Nintendo Switch Crosses 100 Million Shipments, Overtakes Nintendo Wii

Last Updated on February 4, 2022 by Anu Joy

Nintendo Switch now wears the crown of the bestselling gaming console in Nintendo’s lineup. Towards the end of December 2021, it managed to ship 103.54 million units, overtaking Nintendo Wii’s lifetime sales record of 101.63 million units. This also makes it the fifth console ever to garner 100 million sales after the original PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Wii. The majority of the sales came from the Americas, accounting for 42.8%, followed by Europe with 26.5%, Japan with 21%, and other regions with 9.7% sales.

However, these milestones aside, not everything is rosy for the Japanese manufacturer. The company’s report suggests that it sold about 18.95 million Switch gaming consoles from April 2021 to December 2021. These are considerably lower than the 24.1 million sales it posted in the previous year. 

Nintendo President, Shuntaro Furukawa said,

Switch is just in the middle of its lifecycle and the momentum going into this year is good. The Switch is ready to break a pattern of our past consoles that saw momentum weakening in their sixth year on the market and grow further.

Nintendo Switch has three variants, namely Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch Lite, and Nintendo Switch OLED. The Nintendo Switch remains the bread winner for the company with the majority of the sales from 2018. The graph shows that the latest Switch OLED launched in October 2021 and sold around 3.99 million units by the end of 2021. 

Nintendo, just like its major competitors such as Microsoft and Sony, is battling with the ongoing chip crisis and logistical issues. Despite that, the Japanese company is optimistic to sell around 23 million consoles in the first quarter of 2022. The company is betting heavily on its OLED model and upcoming games such as Pokémon Legends: Arceus, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Bayonetta 3, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild etc. to be a major driving force for the company in 2022.