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Sales Data Updated sales numbers for Switch titles: Fire Emblem Engage (1.61M), Kirby's RtDL DX (1.46M), Metroid Prime Remastered (1.09M), and more

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The marketing + release plan for both MP:R and Engage were pretty clear indicators that measuring them up against Dread + Three Houses would be a fool's errand. Time of year, nature of the title itself, time between announcement and release... all indicators of the expectations Nintendo had for them being different than their predecessors.

Further, using them as measures of the health of the Switch is misguided. All of the following titles (might have missed some) are +5m sellers from last year...
  • Pokémon Scarlet/Violet - 22.10m
  • Pokemon Legends: Arceus – 14.83m
  • Splatoon 3 – 10.67m
  • Nintendo Switch Sports – 9.60m
  • Kirby and the Forgotten Land – 6.46m
Meanwhile this year, Zelda is the only dated title that anyone should expect to be in that category. These are just fundamentally different years, where evergreen + DLC are going to be what drive mainstream interest in the platform rather than big new titles with development efforts likely being redirected to the next platform.

There were plenty of "lower tier" titles last year, eg. XB3 and B3 selling under that 5M mark (hell, they were under 2M) with no cause for alarm. Same applies here.

EDIT: and I for one am glad that there's a place for these kind of titles in their line-up! Unreasonable sales expectations are the bane of the larger industry right now... I feel lucky to get different "tiers" of games within my favorite series :)
 
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I think the best way to look at Fire Emblem is that the floor of the series is still in a healthy place post-awakening, but that Three Houses did give more momentum to the series that Engage did not capitalize on, being something more in line with the 3DS games performance. So the series isn't in a bad place at all, but I do think it is fair to say that Engage may not have been the ideal follow up to Three Houses if they wanted to capitalize on what that game specifically brought to the table.
 
PixelKnight said:
Not really sure what’s unpleasant about pointing out the most common criticisms of Engage that are likely why, despite a hugely expanded Switch user base, it has very little word of mouth compared to TH and will likely end up selling just over half of what it’s predecessor does. Agree that the franchise is in a good place.
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Its not about the criticisms, those are more than valid and help give context. Its making Engage look like an albatross to the series when TH was the outlier. However thanks to both entries we can sorta have a ceiling/floor for the franchise given that one game had wayyy better woh than the other.
 
totofogo said:
The marketing + release plan for both MP:R and Engage were pretty clear indicators that measuring them up against Dread + Three Houses would be a fool's errand. Time of year, nature of the title itself, time between announcement and release... all indicators of the expectations Nintendo had for them being different than their predecessors.

Further, using them as measures of the health of the Switch is misguided. All of the following titles (might have missed some) are +5m sellers from last year...
  • Pokémon Scarlet/Violet - 22.10m
  • Pokemon Legends: Arceus – 14.83m
  • Splatoon 3 – 10.67m
  • Nintendo Switch Sports – 9.60m
  • Kirby and the Forgotten Land – 6.46m
Meanwhile this year, Zelda is the only title that anyone should expect to be in that category. These are just fundamentally different years, where evergreen + DLC are going to be what drive mainstream interest in the platform rather than big new titles with development efforts likely being redirected to the next platform.

There were plenty of "lower tier" titles last year, eg. XB3 and B3 selling under that 5M mark (hell, they were under 2M) with no cause for alarm. Same applies here.

EDIT: and I for one am glad that there's a place for these kind of titles in their line-up! Unreasonable sales expectations are the bane of the larger industry right now... I feel lucky to get different "tiers" of games within my favorite series :)
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Nah, I beleive pikmin 4 can sell 50 million copies.

Either way though, new dk, 2d Mario and animal crossing party game all clear 10mil if those are coming this year.
 
