Nintendo Signals Primary Development Focus ‘Shift’ to Switch 2, as Switch 1 Owners ‘Uniformly Migrating’

A day after revealing its latest stellar sales figures, Nintendo has confirmed it will now “shift” its development focus to Switch 2 — and revealed that 84% of the console’s early adoptees were players who owned Switch 1.

“Going forward, we will shift our primary development focus to Nintendo Switch 2 and expand our business around this new platform,” Nintendo wrote in a freshly-published sales presentation.

Switch 2’s first six months have been marked by a smattering of exclusives such as Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza, but also a series of paid upgrades to existing Switch 1 games (like Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Mario Party Bonanza) and cross-gen titles (like Pokémon Legends Z-A and the upcoming Metroid Prime 4: Beyond). Nintendo now appears to be suggesting that its future release slate will likely be more orientated to Switch 2 exclusives, likely buoyed by the huge success of its new machine.

Perhaps it’s not a surprise to see such a huge percentage of Switch 2 players upgrading from Nintendo’s prior console (which, after almost a decade on sale, is now near ubiquitous). But what’s interesting here is a breakdown provided by Nintendo showing how smoothly the company has picked up its early Switch 2 adoptees over the Switch generation — relatively evenly, year by year.

The largest group of Switch 2 players are those who bought the Switch 1 back at its launch in 2017, but the groups of those who acquired Switch 1 in the following few years are not too different.