The Nintendo Switch ended its first calendar year in the US on a very strong note, selling 1.5 million units in the month of December, and becoming the highest selling system of the month in the country in the process. This, in spite of it having absolutely no discounts, and being far more expensive than the PS4 or Xbox One.
Interestingly enough, the Nintendo 3DS, which had its seventh Holiday on the market, ended up with a remarkably strong showing as well, with 750,000 units sold in the US in December. This represents a YoY and MoM increase, and also was probably aided by the release of Pokemon Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon, and also the New Nintendo 2DS XL model.
Put together, the Switch, 3DS, and SNES Classic Mini accounted for half of all hardware sales in December in the US. Nintendo software was no slouch either- on the individual format charts, ranked on a unit sale basis, Nintendo had almost all its major software rank- Super Mario Odyssey at No. 3, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe at No. 4, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild at No. 9 and Splatoon 2 at No. 16. Additionally, Pokémon Ultra Sun and Pokémon Ultra Moon for Nintendo 3DS finished No. 13 and No. 14, respectively.
So, yeah. It looks like Nintendo is well and truly back, ad strongly crushing all competition right now. Let’s see how the PS4 and Xbox One plan to counter it- the release of Monster Hunter World this month may be able to help…