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Nintendo sold more copies of Zelda for Switch than actual Switch consoles

Nintendo sold more copies of Zelda for Switch than actual Switch consoles

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The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

It’s no surprise that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is the best-selling game on the Nintendo Switch, a console that just had its strongest US opening ever for the company. But managing to sell more copies than consoles that can actually play it? That’s what’s happened in the US, amazingly — Nintendo just announced that it sold 906,000 Switch consoles in March along with 925,000 copies of Breath of the Wild

The Wii U version moved almost 460,000 units on top of that, making for total sales of over 1.3 million. Breath of the Wild is now the fastest-selling Nintendo launch title of all time and the fastest-selling Legend of Zelda game ever. Nintendo says it thinks the Switch attach rate of more than 100 percent might be explained by people who bought a limited edition version to collect and a regular version to actually play, though another possibility is that some bought the game before they could find the console itself in stock.

“Nintendo is working to make sure everyone who wants a system is able to buy one,” the company says in a statement acknowledging the supply constraints, “and more systems are continually being shipped.” Nintendo will announce its earnings in a couple of weeks, which should give us a better idea of how the Switch has sold around the world and how it’s expected to grow this year. The company has already said it planned to ship 2 million units globally in March, and reportedly doubled its production plans for the current fiscal year to 16 million units.


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