It’s no secret that Nintendo’s hybrid console, the Nintendo Switch, has been selling particularly well but the latest announcement from the company suggests that the system has hit a new significant sales milestone.
Revealed on the Investor Relations (IR) page of Nintendo’s Japanese site, it appears that the Nintendo Switch has now sold 132.46 million units since its release back in March 2017. This overall figure includes the base model Nintendo Switch, the enhanced Nintendo Switch OLED, and the cheaper Nintendo Switch Lite.
Even so, that’s an awful lot of consoles, especially when you consider that the Nintendo 3DS family of systems, which was itself a fairly popular line of handhelds, only sold 75.94 million units in its whole lifetime.
In fact, this data shows that the Nintendo Switch has now outsold the incredibly popular Nintendo Wii, which racked up 101.63 million unit sales, and is closing in on the Nintendo DS which currently sits in the top spot with a whopping 154.02 million units sold.
This announcement also included some interesting tidbits about software sales. Not only is the Nintendo Switch currently by far the company’s biggest platform in terms of pure software sales, with "1,133.23 million units" to date, but some recent exclusive games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom have been performing very well.
Racking up 19.50 million sales, it has already managed to cement itself among the system’s most popular games after just a few months on the market.
These figures are accurate as of September 30, meaning that the effect of other high-profile hits like the excellent Super Mario Bros. Wonder has yet to be seen - although we do expect this to lead to a significant increase in both software and hardware sales for at least a few months.
This data is also from before any Black Friday gaming deals were properly underway. As we are already seeing plenty of compelling bundle offers up for grabs as part of the sales period, it is especially likely that November will be a particularly strong month for hardware sales.
If you are buying Nintendo hardware this Black Friday, don't miss out! See our guide to the best Black Friday Nintendo Switch deals or the best Black Friday Switch OLED deals.
