobile games and royalties. An analysis by SensorTower also pointed this out.

Turnover in the quarter amounted to approximately 4.8 billion euros, a decrease of five percent compared to the same period in 2018. Operating profit did increase, by six percent to 1.4 billion euros.

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