This past week, Nintendo released its financial reports from the last fiscal year, which made it clear that 2022 was yet another successful year for the Nintendo Switch despite sales beginning to slow.
During this period, the Nintendo Switch sold a total of 14.91 million units, with 7.69 million of those coming from the OLED model, 5.22 million from the standard model, and two million from the Switch Lite. This makes the Switch’s lifetime sales a staggering total of 122.55 million units sold, officially making it the third best-selling console of all time behind the Nintendo DS and PlayStation 2.
On top of this, the Nintendo Switch has reached a software sales total of 994.30 million. Leading the pack is, of course, still Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which has sold 52 million copies. Likewise, Breath of the Wild has continued to sell well and reached over 30 million copies. New titles during the year also sold considerably well with Kirby and the Forgotten Land selling 6.12 million copies sold and Splatoon 3 reaching a total of 10.13 million copies. However, these are all small compared to Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, which exploded onto the market with a total of 20.61 million copies sold since its launch last November.
While these numbers still are incredibly strong, the number of Switches sold last year decreased by 21.3% due to a shortage of semiconductors and other supplies that hindered production according to Nintendo. Total software sales were also down 4% from the previous year.
Sales were slightly down, but it was still a powerful year for the Nintendo Switch and its software. There is a lot of steam left in the hybrid console from 2017, the lifetime sales surpassing the Game Boy and even the PlayStation 4. The runaway success of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet certainly prove this.
