The Nintendo Switch Console Has Sold Close To 18 Million Units Worldwide

The Japanese video games company said it sold more than 15 million Switch consoles, devices that can be played at home or on the move, during the fiscal year.

Nintendo announced today as part of its yearly fiscal report that its president Tatsumi Kimishima will be retiring on June 28. Furukawa is 46 and has served on the Nintendo board of directors.

Furukawa takes over Nintendo as the company is enjoying tremendous success with Nintendo Switch.

If you thought that was impressive, the company also announced that they are aiming to ship an additional 20 million units between April 2018 and March 2019.

Kimishima, while he did an admirable job of running Nintendo after the 2015 death of Satoru Iwata, was largely a placeholder for the company.

The last time Nintendo revealed its earnings, we learned that the Switch had already sold as many units as the Wii U – and this was just in the console’s first nine months on the market. In terms of games, Pokemon Ultra Sun and Pokemon Ultra Moon sold 7.51 million units, while overall sales totalled 35.64 million units.

As for software, Super Mario Odyssey was Nintendo’s best selling game with 1.34 million units sold in the quarter and 10.41 million sold worldwide.

Iwata, originally, was expected to be the person to guide Nintendo into its new future. Strong Switch sales drove the company’s profit up more than 500% compared to the previous year. “I will balance Nintendo’s traditions: originality and flexibility”.

Meanwhile, the Nintendo 3DS continued to perform strongly with 6.4 million sold, beating out the 5.28 million SNES Classic Edition retro consoles bought during the course of the reporting year. As for Switch software, Nintendo increased the forecast to 53 million from 50 million.

The company made around 177,557 million yen in profit during this financial year.

On the digital download front, Nintendo saw sales revenue rise by 87 percent to 60.8 billion yen ($556.9 million), and described the performance of its digital business as “very good” – especially on the Nintendo Switch.