Switch Has Outsold The Wii, Making It Nintendo's Best-Selling Home Console Ever
With over 103 million sales since 2017, the Switch continues to be one of Nintendo's best-performing consoles of all time.
The Nintendo Switch has now sold over 103.54 million consoles worldwide--up by 10 million since September--beating the 101.6 million sales benchmark of the Wii.
While the Switch's impressive sales don't make it Nintendo's best-selling hardware ever--the Nintendo DS family of handheld family consoles shifted over 154 million units during its lengthy lifecycle--the hybrid nature of the Switch does make it Nintendo's most successful home console ever made.
That total is made even more impressive when you factor in the lifetime sales of its predecessor--the Wii U--which only managed to sell 13.5 million units during its short run in the early 2010s. According to Nintendo, 18.95 million Switch consoles were sold during the first nine months of its last fiscal year, with sales being down by 21.4% when compared to the previous year.
While Nintendo blamed this dip on the ongoing global semiconductor shortage and the Animal Crossing: New Horizons boom subsiding, it still expects to ship 23 million Switch consoles before the end of March.
Chart below looks at Switch sell in compared to other consoles when launch aligned.
— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) February 3, 2022
- Switch has surpassed Wii (101.63m) and PS1 (102.49m) after 58 months on the market
- Selling faster than Wii, PS4 and PS2, when launch aligned.
- It will continue to remain behind the DS pic.twitter.com/c8SjBXy3n3
"Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch Lite also sustained sales momentum following the launch of Nintendo Switch OLED Model, and all three models sold well while maintaining a good sales balance," Nintendo said in its February 2022 financial results for the nine months ended December 31, 2021. "Last fiscal year, the March 2020 release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons was a major driver of hardware sales, so compared to the same period of last year, the unit sales declined for hardware resulting in 18.95 million units (a decrease of 21.4% year-on-year)."
As for which Switch console did best, that honor goes to the original model, which sold 81.68 million units by the end of 2021. The Switch Lite model took second place with 17.87 million sales, while the new Switch OLED Model has sold over 3.99 million units since its launch.
Elsewhere in the gaming industry, Microsoft and Sony have also had a great 2021. Xbox had its biggest year of all time, while PlayStation's Game & Network Services division generated $24.87 billion in revenue, up 8.9% year-over-year.
In its own earnings report, Sony revealed that it had sold another 3.9 million PS5 units for the latest quarter, pushing the system's lifetime numbers to 17.3 million as of December 31, 2021.
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