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Switch shipments will near 17 million units by the end of March

Six-month results show big increases in revenue and profit, with 50 million units of software expected to ship this fiscal year

Nintendo has raised its forecast for Switch shipments to 14 million units by the end of the fiscal year, when it will have shipped a total of 16.74 million units overall.

In the period between its March 3 launch and the end of the second fiscal quarter on September 30, Nintendo shipped 7.63 million units of the Switch. Even more impressive is the company's forecast, which has been raised from 10 million to 14 million units for the fiscal year - a figure higher than the Wii U's entire life-to-date shipments.

When combined with the 2.74 million units shipped when the last fiscal year ended on March 31, 2017, that will be 16.74 million units in just 13 months.

The software picture is just as impressive, with 27.48 million units of software shipped to date. Around 5.4 million units of that figure were shipped in the last fiscal year, and Nintendo expects to ship a further 50 million by the end of March 2018.

Zelda: Breath of the Wild remains the system's biggest seller, with 4.7 million shipped by September 30. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe shipped 4.42 million, while Splatoon 2 had shipped 3.61 million.

Needless to say, this level of performance has registered on the company's balance sheet, with ¥374 billion ($3.3 billion) in revenue earned in the six months ended September 30, 2017 - a year-on-year increase of 173.4 per cent. Net income rose 34.5 per cent to ¥51.5 billion ($454 million).

Nintendo has also adjusted its fiscal year forecast, to align with its higher expected hardware and software shipments. In the year ending March 31, 2018, the company has raised its revenue forecast by 28 per cent to ¥960 billion ($8.4 billion), while its profit forecast is up 89 per cent to ¥85 billion ($749 million).

At the time of writing Nintendo's stock price was ¥42.87, which is higher than at any point since late 2008, and almost double the peak it achieved in the wake of Pokemon Go's success last year.

And this is all in the midst of some of the strongest reviews that Nintendo products have ever received. Both Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey are being called high-points not just for their respective franchises, but for the genres to which they belong.

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Matthew Handrahan

Editor-in-Chief

Matthew Handrahan joined GamesIndustry in 2011, bringing long-form feature-writing experience to the team as well as a deep understanding of the video game development business. He previously spent more than five years at award-winning magazine gamesTM.