Switch sales slump as Nintendo attributes the drop to a lack of "special" driving factors and the console's age, but don't worry, its successor will still be announced soon

The Nintendo Switch is in a bit of a sales slump according to Nintendo's latest financial results, but the company has been quick to remind everyone that, to be fair, the console is now almost eight years old.

Nintendo's latest financial report for the six-month period up to September 30, 2024 shows that the Switch isn't selling nearly as much as it once was. Year-on-year, sales for the full family of systems (including the OLED and Lite models) are down by 31%, coming in at 4.72 million units. As you'd expect based on that, year-on-year software sales are down, too – dropping by 27.6% to 70.28 million units. 

However, Nintendo has suggested plenty of reasons why this might be the case. For a start, the same period of the last fiscal year saw a huge boost in sales thanks to both The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (which also got its own special edition OLED console) as well as The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which "energized our dedicated video game platform business," the company explains. However, the first half of this fiscal year didn't have any "special factors" to drive sales in the same way, and perhaps more importantly, "with Nintendo Switch now in its eighth year since launch, unit sales of both hardware and software decreased significantly year-on-year."

There's no mention of the Switch's successor in the financial report documents, but VGC reports that Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa commented during a press conference yesterday that the plans to announce the next-generation hardware before the end of this fiscal year (basically, before April 1, 2025) haven't changed. While no further details were revealed, we're definitely getting closer and closer to that reveal. 

The company's financial results also confirm that it's changed its financial forecast for the remainder of the current fiscal year, with software sale expectations now down by five million units and hardware down by one million. While you can be sure that Switch 2 hopefuls might ponder deeply into what this might mean for the release of the next console, it seems more likely that this is in direct response to the recent sales dip, as Nintendo has also lowered its net sales and operating profit outlook "considering the sales trend through the six months ended September 30, 2024," it explains. VGC reports that after the publication of the results, Furukawa also said this, although he optimistically noted: "For a platform that is in its eighth year in the market, both hardware and software enjoy stable demand and brisk sales."

Analyst suggests the Nintendo Switch 2 could arrive before July 2025, and potentially cost less than the PS5 and Xbox Series X.