There was a lot of pressure going into the release of Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door on Nintendo Switch. The reason for that is simple: it was a remaster/remake of an all-time classic RPG. The game hadn’t been re-released in any way since the Nintendo GameCube era, and that made it something highly desirable by gamers, especially those in the US. When the game arrived, it was everything that fans wanted and more. Then, they only needed to wait for Nintendo to reveal how well the game did to see if its future might be more hopeful than it was before.
Today, the financial briefing came out for the first quarter of the fiscal year 2024, and in it, Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door was revealed to have sold over 1.74 million units since its debut on May 23rd. Given that the first fiscal quarter ends in June, it sold nearly 2 million units in just about five weeks. For a beloved RPG entry that was getting remastered for a new generation, that’s pretty good. That also means that the game will enter the vaunted “Switch Million-Seller Club” that continues to grow in 2024, with multiple entries already in it.
Not to be outdone, the 1st party remaster that came right after, Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, was able to also sell over a million units since it came out in late June. That means that both Mario and Luigi had big hits within a month of each other.
Many have noted that, up until now, the Nintendo Switch wasn’t firing off too many “anticipated titles” in the early months of 2024, and that is very true. Thankfully, Nintendo prepared for this by having fresh titles with Princess Peach come out, while also delivering on some fan-favorite titles while they prepped the back half of the year.
Mario and Luigi will release another RPG in November, Princess Zelda will release her first official solo title in September, and some other games will be sprinkled in and around the next few months to please gamers as we wait ever patiently for the arrival of the Switch successor.
Speaking of the Switch, the console was confirmed to be over 143 million units sold, further boosting it as one of the biggest hardware platforms ever.
Many wonder whether Nintendo’s next console will be able to mimic the software success of the Switch. We answer that if they learn the right lessons and keep cranking out quality first and third-party titles, there’s no reason why they can’t.
