It’s no secret that the Nintendo Switch’s success was bolstered by Nintendo’s slate of strong original titles, but we are finding out how instrumental games like Zelda: Breath of the Wild were in making the Switch a must-have console.
In an interview with IGN, Nintendo of America president and COO Reggie Fils-Aime revealed the Swtich accomplished a feat that no other console has ever managed to achieve. Half of Switch owners purchased the three big titles of 2017: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Super Mario Odyssey.
“Those three games continue to attach to hardware at better than 50 percent,” said Fils-Aime. “Just think about that. For everyone who owns a system, more than one out of every two bought Zelda, more than one out of every two have bought Kart, more than one out of every two have bought Odyssey. That’s never happened in U.S. video game history.”
As Fils-Aime puts it, that’s a major feat for Nintendo. To have three major original titles have such a correlation in the purchase of a console, that’s never happened before. It establishes that the games were the main reason customers purchased the Switch console.
On the other side of the coin, it also doesn’t hurt that those three games were universally praised, with Breath of the Wild winning Game of the Year at the 2017 Game Awards.
That success isn’t stopping just yet for Nintendo. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was just released and is selling just as well as those other games.
