Nintendo is having a pretty good time of it at the moment. Last year, we learned that the Switch 2 became the fastest selling video game hardware device in US history, usurping the PS4’s golden record. Then, earlier this year, we learned that Switch 2 sales reached nearly 20m almost one year after release, making it the second-fastest selling console in US history. Buoyed by the runaway successes of games like Pokopia and other first-party hits, not even the reality of a hardware price rise seems to be hobbling Nintendo’s momentum.
And it seems the company is keen to keep this pace up. “We’re at the beginning of Nintendo Switch 2,” says Nintendo of America COO, Devon Pritchard in an interview with Variety. “This is just beginning and we’ve already had some really wonderful experiences, both ours and third-party come to the table and I can’t wait to see what the system is going to do and what our talented developers will bring to the table.”
She goes on to point out that the publisher’s success isn’t just in hardware and software, but in Nintendo’s recently acquired popularity at the box office, too. “We’re working with Sony Pictures. We are going to have a movie come out in the end of April,” she notes, referring to The Legend of Zelda. “We’re very excited about that”. No doubt; Nintendo and Illumination earned $1bn from The Super Mario Galaxy Movie at the last count, pulling in a third of that ($372.6m) in the opening weekend alone.
Whilst Pritchard is certainly excited about the games the company has on the docket – she namechecks The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, specifically – it seems her eyes are drawn more readily to the film partnerships. “But again, those partnerships and touchpoints with companies like Sony and Sony Pictures around how we can bring those experiences more broadly to not only our current players and fans but to new ones,” she says, “I think that’s one of the most exciting things for us over the next few years.”
Safe to say, then, that Nintendo is putting a lot of effort into its expanding cinematic world. The last we heard about the next big project – The Legend of Zelda film which is just called “The Legend of Zelda”, sans subtitle – was in a dedicated Zelda Direct at the beginning of September. We’ve not even seen a proper trailer yet, but we know that the initial shoot has wrapped filming in New Zealand (after starting the shoot in October 2025). So here’s hoping we see some footage of the final product soon.
“There are more channels for content than ever before,” Pritchard concludes when asked about how Nintendo plans to stand out in a media landscape more competitive than ever before. “Content is available 24/7. So I think you hear a lot of times, people saying, we are competing for consumers’ time and I think what’s unique is that Nintendo is focused instead on building experiences that create relationships that last generations. And I think that’s a different kind of focus for us. But that really is where we put our time and our energy… how do we create those fun experiences? And that becomes the test: is something fun? It sounds simple, of course it’s not.”
Lets see if the company’s belief in its product and audience lasts through the current industry woes; the combination of an industry crunch, rising hardware prices, and lower consumer spend is having a pretty disasterous effect elsewhere – but it seems Nintendo is so far weathering the storm.
