Nintendo's latest Q2 earnings report delivers updates on Switch console shipments, showing the system has no signs of slowing down.
The FY24 period marks the 8th fiscal year that the Switch has been on the market. Despite this long period (console cycles typically last for 7 years), the Switch is still performing quite well, even when relative to prior periods.
As of Nintendo's Q2 FY24 period, which ended September 30, 2023, the company has shipped a cumulative total of 132.46 million Switch consoles across the entire hardware family (includes 2017 launch model, Switch Lite, and OLED).
Per-model cumulative hardware shipments look like this:
- Base Switch model - 90.83 million
- Switch Lite - 21.92 million
- OLED - 19.71 million
Nintendo managed to ship 2.93 million Switch systems in Q2, which is the second-lowest period since te system launched, but Q1-Q2 sales are at a healthy 6.84 million.
"Looking at sales in our dedicated video game platform business, unit sales of Nintendo Switch hardware and software both increased year-on-year. The larger percentage of hardware sales accounted for by Nintendo Switch - OLED Model, which has a higher unit price, helped further increase sales to a total of 736.7 billion yen, up 16.7% year-on-year."
One interesting thing to note about these figures is the popularity of the Switch OLED model. The Switch OLED has accounted for the majority of sales for 7 quarters in a row, and Nintendo notes that the profit margin on the OLED models is lower than it is for the others, so more OLED sales delivers less comparable profit.
Nintendo plans to ship a total of 15 million Switch consoles throughout Fiscal Year 2024, which would bring the combined shipment total to over 140 million units by March 2024.
This would put the Switch just 14 million units shy of beating the Nintendo DS' #1 spot with its mighty 154 million sales.