Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life
Nintendo released its financial year 2023 year-end report and as of March 2023, the Switch family of systems has sold over 3 million since last quarter, bringing the lifetime total of units sold to cool levels 125.62 million.
In February, the total was 122.55, pushing sales past the milestones set by both the Game Boy (118.69 units) and Sony’s PlayStation 4 (117.2). However, the Nintendo DS still tops the list of best-selling video game consoles, with a whopping 154.02 million lifetime sales. And Sony’s PS2 tops the chart with 155 million.
Switch OLED was the most popular SKU last fiscal year, even though overall hardware sales fell 22.1% year over year, with sales slowing during the 2022 holiday season compared to the prior year. While the numbers are relatively healthy given this point in the Switch’s life cycle, which is approaching its seventh year, it’s clear that things are slowing down for the console.
(If you’re wondering, the recently released Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Switch OLED isn’t factored into these lifetime Switch numbers, so the actual number at the time of writing will now be higher than those reported.)
Here’s the breakdown by SKU, followed by their percentage year-over-year change:
- Nintendo switch – 6.14 million units (-54.7.1%)
- Nintendo Swtch – OLED model – 9.22 million units (+58.8%)
- Nintendo Switch Lite – 2.62 million units (-29.2%)
- Total switch hardware sales for fiscal year 2023 – 17.97 million units (-22.1%)
And here’s how things compare to Nintendo’s past console sales:
| console | total sales |
|---|---|
| DS | 154.02 million |
| switch | 125.62 million |
| game boy | 118.69 million |
| Wii | 101.63 million |
| Game Boy Advance | 81.51 million |
| 3DS | 75.94 million |
| Family computer / NES | 61.91 million |
| Super family computer / SNES | 49.10 million |
| N64 | 32.93 million |
| game dice | 21.74 million |
| Wii U | 13.56 million |
Can Switch make the PS2 the best-selling console in history? Well, with games like Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and its themed Switch OLED SKU sure to give a sales boost, and with people upgrading their aging Switches with shiny new versions, there’s certainly life left in the system, so we wouldn’t be surprised.
However, the year-over-year decline suggests that without heavy discounting, it’s going to be a struggle. Nintendo will certainly see Holiday 2023 as an opportunity – maybe the last big one? – to give Switch a sales boost, so discounted packages are likely to appear.
However, with such a massive library of evergreen titles, there’s potential for those numbers to grow even after the release of the next Nintendo console, whenever that may be the case.
Do you think Switch will ever topple DS and PS2? Let us know below.
[source nintendo.co.jp]
Gavin loves a bit of couch co-op, especially when he can delegate roles, bark directions, and end up providing much-appreciated performance feedback. He lives in Spain (the easy bit where most of the rain falls) and his love of banjo-kazooie borders on the unhealthy.