Nintendo Sees Multi-Switch Households As The Way To Topple Wii

Earlier this week, Nintendo shared its financial report for the third quarter in its 2021 fiscal year, showing that the Switch has managed nearly 80 million sales worldwide in its four-year lifespan thus far. That's enough to put the Switch ahead of every other home console Nintendo has ever released save for the Wii. The Wii managed to hit 101 million sales worldwide by the time it was discontinued, and now it seems like the Switch could one day surpass it.

While 20 million sales is a big goal to achieve – especially as the new consoles from Sony and Microsoft become widely available over the course of the next year – eventually surpassing the Wii doesn't seem like an outright impossible goal. As spotted by Nintendo Life, at least one of Nintendo's investors thinks the Switch can eclipse the Wii, asking the company in a Q&A session [PDF] following these financial results what it will take to get there.

"The cumulative sales volume for Nintendo Switch has reached approximately 80 million units and is now within range of the approximately 100 million units recorded by the Wii," the investor starts. "Going forward, what do you think is needed to continue to grow Nintendo Switch sales even further."

In his answer, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa confirmed that Nintendo's goal is indeed to "continue the momentum" the Switch found in 2020 (thanks in large part to the pandemic and the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons) to eventually "increase the cumulative sales volume to overtake that of Wii." Not only does Nintendo's plan involve releasing more system-selling games, but the company will also focus on creating multi-Switch households too.

"And our research has found that approximately 20% of the Nintendo Switch family sell-through between October and December 2020 in the main regions was due to demand for multiple systems within the same family," Furukawa continued. "We will aim to continue increasing our sales volume by rigorously responding to this kind of demand for multiple systems as well."

How Nintendo will rigorously respond to that demand is unknown, but having the Switch Lite on offer is definitely a good start. Still, the question of how Nintendo will specifically target households that already have a Switch is one that doesn't have an answer at this point – if that's something the company wants to do at all. We'll see if Nintendo launches any marketing campaigns geared toward households that already own a Switch in the future, so stay tuned for that.