The Nintendo Switch has been around for six years now. To mark the occasion, we’ll look closer at the Switch’s massive success in the games market and how it shapes the future of the Mario game company.
When Nintendo released the Switch on March 3, 2017, six years ago, it changed the whole video game industry. The Switch is the culmination of everything Nintendo has done in the past. It combines both of Nintendo’s best-selling game formats into one hybrid handheld-console. The Switch was a huge hit right away, sending Nintendo’s business to new highs in the modern era.
There are no signs that the Switch will slow down. The platform has led to a huge number of sales of hardware and software, and Nintendo’s business has been boosted by its first-ever subscription service. Nintendo has used the Switch to move its business into the digital market while keeping everything steady, under control, and easy to measure.
The Nintendo Switch has brought in tens of billions of dollars so far. From the time it came out in March 2017 until December 2022, when our records end, the Nintendo Switch platform made $66.9 billion. This was thanks to the sales of consoles, which made money right away, and the sales of first-party software, which made a lot of money.
The number of people who own a Switch is also very high. In fact, the Nintendo Switch is now the company’s second best-selling piece of hardware ever, behind only the handheld DS, which has sold 154 million units. As of the holiday season of 2022, 122.55 million Switch consoles have been shipped.
The Switch is the third best-selling system of all time, even compared to Sony. PS2 has sold 155 million units, DS has 154.02 million, and Switch has 155 million units (122.55m).
Nintendo is now looking to the future with a new Switch replacement that is expected to support 4K gaming through NVIDIA’s DLSS upscaling technology.
