While Nintendo seems to be enjoying a lot of success with the Nintendo Switch–calling it the fastest selling console in history–it seems as though that success is mostly within the hardcore gaming community. The Nielsen marketing firm conducted a survey of US consumers’ gaming habits and awareness and discovered that only 7% of those who identified as non-gamers were aware of the Nintendo Switch.
The sample size of people was 2,000 over the age of 13. That’s an interesting look at how the world views gaming as a concept and shows just how dominate Sony has been this console cycle, at least here in America.
Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima has expressed doubts about Nintendo’s ability to achieve long term sales without the support of third-parties coming to Nintendo’s table, so it’s worrying that such a low percentage of people are aware of the Nintendo Switch two and a half months after launch.
Polygon does note that the survey was conducted and ended on March 31st, so that only gives about a month of awareness since the Switch launched on March 3rd. It will be interesting to see the results of this survey the next time it’s held for the quarter, to see how awareness has increased since then. Super Mario Odyssey dropping this holiday season will certainly help with that.