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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Major Switch Titles Launch Aligned - December 2023 Update

Since Nintendo reveals quarterly shipment numbers and first party Switch games generally all have simultaneous wordwide releases, Switch is pretty much the perfect system to make a launch aligned games chart for. I more or less had it done already and was waiting for this quarterly report to get it fully up to date. I've split it into three tiers of titles, to avoid having too many lines in one chart:

The X-axis is shipments in millions, the Y-axis is months since launch. The dots are quarterly reports.

Full game titles (translating my abbreviations):

Spoiler!

Top Dogs:

  • BotW - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
  • MK8DX - Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
  • SMO - Super Mario Oddyssey
  • SSBU - Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
  • Sw/Sh - Pokémon Sword & Shield
  • AC:NH - Animal Crossing: New Horizons
  • Sca/Vio - Pokémon Scarlet & Violet
  • TotK - The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Heavyweights:

  • SMP - Super Mario Party
  • NSMBUDX - New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe
  • RFA - Ring Fit Adventure
  • 3D World - Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury
  • Superstars - Mario Party Superstars
  • BD/SP - Pokemon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl
  • Arceus - Pokémon Legends: Arceus
  • Splat 3 - Splatoon 3
  • Wonder - Super Mario Bros. Wonder

Middleweights:

  • Splat 2 - Splatoon 2
  • Let's Go - Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu & Eevee
  • SMM2 - Super Mario Maker 2
  • LM3 - Luigi's Mansion 3
  • 3D All-Stars - Super Mario 3D All-Stars
  • NS Sports - Nintendo Switch Sports
  • Kirby - Kirby and the Forgotten Land

I've used a very rough estimate of launch week shipments as the starting point on the chart to avoid every game starting at 0, which would be messy with so many lines and give an unrealistic sales trajectory for the first quarter. For this reason I've also aligned games that launched right at the end of a month to the next month (SMO, LM3, SMM2, MK8, Superstars, Arceus and NS Sports).

I plan to keep updating this for future quarters, but ofc since Nintendo only gives numbers for games that have sold over a million in the current fiscal year, we will probably only get numbers for some of these in some quarters.

These games are not up to date as of June 2023:

  • Ring Fit Adventure (Last update March 2023)
  • Pokémon Legends Arceus (Last update March 2023)
  • Pokémon Let's Go (Last update March 2023)
  • Pokémon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl (Last update September 2022)
  • Splatoon 2 (Last update March 2022)
  • Super Mario Maker 2 (Last update December 2021)
Last edited by UnderwaterFunktown - on 06 February 2024

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Great graphs. SSBU seems to have pretty great legs. Botw is just astonishing really.
I think we can expect several millions more for SMP as well



Awesome graphs. Love seeing the comparison.



I'm glad to see the sales of MK8D, it's going to end up beating Mario Kart Wii, which is not a small thing considering that game is still moving units to this day.

Also, I'm still mad at those meteoric Sw/Sh sales. All that controversy translating into the best launch of the franchise...



You know it deserves the GOTY.

Come join The 2018 Obscure Game Monthly Review Thread.

Darwinianevolution said:
I'm glad to see the sales of MK8D, it's going to end up beating Mario Kart Wii, which is not a small thing considering that game is still moving units to this day.

Also, I'm still mad at those meteoric Sw/Sh sales. All that controversy translating into the best launch of the franchise...

Did you expect the controversy to result in less sales? I mean, as a casual pokemon fan, I didn't care one bit about the so called controversy, I'm sure nobody who isn't a super hardcore pokemon fan cared at all. And for any hardcore pokemon fans, do you really think any of them would refuse to get the game just because of that?? They're still gonna buy the game because they are hardcore fans, they're just also gonna complain about it online. The only thing that mattered was it was the first core pokemon game for a console and its on the super popular Switch, so yeah its gonna sell like crazy.

The only way I'd say it was held back by the controversy, though really I'd say it was less about controversy that your regular gamer doesn't care about and more about just how the game didn't really do anything groundbreaking for the franchise. And that is just that it hasn't gotten the amazing word of mouth as say BotW, Odyssey, AC:NH, and so on did because Sw/Sh is really just an okay game, nothing to go around telling everyone its a must buy.



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Has Splatoon 2 sold 10 m?

EDIT://btw what game is SMP?



Spindel said:

Has Splatoon 2 sold 10 m?

EDIT://btw what game is SMP?

Super Mario Party



My bet with The_Liquid_Laser: I think the Switch won't surpass the PS2 as the best selling system of all time. If it does, I'll play a game of a list that The_Liquid_Laser will provide, I will have to play it for 50 hours or complete it, whatever comes first. 

Metallox said:
Spindel said:

Has Splatoon 2 sold 10 m?

EDIT://btw what game is SMP?

Super Mario Party

Thx realised that right after my edit :P



NightlyPoe said:
Minor error in the labeling I think. SSM2 should be SMM2, correct?

Nah it's the infamous Super Smash Maker 2 ofc!

But yea you're right, good eye. Will fix it right away.



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2024 OpenCritic Prediction Leagues:

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Slownenberg said:
Darwinianevolution said:
I'm glad to see the sales of MK8D, it's going to end up beating Mario Kart Wii, which is not a small thing considering that game is still moving units to this day.

Also, I'm still mad at those meteoric Sw/Sh sales. All that controversy translating into the best launch of the franchise...

Did you expect the controversy to result in less sales? I mean, as a casual pokemon fan, I didn't care one bit about the so called controversy, I'm sure nobody who isn't a super hardcore pokemon fan cared at all. And for any hardcore pokemon fans, do you really think any of them would refuse to get the game just because of that?? They're still gonna buy the game because they are hardcore fans, they're just also gonna complain about it online. The only thing that mattered was it was the first core pokemon game for a console and its on the super popular Switch, so yeah its gonna sell like crazy.

The only way I'd say it was held back by the controversy, though really I'd say it was less about controversy that your regular gamer doesn't care about and more about just how the game didn't really do anything groundbreaking for the franchise. And that is just that it hasn't gotten the amazing word of mouth as say BotW, Odyssey, AC:NH, and so on did because Sw/Sh is really just an okay game, nothing to go around telling everyone its a must buy.

After all of the controversy with the lack of content and corners cut, I expected SOME kind of negative reaction. Slightly lower sales, shorter legs, something. Instead not only it becomes a massively successful launch, it becomes the immediately crosses the 15 million mark that most Pokemon games need all of its lifetime to reach and it's going to end up becoming the second best seller in the franchise. This is sad because either the hardcore fans who said to boycott this bought it anyway, thus giving up on future games becoming better, or the casual base is so big it can more than compensate for the loss of the core base, thus making any kind of customer reaction powerless. Either way, GameFreak and The Pokemon Co. is just going to continue to degrade the series to sell more games faster and faster.



You know it deserves the GOTY.

Come join The 2018 Obscure Game Monthly Review Thread.