SirArthur said:
Its not about the criticisms, those are more than valid and help give context. Its making Engage look like an albatross to the series when TH was the outlier. However thanks to both entries we can sorta have a ceiling/floor for the franchise given that one game had wayyy better woh than the other.
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Engage is an albatross to the series though. Its sales are entirely due to its own failings, and there's no way it doesn't fall far short of fates.
It would take a miracle for it to even get close to awakening, and that game had to dig the series out of the sales gutter single handedly while engage should have had it handed to it on a silver platter thanks to the series continued growth from awakening to fates to three houses. Instead, it might be facing a more than 50% drop off.

In any case, you can count the number of Nintendo games that didn't see significant growth on the switch Vs the prior platform on a single hand, and it's rather telling how badly engage came across for it to be joining that club, if not outright being the president of it.
 
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totofogo said:
oh me too don't you worry


yah, I was working with what we know for now though
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Mhm

But being serious for a second I think pikmin 4 has a lot of potential. There is a lot of interest i nthe franchsie I feel, for such a small franchise the metrics it gets are insane, usually I don’t factor them but like this is on another level. If pikmin 4 can have some sort of vitality with how the pikmin are coded to behave I think it can pull 5mil.

Same with rhythm heaven but to a lesser extent, it’s Nintendo’s least dead dead franchise.
 
Djehuty said:
But being serious for a second I think pikmin 4 has a lot of potential. There is a lot of interest i nthe franchsie I feel, for such a small franchise the metrics it gets are insane, usually I don’t factor them but like this is on another level. If pikmin 4 can have some sort of vitality with how the pikmin are coded to behave I think it can pull 5mil.
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Yeah, I see it getting a Switch bump. 3 Deluxe already brought us from the 1m range to the 2m range. So, I was expecting somewhere around 3-4m, but if they go all in on marketing could see a 4-5m
 
WestEgg said:
I think the best way to look at Fire Emblem is that the floor of the series is still in a healthy place post-awakening, but that Three Houses did give more momentum to the series that Engage did not capitalize on, being something more in line with the 3DS games performance. So the series isn't in a bad place at all, but I do think it is fair to say that Engage may not have been the ideal follow up to Three Houses if they wanted to capitalize on what that game specifically brought to the table.
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Engage was very purposely different from Three Houses for several reasons, in part because it was developed as an anniversary celebration title and in part because the devs deliberately wanted to make something different in tone and feel from Three Houses. It wasn't about capitalizing on the success of Three Houses as much as experimenting with what Fire Emblem can be.
 
My main thought about the last year of so software wise is that there seems to have been a moderate trickle of enthusiast gamers losing engagement with the platform, probably due to it's age along with new platforms releasing, so we are seeing most of the new software with lowered performance. Not enough to significantly impact evergreens or bigger tentpoles, which are being driven by casual and mainstream Switch buyers/owners, but the smaller/niche titles are getting hurt a bit. I'd imagine that will continue until new hardware comes around, as right now there's a contingent of gamers more focused on putting their money into the shiny new ecosystem of the PS5. I'd assume the emulation situation doesn't really help.

Regarding Prime specifically, given how it popped on the March NPD/Circana chart, I'd assume the physical shortages hurt that release a bit, along with it's weird shadow drop marketing. Hopefully it has some decent legs, but it's Metroid, so I'm not super optimistic there.
 
totofogo said:
Yeah, I see it getting a Switch bump. 3 Deluxe already brought us from the 1m range to the 2m range. So, I was expecting somewhere around 3-4m, but if they go all in on marketing could see a 4-5m
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I actually looked at the video views and found more than I expected.
59mil, 34mil, 12 mil, 25mil,7mil it’s a lot for a tiny franchise. It’s mostly the shorts but this shows more than anything these should be regularly released around pikmin 4 to drum up hype.
 
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Instro said:
My main thought about the last year of so software wise is that there seems to have been a moderate trickle of enthusiast gamers losing engagement with the platform, probably due to it's age along with new platforms releasing, so we are seeing most of the new software with lowered performance. Not enough to significantly impact evergreens or bigger tentpoles, which are being driven by casual and mainstream Switch buyers/owners, but the smaller/niche titles are getting hurt a bit. I'd imagine that will continue until new hardware comes around, as right now there's a contingent of gamers more focused on putting their money into the shiny new ecosystem of the PS5. I'd assume the emulation situation doesn't really help.

