The Switch is Nintendo’s best-selling — and most converted — console

Nintendo has achieved a lot of success during its few decades in the video game industry. Popularizing home consoles with the NES, introducing new audiences to gaming through the Wii’s motion controls, and The touchscreen Trojan that was the Nintendo DSbut not limited to. But often these successes were followed by mistakes. The Wii sold 100 million units, while its successor, the Wii U, couldn’t even manage a quarter of that. But this fragility appears to be changing. The Switch is now Nintendo’s best-selling console of all timesurpassing the DS by 155 million units sold since its debut in 2017. During that time Nintendo has transformed itself into a company better insulated against the whims of the ever-changing gaming industry.

One of the main factors behind the Switch’s success was how it did it It represented a more unified version of Nintendo. In 2013, the company It merged the two main game development departmentswhich were previously divided into home console and portable collections. Given how the Switch straddles the line between console and handheld, this made a lot of sense. But it also allowed Nintendo to put the full force of its creative resources behind a single platform. The result was a series of huge successes: games such as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wildand Super Mario Odyssey All sold over 30 million copies.

Just as importantly, this structure allowed Nintendo to consistently release great games throughout the Switch’s lifespan. Even as the focus shifts to the next console, the Switch’s final years still include entirely new hardware Zelda and Super Mario games. The structure also allowed Nintendo to seamlessly continue this success until the launch of the Switch 2, which took off Very fast start It debuted alongside a new brand Mario Kartwhich followed Donkey Kong and Metroid.

But outside of gaming, which is the company’s core, Nintendo has also used the Switch’s success to steadily expand in new directions. In 2023, Super Mario Bros movie hit theaters, He earned more than $1 billionAnd now Nintendo has both sequel and Live action Zelda film On the road. Nintendo will open its first theme park in Japan in 2021It has since expanded to Hollywood and Florida, and is set to have a location in Singapore next. The company even opened its own museum in 2024. In essence, Nintendo is building an entertainment empire. It is increasingly being challenged by the likes of Disney and Netflix, as well as Xbox and PlayStation. “I think people view Nintendo as a gaming company,” Shinya Takahashi, Nintendo’s chief executive, told me in 2023. “But we’ve always viewed ourselves as an entertainment company.”

It’s not an entirely unique strategy: almost every video game company hopes to find success in film and television after the success of projects like The last of us, He fallsand Minecraft movie. But in Nintendo’s case, the company seems to realize how serious a success like the Switch can be, and has used that success to steadily build itself into something greater in a deliberate and coordinated way. It’s something Nintendo has tried to do before – see: The company’s ill-fated efforts in mobile gaming — but its reemergence during the Switch era has allowed it to approach these projects with a new level of focus and ambition. This is a very confident company It’s about to release a $100 Virtual Boy remakeone of her greatest failures.

But the new Switch also doesn’t need to match the success of its predecessor, it just needs to allow Nintendo to continue that momentum.