Nintendo President Expects Switch Sales to Match The Wii's

More Nintendo news today, as president Tatsumi Kimishima continues to speak with various media outlets about their upcoming console. The surge of Switch news is unsurprising, given how this is Nintendo’s likely last shot at a console and they don’t want to be repeating any unfortunate mistakes from the Wii U, but still, it would have been nice if we’d gotten a drip-feed of this info, rather than a few months of silence followed by this torrent.

Anyway. More of that Nikkei interview was translated and released via Twitter, and this little bit is real interesting, so ya’ll should listen well and prepare a speculative chuckle, because according to Nintendo’s Japanese president, he expects the Nintendo Switch to match the sales of the Wii.

That’s… pretty ambitious, to say the least. The Wii has sold 101 million copies in its long, long lifespan, and not even the PS4 and Xbox One have managed to sell that much… combined. His reasoning is that, like the Wii, the switch offers an innovative new way to play, and while that’s true, the Wii was also casual-focused, exciting to non-gamers, exceptionally cheap, launched with a really fun tech demo that stood alone as a game, and had freaking medical applications. The Wii was, by comparison, a miracle machine… and they want to hit that mark?

I mean, shoot for the stars and everything, but don’t forget the nearest one is still a really, really long ways away.

But then, I can doubt as much as I like, but it won’t mean a thing if the console actually does sell well. And who knows? Maybe I’ll be surprised We’ll find out in about a month, come March 3rd. In the meantime, though, I think I’ll stay suspicious, even if I ultimately do have my fingers crossed.