Nintendo says that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was played by a quarter of new Switch owners on their first day with the console, noting that it and other first-party games were a driving force behind the system's sales this quarter.
That’s one of many figures shared about Nintendo’s first-party games during its Q4 financial report this week, and the company says it’s happy with the pace those games are setting at this point in the Switch’s lifespan across the board.
Between just January and March 2019, 26 percent of new Switch owners played Super Smash Bros. Ultimate during their first day of Switch ownership, just ahead of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (16 percent of players) and the Pokemon: Let’s Go games (13 percent).
The company says its seeing solid momentum for its first-party game lineup on the platform overall. For the quarter, sell-through of first-party Nintendo Switch titles has increased by 50 percent year-over-year. Looking at the full year ending March 31, 2019, Nintendo says first-party software sell-through rose by 70 percent year-over-year thanks in part to those sales “accelerating considerably” during the holiday season.
Nintendo notes that there’s been a trend where Switch versions of games tend to outperform past titles in their series, and that’s something it continues to see with the platform’s newer releases like Yoshi’s Crafted World. Another new release, New Super Mario Bros. U alone, sold over 1 million copies in just two weeks and has, as of the end of March, sold 2.5 million copies worldwide.
While software sales are outpacing hardware sales, Nintendo says that it's seeing a high level of sales per Switch unit. The company also says that monthly active users for Q4 has doubled year-over-year, something the company says means that players who picked up a Switch during the holiday season are spending time with the system even months later.