Regarding Prime specifically, given how it popped on the March NPD/Circana chart, I'd assume the physical shortages hurt that release a bit, along with it's weird shadow drop marketing. Hopefully it has some decent legs, but it's Metroid, so I'm not super optimistic there.
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the increase profit from digital sales kinda puts a hole in this theory though. If that was the case they should be going down, not up
 
Hailinel said:
Engage was very purposely different from Three Houses for several reasons, in part because it was developed as an anniversary celebration title and in part because the devs deliberately wanted to make something different in tone and feel from Three Houses. It wasn't about capitalizing on the success of Three Houses as much as experimenting with what Fire Emblem can be.
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Yeah, and that's totally fair. I know a lot of classic fans were happy that Engage seemed to be a return to form after not liking what Three Houses offered. I just don't think it's the strategy I would have gone with if it were my choice (though this was likely set in motion before Three Houses blew up anyway).
 
Again, you all are here talking about how disappointing Engage's sales is while I'm over here rooting for Re-Boot Camp making at least 300k. FE will be fine. Even if the rumored FE4 remake doesn't light the world on fire, they're probably taking into account what worked and what didn't work for the games.

Clearly this means that Edelgard will be in every game from now on for infinite discourse /s
 
curl-6 said:
That's 3.07 million for the quarter, 17.97 million for the last FY, 15 million forecast for this FY.

Updated software numbers:

  • Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - 53.79m
  • Animal Crossing: New Horizons - 42.21m
  • Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - 31.09m
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 29.81m (Switch version only)
  • Pokémon Sword/Shield - 25.82m
  • Super Mario Odyssey - 25.76m
  • Pokémon Scarlet/Violet - 22.10m
  • Super Mario Party - 19.14m
  • New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 15.41m
  • Ring Fit Adventure - 15.38m
  • Pokemon Legends: Arceus – 14.83m
  • Luigi’s Mansion 3 – 12.82m
  • Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury – 11.38m
  • Splatoon 3 – 10.67m
  • Mario Party Superstars – 10.17m
  • Nintendo Switch Sports – 9.60m
  • Kirby and the Forgotten Land – 6.46m
  • Mario Strikers: Battle League – 2.54m
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 3 – 1.86m
  • Fire Emblem Engage - 1.61m
  • Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe - 1.46m
  • Metroid Prime Remastered - 1.09m
  • Bayonetta 3 - 1.07m
Total Software: 1.03615 Billion

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

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/software/index.html
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Ah, i always love these financial reports. Very interesting information to see. Nothing groundbreaking here though.

I guess the main headlines are the no hardware thing, which i find to be totally reasonable, sometime in 2024 is what i expected, and the 15 million number of Switches they want to pump out this fiscal year. I know that it's ambitious, but i think that if they play their cards right they could very well pull it off. The Mario movie should generate some interest in the Switch, it could motivate new people to buy it alongside Mario games. Of course Zelda TOTK will most likely help too, and who knows what they have got planned for the rest of the year? So yes, i do think 15 million is possible.
 
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WestEgg said:
Yeah, and that's totally fair. I know a lot of classic fans were happy that Engage seemed to be a return to form after not liking what Three Houses offered. I just don't think it's the strategy I would have gone with if it were my choice (though this was likely set in motion before Three Houses blew up anyway).
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Engage is my personal favourite fire emblem so I can attest to that, I care more about the gameplay than the rest.

But again I’ll reiterate my bandaid to be ripped off anology.

This was developed at the same time as 3h so when that came out and they saw it’s success they would have to Bassicaly restart dev for engage which I guess they didn’t find worth it, so they saved it for an emptier month and released it and then rapid fired the dlc out to move onto the next project, engage feels like a passion project anyway, I’m happy with it and it did what it set out to do, but now it’s up to the next fire emblem to recover from it.

