A new Nintendo Switch sales milestone has been reached, giving the console the title of being the company’s 4th best-selling console. The statistics come from Nintendo’s latest sales data, which as of March 2021 and goes all the way back to the NES. The Game Boy Advance’s 81 and a half million lifetime sales, sitting itself in 5th place, as the Switch sets its sights on the current 3rd place holder: the Wii (which sold just over 100 million units).
The Nintendo Switch saw a boost in sales last year, moving 28.83 million units in that period. Obviously, this was helped in part by the COVID-19 restrictions affecting the world and giving people a lot more downtime. The Switch will also continue to be helped by plenty of major releases to come, like the recent release of New Pokémon Snap.
The top five best selling Nintendo Consoles to date are:
| System | Total Hardware Units Sold |
| The original DS systems | 154.02 million |
| Game Boy / Gameboy Color | 118.69 million |
| Wii | 101.63 million |
| Switch | 84.59 million (so far) |
| Game Boy Advance | 81.51 million |
The Switch has a lot of work to do in order to top the original DS. The company will have to reach a significant Nintendo Switch sales milestone several more times for the console to pull that off. Should it manage that, it would then aim for the title of the best-selling console of all time. That means beating the PlayStation 2, which reached approximately 155 million hardware sales globally.
With E3 just around the corner, Nintendo likely has some major announcements coming, which may help sell more consoles. They also just revealed the new creative title: Game Builder Garage.
In the software department, the original DS is king, as you can see below. Behind the Switch, the Game Boy/Game Boy Color barely edged out the NES for fourth place, selling just barely more software.Â
| System | Total Software Units Sold |
| The original DS systems | 948.74 million |
| Wii | 921.85 million |
| Switch | 587.12 million (so far) |
| Game Boy / Gameboy Color | 501.11 million |
| NES | 500.01 million |
The Switch’s sales are helped by the fact that it is unusual in being both a home console and a handheld at the same time, straddling two different markets. There is also the potential Switch Pro upgraded system coming. The console’s future also holds major releases like Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2, Metroid Prime 4, and who knows what else. However, the global semiconductor shortage may harm hardware sales for a while, though Nintendo’s President says they are fine for the time being.
It will be interesting to see where the Switch winds up on the charts when it’s all said and done.
