Nintendo Has Sold Over 80 Million Switch Consoles

Nintendo sold over 80 million Switch consoles through the end of 2020, putting it on pace to outsell the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 during the current quarter. The Switch has now sold better than all standalone Nintendo consoles save the Wii, which sold over 101 million units.

The milestone was reported as part of Nintendo’s quarterly earnings report. Confusing matters, Nintendo reports income in 9-month increments, with the firm earning a net profit of $5 billion on revenues of $13.4 billion for the last 9 months of 2020.

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In any event, Nintendo reports that it sold 24 million Switches in the last nine months of 2020, 11.5 million of which sold in the fourth quarter. That places total Switch sales at north of 80 million units. So Nintendo’s newest console has now outsold the 3DS family of devices, which registered about 76 million sold. And it puts it on pace to challenge the Wii, though earlier portable Nintendo devices like the Game Boy family (119 million units) and DS family (154 million) are a bit further out of reach.

From a software perspective, Nintendo sold over 3 million units of Paper Mario: The Origami King since July and over 8.32 million units of Super Mario 3D All-Stars since July. Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit and Pikmin 3 Deluxe, both released in October, saw sales of 1.08 million and 1.94 million, respectively. And Animal Crossing: New Horizons has now sold a total of 31.2 million units, while Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has hit a cumulative sales total of 33.4 million units.

Third-party game publishers have done well on the Switch, too. Nintendo reports that 29 titles sold over one million units during the fiscal year, with total software sales reaching 176.1 million units in the year.

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Conversation 6 comments

  • shark47

    01 February, 2021 - 9:42 am

    <p>That’s not surprising. If I’m reading this correctly, though, XBox might be a bigger business than Nintendo. </p>

  • crunchyfrog

    01 February, 2021 - 9:45 am

    <p>I love the Switch! Fantastic device that's easy to travel with over lugging a gaming laptop. I have been following the crowd funded GPD Win 3 which looks very similar but is a full Windows 10 laptop that looks a lot like a Switch but can play all of your PC games. The big advantage of the Switch still remains that it is thinner and lighter, way better battery life and costs about 60% less. Switch is still the winner.</p>

  • LT1 Z51

    Premium Member
    01 February, 2021 - 10:35 am

    <p>Because I have Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart 8 on Wii U (which almost no one bought) the Switch is the first Nintendo system I've never owned. Maybe I'll get the next version when the new Zelda game comes out. But Nintendo's 1st party titles have generally gone down hill since the days of NES, SNES, and N64 in my opinion (I find that I prefer to go back and play the old games).</p>

  • MoopMeep

    01 February, 2021 - 10:55 am

    <p>xbox one and ps4 came out in late 2013 and switch in early 2017.</p><p>Amazingly the switch has already outsold the xbox one and with ps4 winding down and the switch only in mid-cycle I can see it passing sales of ps4.</p><p><br></p><p>Pretty amazing…..</p><p><br></p>

  • fishnet37222

    Premium Member
    01 February, 2021 - 11:24 am

    <p>I wonder how many of those sales are of the Switch Lite.</p>

  • remc86007

    01 February, 2021 - 11:59 am

    <p>I bought one of these soon after release and it's been a huge disappointment to me. I tried Breath of the Wild and didn't find it very compelling and the rendering resolution and asset quality is so low I can't stand to play it docked. I have Mario Party and Mario Kart and those have been fun the four or five times I've gotten friends to play it with me. Mario Rabids is good, but not my kind of game. Splatoon is okay, but not very compelling and the intro sequence combined with having to pay annually for their garbage online service just to make the game work is super disappointing. I've bought a couple other small games but they've all been underwhelming. The only game I've enjoyed and beat is Mario Odyssey. </p><p><br></p><p>So basically, I've had the thing for nearly four years, paid over $400 in games (because the stupid things never go on sale) and it only gets picked up every couple months when I go on vacation, but even then, I can't find anything I really want to play and end up just reading a book. By contrast, in that time period I have played and beaten 25+ games on my Xbox. I hope the XCloud thing really works out (although most places I want to play portably do not have fast internet) or they launch a portable system. I'd love to be able to play Xbox games portably. It probably wouldn't be hard to make a portable system with roughly the power of the 2013 Xbox and that would be a massive catalog of games to be able to play on the go.</p>

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