Nintendo Switch is the fastest selling home video console in US history

The Nintendo Switch has become the fastest selling home video console in US history in the 10-month period since its launch last year – despite supply problems for most of 2017.

Nintendo sold 4.8 million Switch units in the US since it was released in March 2017 through the beginning of this month.

The previous record holder was Nintendo’s Wii system, which sold 4 million units within the same 10-month timeframe.

“We believe that this is because the core proposition of Nintendo Switch, a home console that you can play anytime, anywhere, with anyone, is resonating with consumers,” said Reggie Fils-Aimé, president and chief operating officer of Nintendo of America. “It’s a whole new way to play video games, and a whole new way to think about what ‘home console’ means.”

Nintendo forecasts that it will ship almost 17 million Switch units by the time its financial year ends in March 2018, topping lifetime sales of the Wii U worldwide.

Nintendo also revealed the best performing games on the platform. Over half (55%) of Switch owners have the critically acclaimed Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, translating into sales of at least 2.64 million units, while over 60% of Switch owners have Super Mario Odyssey (2.88 million units).

Reggie Fils-Aimé told Forbes:

“A key tenet for the first ten months of Nintendo Switch was making sure we had a steady cadence of fantastic content.

“For calendar 2018 and beyond, our focus is the same. We need to make sure we’ve got a cadence of great content to motivate the consumer, and we’re going to continue to announce the details of those games in due time, and on a rolling basis.”

Since the company launched the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1983, it has sold more than 4.5 billion video games and more than 710 million hardware units worldwide. Hardware refers to the physical items in a computer system.