Also this is just my opinion but saying, they could only dream of this number x years ago is extremly reductive of this discussion, it comes off as deflection, old fe and current fe are not comparable, out of awakening, fates three houses, and engage, engage will probably be the worst selling by a not so insignificant amount. Comparing it to products for a bygone era just makes it look worse actually. It’s just not an apt comparison.
 
WestEgg said:
Yeah, and that's totally fair. I know a lot of classic fans were happy that Engage seemed to be a return to form after not liking what Three Houses offered. I just don't think it's the strategy I would have gone with if it were my choice (though this was likely set in motion before Three Houses blew up anyway).
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As a longtime FE fan, the "return to form" comments will always confuse me. Which form of FE are they talking about?
 
Lugia667 said:
yeah let's be clear before awakening, Nintendo would have never dreamed of seeing Engage's numbers lol
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Yeah, but this goes both ways. Engage is the kind of game that would have continued the series languishing in sales mediocrity if it was some kind of weird alternate reality where this was what was released immediately following the two DS remakes.
 
Prime definitely ain't disappointing. 1.1 million for a shadowdropped remaster in about a month and a half is great. it's gunna have legs through the year. If Prime 4 gets announced for this year that'll help too.

As much as I think Engage sucks, for a Fire Emblem game 2 months on the market I don't think 1.6 million is anything to complain about either.

I continue to be astounded by Pokemon Legends Arceus not blowing the lid off the place. Thought that would've been 20+ million easy.

Xenoblade 3 is kind of a funny situation. I wonder what Nintendo's expectations are for that series. They take a few years to make and don't really cross that 2 million mark. They must be doing okay, but I wonder if Nintendo expected more.

Inflation rising since the new year probably hampered some software sales at least in the US but overall still a pretty great quarter, despite showing some obvious signs of slowdown. Really wonder now how TOTK will debut. It'll have a great year overall but I wonder how frontloaded it'll be for the middle of May.
 
WestEgg said:
Yeah, and that's totally fair. I know a lot of classic fans were happy that Engage seemed to be a return to form after not liking what Three Houses offered. I just don't think it's the strategy I would have gone with if it were my choice (though this was likely set in motion before Three Houses blew up anyway).
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I mean the maps felt better than 3 Houses but everything else 3 Houses did better. I just really couldn't connect with the characters in Engage and I had no urge to finish the game. I wasn't engaged in it! I was just going through the paces and that really disappointed me because I think I came into the game more positive than most here did lol.
 
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Christo750 said:
Xenoblade 3 is kind of a funny situation. I wonder what Nintendo's expectations are for that series. They take a few years to make and don't really cross that 2 million mark. They must be doing okay, but I wonder if Nintendo expected more.
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Well, in the Switch's life alone, we've gotten Xenoblade 2, Torna, Xenoblade: Definitive Edition, Xenoblade 3, and Future Redeemed.

That's like 3 major releases in just a few years, all selling over a million. Some closer to 2 million. Monolith has a consistent release output alongside assisting with Nintendo's biggest releases.

I would hope Nintendo would be happy with this situation.
 
totofogo said:
The marketing + release plan for both MP:R and Engage were pretty clear indicators that measuring them up against Dread + Three Houses would be a fool's errand. Time of year, nature of the title itself, time between announcement and release... all indicators of the expectations Nintendo had for them being different than their predecessors.

Further, using them as measures of the health of the Switch is misguided. All of the following titles (might have missed some) are +5m sellers from last year...
  • Pokémon Scarlet/Violet - 22.10m
  • Pokemon Legends: Arceus – 14.83m
  • Splatoon 3 – 10.67m
  • Nintendo Switch Sports – 9.60m
  • Kirby and the Forgotten Land – 6.46m
Meanwhile this year, Zelda is the only dated title that anyone should expect to be in that category. These are just fundamentally different years, where evergreen + DLC are going to be what drive mainstream interest in the platform rather than big new titles with development efforts likely being redirected to the next platform.

