The Holiday season is one that traditionally sees video game consoles selling in droves, and the Nintendo Switch in particular has seen high sales during this period since its launch. Unsurprisingly, that’s been the case this year as well. As revealed recently by the NPD Group, and then touted further by Nintendo in a press release, the Nintendo Switch was the highest selling console in the US in November 2021.
Collectively, the base Nintendo Switch, the Nintendo Switch Lite, and the Nintendo Switch OLED sold 1.13 million units in the region across the month, of which nearly 550,000 units were sold during the Thanksgiving and Black Friday week. Incredibly, this means the Switch has been the best-selling console in the US in 35 of the last 36 months (with the PS5 having outsold it in September 2021).
That said, hardware sales in general were down in the US during the month, which can be attributed to the significant supply constraints brought about by the global semiconductor shortage. As pointed out by Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad on Twitter, even with its aforementioned sales figures, the Switch still sold less than what it managed in November of 2020.
Meanwhile, the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S put together were “barely” able to sell as much as the Switch did. Interestingly, the combined sales of all three put together are lower than the combined sales of the PS4, Xbox One, and Wii U in November 2021- and the Wii U was a notoriously low-selling console, to put it mildly.
Last month, Nintendo admitted that due to the global chip shortage, it would be unable to produce enough Switch consoles to meet global demand during the Holiday period. Read more on that through here.
If you want to know how bad the supply situation is:
– The Switch sold less than November last year
– PS5 + Xbox barely = what Switch sold in total
– The PS4, XB1 and Wii U (yes Wii U) sold more in Nov 2014 than Switch + PS5 + Xbox Series in Nov 2021. https://t.co/pX6rpKb8Nk— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) December 13, 2021
