Nintendo’s return to form with the Switch has truly been something to behold- the company has broken all sorts of records with the system since it launched (it is the fastest selling console of all time in USA, Canada, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and Japan), and has managed to outsell the Wii U’s entire lifetime sales in less than ten months.
This has resulted in almost 15 million units sold in less than a year- which means the Switch is already over a third of it way to covering the lifetime sales of the Xbox One so far. Apparently, Nintendo will continue their gains on Xbox this year, because market analysis firm IHS Markit expects Nintendo to have a larger market share than Xbox in 2018; that said, they expect PlayStation to continue to lead on that front for now.
The interesting thing is that while Nintendo’s success with the Switch so far has been independent of the performances of PS4 and Xbox One, this year, IHS expects spending on PS4 and Xbox One to slow down as a result of increased spending on Switch- which, I suppose, also makes sense given that PS4 and Xbox One are entering the last legs of their life cycles, while the Switch enters its first.
No matter how things play out, the state of the gaming industry will be very interesting to observe over the coming months, that’s for sure.
[via GamesIndustry]