There were plenty of "lower tier" titles last year, eg. XB3 and B3 selling under that 5M mark (hell, they were under 2M) with no cause for alarm. Same applies here.

EDIT: and I for one am glad that there's a place for these kind of titles in their line-up! Unreasonable sales expectations are the bane of the larger industry right now... I feel lucky to get different "tiers" of games within my favorite series :)
Click to expand...
Wow. This really shows how much of a juggernaut Pokemon is, even though we're this late into the Switch's life. I wonder if GF will make another Pokemon game for the Switch in '24 or '25? I'm sure it could sell around 15 million copies (or more) even if it would release in Holiday 2024, for example.
 
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meatbag said:
TTYD maybe but I have my doubts about F-Zero selling better even with a more substantial promotional push.
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I don't see how more marketing wouldn't help it sell better.
Dardan Sandiego said:
lol
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1d2dd2aff944499d0be0b7eeed2b082b.jpg

ILikeFeet said:
a million units for a shadow dropped, physically constrained budget release sounds damn good
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Prime 1 selling a million in a month isn't bad, no doubt it's considered a success internally. But after Dread sold over 3m it seems like a bit of an underperformance when it could have done a bit better.
 
Comparing Dread sales to Prime isn't exactly a perfect match. Yes, they're both Metroid, but one is a brand new side-scrolling Metroidvania and the other is a remaster of a twenty-year-old first-person title.
 
Apopheniac said:
Part of me wonders how much the strength of evergreens versus new core titles comes down to teenagers wanting to save their allowance for Zelda
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to invert this, one explanation for weaker sales of core titles could be a lack of major "tentpole" releases in the last six months outside of Pokémon that drive broader interest in the platform, which could suggest that core title performance could recover somewhat after TotK launches
 
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Lugia667 said:
I will say it's no wonder they are reluctant to do anything with f-zero. I sometimes feel like these vocal fandoms may be just that
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Jesus, you're saying this because a GameCube remaster of a game that has been re-released multiple times sold over a million copies?
 
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totofogo said:
Unreasonable sales expectations are the bane of the larger industry right now...
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Ain’t that the truth

MrBones said:
I don't see how more marketing wouldn't help it sell better.
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I guess it’s more of a question how much more will it sell with more marketing.

Djehuty said:
engage feels like a passion project anyway, I’m happy with it and it did what it set out to do, but now it’s up to the next fire emblem to recover from it
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Sometimes it’s fine for creators to not chase after infinite growth, yeah? Engage is fine, it won’t hurt the next FE, far from it. And again 3H is selling well anyway, so there’s your possible ceiling.
 
Hailinel said:
Comparing Dread sales to Prime isn't exactly a perfect match. Yes, they're both Metroid, but one is a brand new side-scrolling Metroidvania and the other is a remaster of a twenty-year-old first-person title.
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it is extremely funny to me to think of Metroid sales as following similar historical trends to Mario in microcosm, in which core audiences acclaim 3D entries more highly while the 2D entries sell more, on the console for which Super Mario Odyssey has reversed that trend
 
MondoMega said:
It's that time again. The final 3DS and Wii U increases, alongside all the Switch increases. NSMBUDX jumping back into the Top 10 before the Mario Movie sale even comes into play is shocking.
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Scarlet/violet about to suck the life out of gold and silver on that chart is incredibly depressing to see man

Least PMD DX is nearing 2 million ever so slowly: gives me hope for a PMD2 DX of some sort or at least more retail Pokemon Spinoffs
 
totofogo said:
The marketing + release plan for both MP:R and Engage were pretty clear indicators that measuring them up against Dread + Three Houses would be a fool's errand. Time of year, nature of the title itself, time between announcement and release... all indicators of the expectations Nintendo had for them being different than their predecessors.

