Nintendo rounded out 2025 with another barn-storming quarter of sales for the Nintendo Switch 2, cementing its status as the fastest-selling new console in history to sweep past 17 million sales by the end of the year. But its predecessor, the original Nintendo Switch, is still hanging on in there and managed to hit another milestone, surpassing the Nintendo DS lifetime sales with over 155 million console sold, and clinching second place in the all-time best selling consoles list behind the PlayStation 2.
Starting with the Switch 2, the final quarter of 2025 was naturally buoyed by the Christmas shopping season, with 7.01 million Switch 2 consoles sold. That brings the lifetime sales to 17.37 million after seven months, which is simply huge. To put that in perspective, it took the PS5, the PS4 and the original Switch roughly one year to reach the same point. Of course, both PlayStations launched in mid-November and the Switch in March, so it’s not a direct comparison in terms of the peaks and troughs of the market, but this shows the power of having an appealing new product and lots and lots of stock.
It’s no surprise that, as a cut-price bundled game, Mario Kart World has been the best-selling title for Switch 2 with 14.03 million copies sold, but Donkey Kong Bananza has also done very well for itself with 4.25 million copies. Pokémon Legends: Z-A Switch 2 Edition has 3.89 million copies sold, but that’s not including the Switch 1 version and upgrades. Kirby Air Riders has also been a nice little game with 1.7 million copies sold. Alas, there’s no milestone for Metroid Prime 4 revealed at this point, but we hope it’s done well.
And so we come to the original Switch, and potentially its last major milestone. With 1.38 million more consoles sold last quarter, it’s clearly playing second fiddle to the Switch 2, but that was enough to bring it 155.37 million and pass the Nintendo DS at 154.02 million units sold. That puts it in second place for the all-time best-selling console list, behind the PlayStation 2 with Sony’s rather nebulous “more than 160 million” sales figure. If the Switch continues to sell around 1 million a quarter through 2026, it could get pretty darned close to the PS2, but I imagine Sony would be tempted to hold a firesale on some museum pieces to juice their own figures once more.
