The Nintendo Switch is now officially a bigger success than the fondly remembered N64, the home of such classics as Ocarina of Time, Super Smash Bros, and Super Mario 64.
This news comes from Nintendo’s official website, via Nibel on Twitter. It was revealed that as of March 2019, the Switch has shifted an incredible 34.74m units worldwide, beating the number of N64 lifetime sales, which sits at 32.93.
Since launching back March 2017, the Nintendo Switch has been absolutely unstoppable. Within a year of release the handheld/home console hybrid managed to soar past the Wii U’s lifetime sales of 12 million.
The continued success of the Switch is no doubt down to the constant stream of quality games for the console, which was a much needed course correction after the sparse lineup the Wii U offered.
In just under three years, the Switch has boasted a blend of sublime first party exclusives (Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Super Smash Bros Ultimate), third party ports (Skyrim, LA Noire, DOOM), and delightful indie hits (Hollow Knight, Celeste, Stardew Valley).
The portable nature of the console and wide variety of games has helped make it a must-own console for most gamers. It helps that now more than ever, it’s obvious with the Switch that Nintendo isn’t trying to directly compete with Sony and Microsoft, and has carved a nice little place for itself as a “side console” as a result.
The next target for Switch would be the SNES, which sits at around 49.1 million units. This might take some doing, but with rumours of a budget Switch model on the horizon, as well as Pokemon Sword/Shield, and two new Zelda games still to come before the end of the year (on top of all the games we still don’t know about), I reckon Nintendo might just manage to pull it off.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.