What were GBA's first year numbers?

It is a shame Nintendo did that to the GBA, it might have gotten a lot more games and broke more records, had they not taken it out back so early in its life.

I myself enjoyed the GBA SP more than the DS. I know they did it because the PSP threatened their golden goose (the handheld gaming market cash cow they kept milking), if only things had played out differently...

In some ways, the Nintendo Switch is like the Game Boy Ultra we never got. So, I am very pleased with that.

:)

They shipped around 17 million units in its first year or so. I don't think that exact monthly or yearly sales numbers exist, therefore it is impossible to compare those two.  

Now I am wondering if Nintendo Switch can ship 17 million by March 3rd...

:P

Too bad public data on older consoles is still so limited. :/

I wish companies were more transparent with their sales data... or at the very least their 10+ year old sales data. (like declassified government info after it is so old)

GBA launched in March 2001 in Japan and June 2001 in America/Europe.

It shipped just over 18 million by the end of March 2002 so ~12 months in Japan and ~9 months in the West.

There's some decent data here (second link of the three):

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/historical_data/index.html

It's still only broken down by financial year, but it gives you a good idea of how GBA performed. It opened pretty strong (about 18ish million shipped in a little over a year) but it also never substantially exceeded that in subsequent years.

Well those number are interesting to look at.

What is curious is how Game Boy + Game Boy Color were fairly successful in each region having a fairly equal share of sales; where as, with the Game Boy Advance it was extremely lopsided in the Americas being the region upholding over half of the GBA's hardware and Software sales all by itself.

I wonder how that effected its strange worldwide sales curve of having both Year 1 and Year 3 as peaks and Year 2 and Year 4 as down years, where as the Americas alone had a normal sales curve peaking in Year 3, Japan's sales curve Peaked in Year 1 and was down hill its whole life, and the rest of the world seems to have a dip in Year 2 as well.

I wonder why the discrepancy in sales curves among the regions... We know the DS killed its tail, but the GBA's launch curve seems weird looking at it.

Yeah, the GBA was an odd one in that it had peaks at different times in different parts of the world (unlike most consoles where popularity usually peaks at a similar time worldwide).

The main reason I posted this here, though, was so people could get a clearer idea of how GBA performed in relation to Switch. Their early sales were reasonably similar, but Nintendo is already planning to ship more Switches next financial year than GBA ever managed, so if Switch isn't outpacing GBA (which is a little unclear), it almost certainly will be soon.

Well I still see the PS4 selling more overall due to sheer longevity of PlayStation systems. Let's face it it will pass Wii so the real battle will be between Switch and PS4 to see who can get closer to PS2 although I have already predicted the Switch to top out around 65 million. I would like to see a Total company sales charts. The Wii DS and GAB should give Sony a run for its money.

THANK YOU. I really find it funny how people just ignore the handheld market all the damn time like it doesn't count ? It's like the Vita and the PSP never excited and also nintendo handhelds..

Sure Nintendo doesn't have always tremendous success in the home console department, but their handhelds have legendary longevity. Switch can easily take up to the Nintendo handheld lifestyle and Nintendo is planning to market the console as one per person (so more of a handheld basically). 

But we'll see. 

Week 46 is up, 230k for the Switch