Nintendo’s latest game console is a hit: The Nintendo Switch has outsold the company’s previous flagship Wii U just 10 months after its introduction. Altogether, Ninendo has sold more than 14.86 million Switch units since its debut in March of 2017. The company sold around 12.5 million Wii U’s between 2012 and 2017.
For Nintendo, this is a remarkable turn-around reminiscent of the introduction of the original Wii back in 2006. In fact, earlier this month, news broke that the Switch had become the fastest-selling game console in the U.S. to date, handily outselling original Wii with 4.8 million vs. 4 million units moved over a ten-month span after each device’s introduction to U.S. consumers.
Nintendo sold 7.23 million Switch units during the holiday quarter alone. The company adjusted its financial guidance for Q1 in light of continued demand for the device upwards by 33%, and now expects to bring in an operating profit of 160 billion yen ($1.47 billion), as well as revenue of around 1 trillion yen ($9.38 billion).
All of this is good news for Nintendo, but the continued success may be a bit of a mixed bag for some media businesses. That’s because with the Switch, Nintendo returned to its gaming roots, and didn’t focus much on video streaming and other forms of media consumption. It’s still unclear whether the Switch will ever get a Netflix app, and Amazon Video and YouTube are still MIA as well. Only Hulu managed to launch an app on the device in November.
