Nintendo sold a record number of Switch consoles over the holiday season, nearly three years after the smash hit device debuted.
Switch sales topped 10.8 million units in the quarter, bringing the lifetime figure to 52.48 million. With the strong holiday quarter, Switch passed the 1990s mainstay SNES, aka Super Nintendo, in lifetime sales.
Nintendo saw a 15 percent annual bump in Switch hardware sales over the 2018 holiday season. The company chalked up the increase to the release of the lower-cost Switch Lite, the handheld-only device that debuted in September for $199, $100 less than the flagship Switch.
“Pokemon Sword and Shield,” released in mid November was a huge hit, selling more than 16 million copies in its first six weeks. The game is already the fifth-most popular Switch title in the history of the console.
Overall, Nintendo net sales rose 2.5 percent to 1.02 trillion yen for the first nine months of its fiscal year ($9.37 billion) That’s a drop off from the 16 percent spike the company saw the year before. Profits saw a nearly 20 percent spike to 262.9 billion yen ($2.4 billion), compared to a 40 percent rise from a year ago.
