Tears of the Kingdom managed the extremely difficult feat of matching BotW's critical reception, set a record for launch sales for Nintendo during one of the calmest month of the year (m ost records were set in the Holidays previously) and of boosting hardware more than 6 years after its launch:
Switch sales rose worldwide during the quarter, to reach a very strong 3.91M units during Mario & Zelda launch quarter, a 12% growth YoY and simply the biggest outside of the Covid boost in 2020/2021. It puts Nintendo into a very comfortable position to reach their 15M forecast for the whole fiscal year since already 26% of the target is reached.
Even if it utlimately slowed down, at least on the hardware front, the momentum is very strong for an ecosystem that old and the reveal (+ now launch) of Super Mario Wonder confirmed that Nintendo would ride this wave throughout the Holiday season. They are therefore ending 2023 in a very favorable position.
So, with 2-3 significant launches in 2023, did Nintendo blow off their load and is going into 2024 empty handed ?
A remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door was Nintendo's biggest announcement during September 2023's Nintendo Direct
We are currently mostly in the dark on the pipeline front. Games are key to have a successful hardware transition, it was abundantely clear for the Switch itself, so what could Nintendo really be preparing for its next console launch window ?
2017-2024: Waiting for Mario
It might sound ludicrous, given the amount of Mario related content we got since April 2023, between the movie, a new 2D Mario, a new Peach subseries coming this March, and a meaty slate of remakes. However, there's Mario and Mario, and for Nintendo, two Mario subseries are treated very specially. Those two Mario subseries have been mostly dormant since 2017, at the exception of new (but mainly outsourced) content between 2021 and 2023.
For waiting right ? (excerpt of the final Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Pass credit scene, November 2023)
Mario Kart and 3D Mario have been two of the biggest cards of Nintendo's playbook:
The Mario Kart franchise has hit incredibly massive mainstream appeal ever since its shift to 3D. However, ever since the DS/Wii, the franchise reached new heights, being the best-selling games on every Nintendo platform ever since (3DS, WiiU, Switch).
For 3D Mario, the return to the sandbox formula combined with the Switch's incredible success has put the subseries to a new level. Trailers of Super Mario Odyssey remain, to this point, the most watched for a Nintendo game (55M for the reveal trailer, 41M for the E3 one in Nintendo of America YT account).
