Nintendo announced via its yearly financial statements that it’s having its best year on record—surpassing the Game Boy Advance’s numbers—with the Wii in sight.
The yearly results are in for Nintendo and the handheld-hybrid is continuing to dominate the market. Between having its best full-year profits ever, hitting 85 million units for the Switch, and showing an 82% increase in year-over-year profits, Nintendo seems like they are doing okay in the current market conditions.
With 28.8 million Switch units sold last year, and a projection of an additional 25.5 million units for this upcoming year, that would mean that Nintendo is on track to blow past the Wii’s record-setting sales numbers quite soon. Considering the Game Boy sold somewhere around 118 million units and the highest-selling system of all time is the PlayStation 2 at approximately 155 million units, it’s easy to see where a couple more years like this could lead to the Nintendo Switch taking the mantle.
As the Xbox Series X and PS5 see more availability on the market and the Switch’s life-cycle gets longer and longer, the numbers should start turning downward, but with this much steam and reports of an upgraded Switch iteration in the works, it’s hard to argue against its longevity.
On the software side, Nintendo also continues to see market dominance, with Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe crossing 30 million units apiece, and an astounding 36 titles seeing over a million units sold from April 1st, 2020 to March 31st, 2021. Twenty-two of those were Nintendo-published, with the other fourteen being from third-party publishers.
The Top 10 best-selling Nintendo Switch titles are as follows:
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 35.39 million units
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons – 32.63 million units
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 23.84 million units
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 22.28 million units
- Pokémon Sword / Shield – 22.1 million units
- Super Mario Odyssey – 20.83 million units
- Super Mario Party – 14.79 million units
- Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! / Eevee! – 13.28 million units
- Splatoon 2 – 12.21 million units
- New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 10.44 million units
Additional highlights include Mario Kart 8 Deluxe fastly-approaching Mario Kart Wii’s record-setting numbers, Ring Fit Adventure surpassing 10 million units due to high demand, and Pokémon Sword & Shield drawing within one million units of Pokémon Gold & Silver.
