It's no major secret that the Nintendo Switch was one of the most highly coveted items during the 2017 holiday season, with analyst Daniel Ives of the market research firm GBH Insights having posited that such major desire for the product helped it become the potential best-selling console of 2017. While last year's king of the consoles has yet to be officially crowned, it looks as if the Big N's latest system has at least managed to beat lifetime sales of its precursor, the Wii U, in Japan.

According to Famitsu, the Nintendo Switch has already managed to reach 3.4 million units sold in Japan by the end of the 2017, compared to the 3.3 million Wii U units that have been sold over the course of its entire lifespan in the country. This means that it has only taken less than one year for the Big N's newest gaming hardware to best its predecessor's total sales of nearly six years on the market in Japan, as the Switch came out in March 2017.

While this specific sales feat for the Switch is a significant victory for Nintendo–especially considering its origins as a Japanese company–it's important to reiterate that this accomplishment doesn't reflect global sales of the new console or the Wii U. To be clear, the Wii U has sold just over 13.5 million units worldwide in all. Nevertheless, the Switch seems to be nearing that number quite quickly. After all, Nintendo has already revealed that 4.8 million Switch units sold in the U.S. in its first year, with European numbers being around the same area.

Taking all of this into account, it will be interesting to see what the Nintendo Switch's official sales are once the console's one-year anniversary rolls around this March. Should the console manage to outpace the Wii U's comprehensive worldwide sales after only being available for one year, then it would sync up almost perfectly with one analyst's projections that the console will reach 40 million units sold within its first four years of release.

The Nintendo Switch is available now.

Source: Famitsu