Nintendo
Saying goodbye to the Switch: These were the best-selling games on Nintendo's console
We take a look at the ten best-selling video games for the Switch. A top 10 with very few surprises, and all titles are Nintendo franchises.
With the Nintendo Switch 2 on the horizon and its announcement more than imminent, it is time to look back at the great successes of the first Switch. Nintendo’s hybrid console was a huge turning point for the legendary Japanese company. Not only because it managed to combine its two historic product lines - handheld and desktop consoles - in the same hardware, but also because it is on its way to becoming the best-selling console in history. With these great merits, it is the perfect time to list the best-selling Nintendo Switch games, the main warhorses that have allowed it to establish a dominant position in the market:
Top 10 Best-Selling Nintendo Switch Games
At the time of publication, these are the top ten best-selling Nintendo Switch games, taking into account the latest sales updates:
The best-selling video game on Nintendo Switch, with nearly twenty million units sold, is Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, the definitive version of Mario Kart 8 released in 2014. These extraordinary sales figures are due to the fact that the game arrived in stores barely a month after the console’s launch, in addition to its enormous accessibility and the fun it offers. The second bestselling title, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, unexpectedly benefited from its release date, which coincided with the start of global lockdowns as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. For many people, the connection with other users that this Animal Crossing title provided helped them cope with the global lockdowns.
Pokémon is proving that it is still a global mass phenomenon, with the main eighth-generation games (Sword and Shield) and ninth-generation games (Scarlet and Violet) making the top 10 best-selling titles. What’s more, until the arrival of these Switch installments, no game in the franchise had managed to outsell Pokémon Gold and Silver (1999), which is considered by many gamers to be the pinnacle of the saga, with some 23,730,000 copies sold worldwide.
Meanwhile, The Legend of Zelda has also seen its best sales with Switch releases. Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are the two best-selling titles in the series, while the third was The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2006), released on GameCube and Wii, which sold around 8,700,000 units. This is thanks to its open-world design, full of details and secrets, which has managed to reach a wider audience than the linear adventures of previous installments.
Last but not least, both Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe represent a move that is as peculiar as it is controversial: that of “rescuing” Wii U titles, the biggest hardware sales failure in the company’s history, and giving them a second chance on Nintendo Switch. Looking at the sales figures, especially those of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, the result is clear: it has been a highly successful strategy that, with minimal investment - after all, the video games themselves were already developed - has effectively allowed these titles to reach a wider audience thanks to the larger Switch console fleet compared to Wii U, and has also been a great incentive to purchase them in and of itself.
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