Nintendo powers up as pandemic drives unprecedented console boom

Already on an upswing in early 2020, Nintendo and video games overall have ridden the waves of lockdowns in the coronavirus pandemic to become more popular and relevant than ever before.

A perennial paradigm-shifter, the Japanese gaming giant synonymous with Super Mario and Pokemon is accustomed to winning some and losing others; it’s been doing it in one form or another for more than 130 years.

The Nintendo Switch has been flying off the shelves during the pandemic.

After greatly expanding the game-playing audience with its accessible Wii and DS platforms in the 2000s and 2010s, it spring-boarded off the failed semi-portable Wii U to create the Nintendo Switch in 2017.

A hybrid home console and Game Boy that lets you play anywhere and has become a must-have for players of all ages and experience levels, the Switch now looks as though it may become the most popular hardware the company has produced.

At a recent quarterly earnings call, Nintendo said Switch had sold a total of 89.04 million units, surpassing sales of Sony’s PlayStation 3 to become the fifth best-selling home console ever, despite only being on the market for four years (the PS3 figure takes in 11 years of sales).

Nintendo expects Switch to break 100 million sold and supplant Wii as its greatest home console success by March 2022, though it still has a way to go to reach the heights of the portable DS, which shifted more than 150 million. Though older systems like the Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 are fondly remembered, Switch has sold more than both of them combined, thanks to gaming’s ever-growing popularity.

While Switch’s initial rise was down to new Mario and Legend of Zelda blockbuster games, as well as the ability to play many old and new games without being tied to a TV, the company’s earnings call also shone a light on the pandemic’s role in its success.

Sales for the quarter were down significantly year-on-year, but not because they were particularly low. Last year, Nintendo’s Animal Crossing game hit exactly as COVID-19 lockdowns took hold, giving players a much-needed escape and a playful tool for social interaction, leading to millions of Switch console sales.

That in turn means a larger install base for Nintendo games: the platform sold nearly 80 million software units in the final calendar quarter of 2020, and it had the strongest first quarter the Switch has seen in 2021.

Jess Zammit, a writer and researcher living in Sydney, said over the course of the pandemic she had noticed more and more of her friends and colleagues were starting to pick up controllers.

“It’s the first time that I’ve been able to talk to my co-workers about the games that I’m playing. They’re all psychology academics, and they used to all look at me weird like, ‘oh, whatever, Jess is off playing video games by herself’,” she said.

“But now I can have conversations with them, and we can play together like, ‘oh come to my Animal Crossing island’. It’s like this whole new level of connection with people that I couldn’t really connect with before.”

Jess Zammit with her Switch and PlayStation 5 controller. She says she’s working on tracking down an Xbox Series X.

And it’s not only Nintendo enjoying unprecedented success; the number of people playing video games on dedicated consoles has been growing in Australia and worldwide for years, despite claims as early as the mid-2000s that mobile and streaming tech would ruin the industry. And lockdowns have only accelerated the upwards climb.

The general lack of availability of 2020’s new next generation systems â€" the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X â€" may make it seem as though there aren’t many of the consoles in homes. In fact, the systems are selling faster than any of their predecessors. The frequently sold-out PS5 for example hit 10 million units sold last month, making it the second-fastest console to hit that milestone (behind only the Wii), and that’s despite supply chain issues and component shortages because of COVID-19.

The Xbox Series X, Series S and PlayStation 5.

Microsoft said last month the Series X â€" taken together with the cheaper and much more available Series S â€" were also the fastest-selling Xbox consoles ever, though it declined to give a sales number. Its previous fastest-selling system over the same period of time was the Xbox One at 5.7 million units, so it’s higher than that.

“A lot of people are coming back to gaming. People who might not have played since the Nintendo 64 or original Xbox, who might have skipped a few generations because they didn’t have the time to keep up the hobby,” Ms Zammit said.

“But a lot of the other commitments they had in their lives, they no longer have. They have to find something to do inside. I know quite a few people that have done that.”

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Tim is the editor of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald technology sections.

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