While analysts have said that investors might have started believing that Nintendo Switch 2 sales might be slowing down, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa believes the opposite. During a Q&A following the company’s recent earnings report, Furukawa spoke about how the early success of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake is evidence of the fact that the Nintendo Switch 2 is just getting started. He also pointed to the success of titles like Pokemon Pokopia to make his point.
“Adoption has progressed smoothly over the roughly one and a half years since Nintendo Switch 2 launched last June, and the installed base now exceeds 25 million units. At the end of last year’s holiday season, we explained that there were regional differences in how well our expectations were met. But the March release of Pokemon Pokopia acted as a driver of global hardware sales, and we entered the new fiscal year with good momentum.”
As for Ocarina of Time Remake, he noted that its release has been “very positive” for the company and that it has already “contributed to strong sales in various regions.” Furukawa went on to say that the game is already “off to a great start”, and that Nintendo is ready for the upcoming Holiday season, noting that the company is in “good shape” for it. The Holiday season is going to be particularly important for Nintendo, according to Furukawa, since it tends to involve massive amounts of units being shipped.
“Holiday season sales significantly impact the number of units shipped annually for our dedicated video game platform business. Given the hardware price revisions, we think the sales trends over the next several weeks will be key to achieving our sales guidance.”
The success of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake is well worth noting, since the company has confirmed earlier this week that it has already sold more than 5.2 million copies in just four days. This has the added effect of making the title the biggest launch for the Nintendo Switch 2 so far. While a remake of a game many consider to be one of the greatest of all time would likely end up doing quite well, the fact that Nintendo has also introduced a few changes to make the overall experience smoother certainly helps.
In our review, we gave Ocarina of Time Remake a score of 10 out of 10 thanks to the fact that it retains the original’s impeccable core gameplay design, while also bringing in great and detailed graphics as well as good performance on the hardware. Our only issue with it was that Nintendo didn’t quite deviate from the original enough.
As for the Nintendo Switch 2, Furukawa has also confirmed that the company isn’t planning any more price hikes for the console, at least for now. This announcement came in light of the company reporting declining profits in the last quarter due to lower hardware sales. The overall decline has been around 16 percent, amounting to ¥73.9 billion (roughly $468 million).
