| RolStoppable said: The first time they provided sales figures for Labo was in the briefing for Q1 of fiscal year 2018. Combined shipments for the Variety Kit and Robot Kit had reached 1.39m units as far as I remember. The figure barely moved upwards during the rest of the fiscal year. Despite the release of the Vehicle Kit, Labo didn't manage to cross 2m in calendar year 2018, so combined shipments during Q2 and Q3 of the fiscal year were under 0.61m. |
Still, 1.5 million is still pretty good for a single year. Not everything has to be a rapid selling mega hit to be profitable or successful.
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Considering that Nintendo's in-house development teams have the task to develop products that improve hardware sales, Labo has been unsuccessful and there's no way around it. The Labo series of games has been a failure because it couldn't meet its goal of bringing in new customers. Nintendo sugarcoats the shortcoming of Labo by pointing towards awards that were won, but they did forego to give Labo a holiday marketing push because they already knew that the money is much better spent on Super Mario Party, Pokémon: Let's Go and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Internally they had written off Labo long before the year 2018 had ended. It's doubtful that they will make any more sales figures of Labo public, simply because Labo isn't going to hit a new sales milestone. |
Labo was never designed to be a system selling killer app. It was always intended to be a niche product for a different market. Something Nintendo themselves said even before it launched. Even when it launch, there wasn't really a massive marketing push for it. And to your second point, Nintendo already has a bunch of system sellers on the Switch. Again, If their console was struggling, then I can see sales being held to a higher standard for New IP or Non-Franchise games. But the Switch is healthy in both hardware and software sales, Nintendo has the room to toy around with niche 1-2 million sellers, in adition to system sellers that do arrive.
