Nintendo Says 50% of Switch Owners in US Own Zelda, Mario Kart, and Odyssey

Last week the 2018 Game Awards were held, and winners were announced. Following the awards show Nintendo of America’s President Reggie Fils-Aime talked about some interesting factoids for Nintendo during the year. Nintendo Life reports that he talked about half of all Nintendo Switch owners in the US owning Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

Fils-Aime said, “Those three games continue to attach to hardware at better than 50 percent…Just think about that. For everyone who owns a system, more than one out of every two have 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.”

The question that keeps circling Nintendo is if the company can maintain the sales momentum it has had with its console and games as the market saturates and fewer people want a Switch. Fils-Aime thinks it can and has a plan to launch new franchises to continue to spur software and hardware sales.

“We’ve launched many systems, we’ve seen what works in driving a system forward…We’ve seen where we’ve lost momentum, and a critical component is having a great cadence of launches, and as you highlight, we have a number of key franchises teed up for next year…the other element is making sure that we also surprise with something that is completely unexpected, but brings new consumers into the platform. And that’s what Nintendo Labo was all about. And we’re going to be continuing to drive Nintendo Labo. The announcement we made in partnering with the Institute of Play, and leveraging the STEAM elements of those experiences, these are all part of the grand plan to continue making Nintendo Switch a very effective platform.”