Nintendo says the Switch 1 sold 155.37M units from its March 2017 launch through December 2025, topping the DS' 154.02M units, becoming its best-selling console
The milestone completes a sales arc visible from the platform’s first year, when Nintendo reported 10 million Switch units sold in its first 10 months, through the 146 million units disclosed in late 2024 alongside a 127 million annual-player community.
It also puts the original Switch’s long run beside Nintendo’s next hardware cycle: the company said Switch 2 sold more than 3.5 million units in its first four days, making the older platform’s installed-base record an important benchmark for the transition.
First-order effects
Nintendo officially moves the Switch ahead of the DS in its internal lifetime-sales ranking, giving the company a new best-selling console benchmark.
The result confirms that the original Switch remains the largest hardware base Nintendo has built, even as Switch 2 sales begin to establish the successor platform.
Second-order effects
Switch 2’s performance will now be measured not only against prior launch records but against the challenge of extending a franchise whose predecessor reached an exceptionally large installed base.
Nintendo’s software and platform planning must manage a handoff between a record-scale legacy audience and a new console population, rather than a clean reset after a shorter hardware cycle.
Third-order effects
If Nintendo can repeatedly carry demand from a mature platform into its successor, console competition will place greater value on maintaining platform continuity across generations; the available coverage does not establish whether that carryover will occur.
The Switch’s trajectory reinforces a broader industry shift toward consoles functioning as long-lived player ecosystems, where cumulative audience scale matters alongside launch-period hardware sales.
The trend: Nintendo’s Switch results are one data point in the move toward longer-lived console platforms whose installed bases shape successor launches and software strategy.
The Switch is now Nintendo's best-selling console of all time. Nintendo has now sold 155.37 million units since its launch in 2017, compared to 154.02 million units for the 2004 Nintendo DS www.theverge.com/games/872768...
Nintendo Switch 2 now at 17.37 million units sold as of Dec 31, 2025. Nintendo Switch at 155.37 million units Mario World World sold 14.03 million Donkey Kong Bananza 4.25 million [image]
Nintendo has now sold 17.37 million Switch 2 devices as of December 31st. Less than a month of Metroid Prime 4 sales data, but it's certainly not an immediate hit given Kirby Air Riders only had an extra 2 weeks of sales [image]
The Switch is officially the best selling Nintendo system of all time. 1) Switch - 155.37m 2) DS - 154.02m 3) Game Boy - 118.69m 4) Wii - 101.63m 5) Game Boy Advance - 81.51m [image]
Nintendo Switch Hardware & Software Sales Update: Switch - 155.37m 1) Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - 70.59m 2) Animal Crossing: New Horizons - 49.32m 3) Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - 37.44m 4) Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 33.64m 5) Super Mario Odyssey - 30.27m 6) Pokémon [image]
Narratives of the Switch 2 and of Legends: Z-A not doing well are obviously proven false now Can't wait to see how the online grifters contort themselves to continue this narrative.
Metroid Prime 4 sales numbers were not mentioned in Nintendo's financial results. This means it failed to sell over 1 million units on either Switch or Switch 2 as Nintendo counts the software for each platform separately. Combined it could be over 1M but the sales numbers are [i…