Nintendo planning to bring more 3DS franchises to Switch Lite

Switch Lite console — Switch Lite – the true successor to the 3DS

Yesterday, Sony were rightly celebrating the success of the PlayStation 4, as it became the second best-selling home console ever, but the Switch has been no slouch ether.

Since it was released more than three years after the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One (thanks to the failure of the Wii U) comparing total sales should be meaningless, but the Switch is expected to overtake Microsoft’s console this year.

The Xbox One is currently thought to be on around 45 million sales worldwide, but the latest Nintendo financial results have updated the Switch total to 41.67 million.

Adding to that total will be the newly launched Switch Lite model, which according to Nintendo sold over 1.95 million consoles in just 10 days.

Software sales also seem more than healthy, with last month’s Zelda: Link’s Awakening already amassing a total of 3.13 million, Super Mario Maker 2 on 3.93 million, and Fire Emblem: Three Houses at 2.29 million.

But perhaps the most interesting detail, as reported by Wall Street Journal journalist Takashi Mochizuki, is that Nintendo boss Shuntaro Furukawa is interested in bring more 3DS franchises to the Switch.

This is apparently inspired by the upcoming Pokémon Sword and Shield and a desire to emphasis the appeal of the Switch Lite as a portable console.

No specific titles were mentioned but it’s not hard to draw up a list of possibilities, although it’s unclear whether he’s talking about remakes or new entries in traditionally portable-only franchises.

Most of the latter, including the recent Fire Emblem and Luigi’s Mansion, have already made the jump but we don’t think anyone’s going to complain about having more from both franchises on the Switch.

Also possible are updates of portable games such as Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, Kid Icarus: Uprising, Super Mario 3D Land, the various WarioWare games, the Mario & Luigi series (although that may be difficult now the developer has gone bust), and Fire Emblem sister series Advance Wars.

What exactly Nintendo has in mind isn’t clear, and it’s probably best not to try and second guess them, but with the Wii U running out of games to port to the Switch the 3DS library could be next.