Further, using them as measures of the health of the Switch is misguided. All of the following titles (might have missed some) are +5m sellers from last year...
  • Pokémon Scarlet/Violet - 22.10m
  • Pokemon Legends: Arceus – 14.83m
  • Splatoon 3 – 10.67m
  • Nintendo Switch Sports – 9.60m
  • Kirby and the Forgotten Land – 6.46m
Meanwhile this year, Zelda is the only dated title that anyone should expect to be in that category. These are just fundamentally different years, where evergreen + DLC are going to be what drive mainstream interest in the platform rather than big new titles with development efforts likely being redirected to the next platform.

There were plenty of "lower tier" titles last year, eg. XB3 and B3 selling under that 5M mark (hell, they were under 2M) with no cause for alarm. Same applies here.

EDIT: and I for one am glad that there's a place for these kind of titles in their line-up! Unreasonable sales expectations are the bane of the larger industry right now... I feel lucky to get different "tiers" of games within my favorite series :)
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self reply because I forgot to mention wrt evergreen titles.... the Mario Movie is a massive part of Nintendo's plan this year lol. Another reason why using two expected lower-tier titles as a measure of Switch success is silly.
 
XC2 likely benefitted more from Torna than XC3 will from FR, if only because Torna is a standalone release that doesn't require any other Xenoblade game as prerequisite to play
 
Lord Azrael said:
Isn't that their point? Releasing early = better legs
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As a general point, I think a lot of people also forget how multiple games of a series sell on the same console since game development time is so long now that typically you only get one installment per generation.

Take Final Fantasy on PS1. 8 sold significantly less than 7, and 9 sold significantly less 8. Maybe there were a lot of hot takes on early internet sites over 20 years ago about the downfall of Final Fantasy, but sales bounced back for 10 on the PS2.
 
Dark Cloud said:
Oh wow remember Nintendo released Skyward Sword at the end of the Wii’s life. “Momentum”
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I've played none so this is purely a sales POV but
you cannot compare SS to the sequel to BOTW
TOTK will be triple Skyward Sword's lifetime sales in like 3 days
 
Regulus Tera said:
Miffed that we only get updates for the titles that got more than a million in the period. I wanna know if Tropical Freeze finally dethroned Returns as the best-selling DKC game since the buyout.
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We'll get those most likely in Summer with the CESA White Paper.
 
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Apopheniac said:
it is extremely funny to me to think of Metroid sales as following similar historical trends to Mario in microcosm, in which core audiences acclaim 3D entries more highly while the 2D entries sell more, on the console for which Super Mario Odyssey has reversed that trend
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The Prime series has always outsold the mainline series though.
 
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Oh wow. Luigi's Mansion 3 has outsold Super Mario Galaxy?!? :eek:

Would have never conceived of such a thing being possible just a couple years ago. I wonder if it can get all the way to 13 mil at this rate? maybe?

It's really interesting to me how Nintendo currently have these two polar opposite success stories living in the same general range that used to be the ceiling for Animal Crossing and 3D Mario games pre-Switch era, with both Splatoon(Totally new IP, celebrated primarily for it's multiplayer focus but also has a single-player campaign, over night success story, bigger in Japan but still a global success) and Luigi's Mansion(spin-off of a long running existing Nintendo brand, celebrated primarily for it's single-player focus but also has multiplayer, took a decade for them to invest in it seriously, bigger hit globally but still a success in Japan).

Both of which also happen to be totally unique takes on genres not traditionally associated with Nintendo at all, one a third-person shooter and the other a survival horror.

All this and they are also both only on their third main entry, with plenty of untapped potential to grow and change with time.

I have no idea who greenlit the original Splatoon or the revival of the Luigi's Mansion series, but kudos to them. They were absolutely right, and honestly, they have earned the right to be extremely smug about it.

Now add the Professor and Polterpup to Mario Kart and King Boo to Smash already dagnabbit!
 
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