【Secret Pleasures (2002) Watch online】

If there's a major takeaway from Nintendo's latest earnings report,Secret Pleasures (2002) Watch online it's this: the Switch is #2.

Nintendo reported 2.74 million sales between the console's March 3 launch through March 31, the end of the company's 2016 fiscal year. There's also a forecast for 10 million more sales through the end of the 2017 fiscal year.

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The sample is fairly small when held up against PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, both of which launched in Nov. 2013. But a picture starts to form as you look at each respective console's sales performance, post-launch.

Xbox One launched on Nov. 22, 2013 and Microsoft reported 3 million in sales through the end of that year. Microsoft hasn't been very forthcoming with console sales numbers, though it did confirm 10 million units had shipped-- not sold, mind you -- by Nov. 2014, a year after launch.

That's the last official number from Microsoft, as the company confirmed in 2015 that it would no longer use console shipments to measure success. Though it's worth noting that an Electronic Arts earnings call in Jan. 2016 put Xbox One sales at "around 18 to 19 million."

The PS4 launched on Nov. 15, 2013 and Sony reported 4.2 million in sales by Dec. 28 of that year. Roughly nine months after release, it was up to 10 million.

Looking at all three consoles' first-month performances, Switch looks like it falls in the middle. There's no direct comparison, but in terms of sales it's trending ahead of where Xbox One was and behind where PS4 was during their own launch months.

It's the software, stupid

Nintendo's biggest challenge for the year ahead will be getting Switch into more stores. The 10 million sales forecast for 2017 seems conservative -- PS4 got there after just nine months -- but Nintendo has struggled to meet the demand for Switch so far.

That won't be a forever situation. As the post-launch hype fades, it will get easier and easier to just walk into a store and score a Switch. There's only one way for Nintendo to keep a healthy pace of console sales after that: software.

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The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wildwas an ideal launch title for Switch, combining a fan-favorite franchise with an extremely well-received creative reboot of what a Zeldagame can be. It may not be the only Switch game out there, but it's telling that Nintendo sold more copies of Zelda-- the Switch version -- than it did the actual console.

There's an outsized amount of interest in this new Zeldagame -- it's the definition of a "killer app." It's implausible to expect a regular stream of games with that level of success, but the fact remains: Nintendo will have to continue delivering on the games side if it wants to keep selling consoles.

Here we can look again at the latest earnings report. Nintendo forecasts 35 million units of software sold for the year -- which translates, roughly, to 2-3 games per Switch console sold.

Assuming Zeldais one of those games for nearly everyone -- which is fair speculation based on the performance so far -- that means Nintendo will need a couple more hits for this year. The schedule laid out in the earnings report points to a few possibilities.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, out on April 28, feels like a no-brainer. It's a massively popular series for Nintendo, and this remake of the 2014 Wii U game has earned lots of praise for its many improvements.

As a series, Mario Kartis also consistently one of Nintendo's top-selling series' on consoles. By the end of Nintendo's fiscal 2016, 58.6 percent of Wii U owners had purchased the original Mario Kart 8.

Splatoon 2, coming on July 21, is another candidate for big success. The previous game, for Wii U, had just shy of 5 million units sold by the end of 2016. That's more than one-third of the Wii U's 13.5 million life-to-date sales. In other words: Splatoonwas popular.

Will history repeat for Splatoon 2? Probably. Switch owners will be hungry for new Nintendo games by July, and Splatoonhas already carved out a big fanbase for itself. Nintendo also has the motion-controlled fighting game ARMS coming to Switch in June, but its control scheme may be a little too gimmicky for wide adoption.

The big question mark is on holiday 2017, when Nintendo plans to release Super Mario Odyssey. If anything can eclipse the popularity of a Zeldagame, it's Mario.

Odysseyis still listed on the earnings report for "holiday 2017." A delay wouldn't be disastrous -- especially if it's only a month or two -- but with Mario, Nintendo has an opportunity to own the holiday season. If Odysseylands in the same way Zeldadid -- especially during the prized holiday window -- it could spur console sales in a way that releases in other parts of the year wouldn't.

So the Switch is looking like the #2 on the market... but only for now. Nintendo should be pleased with that success, but the onus is now on the company to make sure things stay that way.

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Topics Gaming Nintendo Nintendo Switch