Nintendo’s Super Mario franchise is shaping up to deliver a holiday punch for the video-game maker’s Switch system — even as the company has encountered supply-chain constraints.
In the first five days of release, the new “Super Mario Odyssey” video game for the Nintendo Switch hybrid-handled game system sold more than 1.1 million units in the U.S. alone. That makes “Super Mario Odyssey” the fastest-selling game so far for Nintendo Switch, and it’s also the fastest-selling Super Mario game ever in the U.S., surpassing the “New Super Mario Bros. Wii” game, released in 2009.
Nintendo also touted positive reviews for “Super Mario Odyssey,” with an average 97 score (out of 100) on Metacritic.com — tied only with Nintendo Switch’s launch game, “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.”
The Kyoto-based company said it has increased production of Nintendo Switch to meet demand through the holidays. Nintendo has been expecting to run into supply issues leading up to the critical holiday-shopping season, Nintendo of America president and COO Reggie Fils-Aime said at Variety’s Entertainment and Technology Summit in September.
This week, Nintendo raised its projections for Switch shipments for its fiscal year ending March 2018 from 10 million to 14 million units. That would put the Nintendo Switch at 16.7 million units sold in its first year of release, on pace to exceed lifetime sales of the Nintendo Wii U, which shipped 13.6 million units total over five-year period. (The original Nintendo Wii sold more than 100 million units.)
Through the end of October, the company has sold more than 2.6 million Nintendo Switch systems in the U.S. since its March 2017 debut. Globally, it has sold 7.63 million Nintendo Switch consoles through the end of September.
“The public continues to respond positively to Mario’s latest adventure,” Fils-Aime said in a statement. “We’re also seeing sales momentum for Nintendo Switch thanks to an ever-growing catalog of games from large publishers and indie developers.”
Nintendo beat revenue and profit expectations for the September 2017 quarter. In announcing earnings Monday, the company raised operating profit outlook for the fiscal year ending March 2018 to $1.05 billion (120 billion yen) up from $570 million (65 billion yen).