Nintendo impressively sold 17.4 million Switch consoles last year, making a close race with Sony's PlayStation 4 that sold 17.7 million units.
Although Sony PS4 ruled the sales last year, Nintendo's sales performance with the Sw.itch is extremely impressive for a console that is just less than 2 years old in the market.
Software Sales Help Sell Nintendo Switch
Nintendo sold 9.4 million units of Switch consoles from October to December, making it closer to Sony's sales for the same period. Nintendo has sold a total of 32.27 million units of Switch consoles as of Dec. 31, 2018.
The sales of software have also helped sell the Nintendo Switch consoles. The company reports that software sales have reached 52.51 million units in the last quarter of 2018, including its best-selling fighting game, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and both the role-playing games, Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu and Pokémon: Let's Go, Eevee.
With the encouraging figure from last year, Nintendo expects a good sales performance this year with the help of games such as Animal Crossing and Luigi's Mansion 3 among other titles.
However, even though Nintendo Switch recorded strong sales during the holidays last year, the gaming company is lowering its sales target for the next fiscal year from 20 million to 17 million consoles.
Sony PlayStation 4 Sales Dropped
Meanwhile, despite that the PlayStation 4 sales inches past its rival consoles, it does not mean that it is performing well in sales last year.
"Hardware sales dropped to 8.1 million units in the quarter," said chief financial officer Hiroki Totoki in the earnings briefing.
Sony reported that its profit in the gaming business dropped by 14 percent, which is affected by the significant slowdown of PS4 sales. Despite the slowdown in its PS4 sales, Sony remains optimistic about its gaming business with its huge install base.
With almost 92 million units sold of the PS4 to date and with more than 90 million monthly active users, Sony is confident of its sales this year. In addition, the PlayStation Plus subscribers have increased from 31.5 million as of December 2017 to 36.3 million members as of December 2018.
Overall, it was a close race for both Sony PS4 and Nintendo Switch. While Xbox One console did not sell as many numbers as its competitors in the past year, it also brought a good amount of revenue to Microsoft.
