April 27, 2017

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the nintendo Switch outsold the Switch itself.

Yes, Nintendo Switch has put up some impressive sales numbers in its first month on the market. No, that doesn't mean that the Switch will continue to perform at this same pace indefinitely. Because right now, the Nintendo Switch is still a Zelda machine, with very little else to recommend it to gamers who will want a variety of high-quality games to play on the platform, and only die-hard Nintendo and Zelda fans are buying.

From Kotaku:
In Japan, Nintendo sold 600,000 Switch units between March 3, when the hardware launched, and March 31, when the financial quarter ended. In the Americas, during that same period, 1.2 million Switch units were sold, while another 940,000 Switch units were sold in the region Nintendo calls “Other” (Europe, Australia, and beyond).
In total, Nintendo has sold 2.74 million Switch consoles worldwide in less than a month.
[...] Globally, Nintendo sold 2.76 million copies of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the Switch (including the Wii U version, the total is 3.84 million copies). That’s 390,000 copies of Breath of the Wild Switch for Japan (120,000 copies for the Wii U version), and 2.37 Switch copies overseas (960,000 Wii U copies).
Yes, you read that right. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the Switch actually outsold the Switch.
I don't have a horse in this race; I don't care whether the Switch succeeds or fails. I do, however, hate corporate hype on principle, and the Nintendo Switch hype machine has been running on overdrive for too long already. The unit looks interesting, but it isn't all that and a bag of chips; considering that the only game of any worth on the console is Zelda, I really don't understand why people are lining up to buy this thing, unless it's because they see other people lining up to buy this thing. 

Get a fucking grip, people. Wait for some more games to come out for the Switch, and for Switch stock levels to reach something like stable availability, and then decide if you want one of these. If you do, then great, enjoy it, but make an informed decision, rather than letting the hype overstimulate you into spending a few hundred dollars on a neat-looking brick that you'll barely use.