Last month was pretty good for Nintendo. Along with releasing Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which is already the second highest selling game of 2020 behind Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in the US, it’s also seen record Switch sales. According to The NPD Group on VentureBeat, the console sold over twice as much as March 2019, setting a new all-time record in March for unit sales in hardware.
Overall hardware spending came in at $461 million, which is a 63 percent increase over last year. The Xbox One and PS4 hardware sales were up by 25 percent, which is also good. But ultimately, the first quarter of the year belongs to the Switch, which had the highest unit sales for a first quarter on any platform since the Nintendo DS back in Q1 2010.
NPD Group analyst Mat Piscatella also provided an update on total tracked spending for hardware, software, accessories and game cards, which came to $1.6 billion. “Year-to-date 2020 tracked spending across video game hardware, software, and accessories and game cards totaled $3 billion, declining 4 percent when compared to a year ago.” Overall, it’s not bad considering the slump that the industry was witnessing in January and February.
The question now is whether that momentum can continue, especially with the Xbox Series X and PS5 still a ways off (if they release this year at all). Stay tuned for more details, as always.
