The Switch is Now Nintendo's Best-Selling Console of All Time (theverge.com) 13
The original Switch is officially Nintendo's best-selling console of all time after surpassing the DS handheld in lifetime sales. From a report: In its latest earnings release, Nintendo reports that the Nintendo Switch has, as of December 31, 2025, sold 155.37 million units since its launch in 2017, compared to 154.02 million units for the 2004 Nintendo DS.
In November, Nintendo reported that the Switch and DS were neck and neck. We expected the holiday sales period would see the Switch surpass the DS, even with Nintendo announcing that primary development would focus on the Switch 2. Nintendo previously said that it would continue to sell the original Switch "while taking consumer demand and the business environment into consideration."
Nintendo has to keep selling the Switch if it wants to dethrone Sony's PlayStation 2 as the best-selling video game console of all time. The PlayStation 2, discontinued in January 2013, sold more than 160 million units over its 13-year lifespan.
In November, Nintendo reported that the Switch and DS were neck and neck. We expected the holiday sales period would see the Switch surpass the DS, even with Nintendo announcing that primary development would focus on the Switch 2. Nintendo previously said that it would continue to sell the original Switch "while taking consumer demand and the business environment into consideration."
Nintendo has to keep selling the Switch if it wants to dethrone Sony's PlayStation 2 as the best-selling video game console of all time. The PlayStation 2, discontinued in January 2013, sold more than 160 million units over its 13-year lifespan.
I wonder (Score:1)
Re:I wonder (Score:4, Interesting)
Remember Nintendo were coming off relatively poor market share - for all the nostalgia today, the Gamecube in its day was considered a failure and very much an afterthought (although I seem to remember that was a consumer view, and that it made the most profit of that gen. Again, just casting mind back to what was said at the time, not quoting any hard data here). The PS and XBox owned the Gamecube era, so Nintendo likely didn't have manufacturing capacity at the time to handle the huge demand for the Wii.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, and there's plenty of stories about companies that *did* spend crazy amounts to expand capacity to meet demand only for the fad to die down before that spend could even matter, and then they spend all that for nothing.
When a company is faced with a surprise demand surge, they are carefully considering the likelihood of the surge subsiding before they can even do anything.
Re: (Score:2)
I never really understood all the hate for Game Cube from 'serious gamers' .
When using RGB out at 480P most games looked just as good as the 'HD' competition. The performance was fine, but I guess it was memory staved because it seems like the GC version of some 3rd party titles got cut down a bit.
There was NOTHING more fun then MK Double Dash with about four people and game cubes with broadband adapters.
Re: (Score:2)
At the time I got the Gamecube, I was unfit and pretty overweight. There was a poster here on Slashdot who in one thread or another said "How many overweight 30 year olds do you know? A lot, right? How about 40 - still a lot? Now try 50, 60, 70...". This really stuck with me, and I decided to use Wii Fit properly. Started out jogging round the living ro
Re: (Score:2)
Because Nintendo was considered "family friendly" games and they generally discouraged the violent and dark FPS games that were the rage at the time in favor of more family friendly games.
While the original Xbox and PS2 were playing the cutting edge games and shooters, they considered Nintendo to be for kids - the Xbox and PS2 were the "adult" gaming consoles. (No doubt helped by the way Sega positioned the Genesis/Megadrive back in
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I think the challenge was that publishers saw Gamecube as a platform from a vendor that wasn't historically the easiest to work with business-wise, and with game sizes limited to 1.5GB whereas Xbox and PS2 did the full 8.5GB disk size. Of course Sony enjoyed coming off of Playstation being *the* platform (N64 cartridges severely limited them, Saturn made some bad bets technology wise), so a Playstation 2 that was *backwards compatible* was a slam dunk.
Xbox didn't do that well either, Sony was largely still
Re: (Score:3)
Serious Gamer (Score:2)
I never really understood all the hate for Game Cube from 'serious gamers' .
Basically: Its position among the consoles of the same generation.
And the "Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology" approach typical at Nintendo (don't go for bells and whistles and custom chips, go for well-established tech that's easy to mass-produce).
On paper, the GameCube had musc lower specs than the competition (Sony's Playstation 2 and Microsoft's X-Box), as Nintendo didn't want to follow the arm-race for the beefiest specs.
Contrast with the previous two iterations:
- Nintendo 64: has a very cool c
Re: (Score:2)
I remember the NGC could push more triangles than the other systems but since most of them were static backgrounds it didn't matter much. It's like some engineer thought games need to be able to have the CPU move everything not realizing that probably majority most the time are just rotated around by the GPU without any modifications. Maybe the 1st resident evil games actually used it; since they were large moving characters with video-loop like backgrounds - that whole thing likely utilized the system in w
It could stall out at these prices (Score:1)
This is only talking about their momentum. Unfortunately the cost is prohibitive to replace all those $150-$200 Switch Lites. Parents aren't going to do that. This isn't like the pandemic where people are spending extra on entertainment either. Prices are also rumored to go up because of the priority AI hardware is getting. RAM and processors and other components in the Switch 2 are going to go up in price.
If they don't come out with something cheaper that momentum will stall and then it will end up selling
Noting the lack of competition (Score:2)
With retailers cutting back their shelf and floor space for all consoles for years, the Switch is simply taking sales that would have gone to Sony or Xbox since the Switch has the largest part of the kids 4 to 12 market and is the first game console/handheld most kids get.
inflation (Score:2)
Some of this is inflation. The population of the US has increased about 40% since 1985 (241M to 342M). With much larger increases than that in population of Nintendo's effective global market, as nations that could not afford a Game Boy* in 1989 can now afford the slightly more expensive Switch.
* Game Boy MSRP in 1989, US$89.99 (equivalent to $228 in 2024)