It’s no secret that the Nintendo Switch has enjoyed rampant success over the course of its ten months, but now it has officially passed the lifetime sales of its predecessor, the Wii U. While not a hard to achieve goal by any means due to the latter’s commercial failure, the Switch has bolstered Nintendo’s operating profit margin considerably from just last year.

In terms of pure facts and figures, Nintendo has sold 14.86 million Switch consoles over its ten-month lifespan, 7.23 million of which came in the last three months of 2017. This has surpassed the Wii U’s 13.56 million units sold, accumulated throughout its 4-year shelf life before discontinuation.

Of course, this has resulted in Nintendo’s most profitable quarter since 2009, even boosting its operating profit by 32.26 billion yen from just last year as the company sits at 116.50-billion-yen profit (approximately £755m/$1.07 billion). Even more impressive is that this is a 261 percent year-over-year increase.

While much of the success of the Switch might be able to be attributed to its innovative portable design as it blends the best of the handheld and home console worlds, Nintendo’s recent success primarily comes from its first-party titles. This is nothing new for Nintendo, but Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild have proven particularly strong even for their respective series.

Super Mario Odyssey is the most popular title on the Switch, accounting for 9.07 million sales of the consoles total 47 million video game sales. Wii U port, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe takes second place at 7.33 million units so far and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is actually in third with its 6.7 million sales.

Considering the Nintendo Switch has yet to receive the traditional Virtual Console functionality to play classic titles, on-demand video applications and major first-party titles from its Pokémon and Metroid series, there’s plenty more to come from the console in the next few years.

KitGuru Says: In fact, it’s difficult to believe that the console has experienced such immense success in comparison to its predecessor even without these core features we’ve come to expect from a modern day console. Then again, even if I am getting impatient at the lack of them, I can’t deny the current first-party titles are incredibly enjoyable. Do you own a Switch? What are you looking forward to for the console?

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