The Road to 160m+ for Nintendo Switch (EDIT: See mod note in first post for new rule).

[Shadow1980]

(Had to break this into two posts because VGC has been having weird formatting issues when quoting)

Looking at the current trajectory for the Switch, it's hard to see how it can reach 160M at this point. While I may have been wrong in the past about how much the Switch was going to sell (which to be fair just about everyone was at one point), one thing I was always right about was how quickly the Switch would decline after being replaced. Nintendo systems have rarely had good legs. The NES & SNES had decent legs, but they also had decent support after their successors came out, and Nintendo still produced them in decent numbers as well. NES games were still being made and released through 1994, and Nintendo shipped over 20% of the NES's lifetime units after March 31, 1991 (about halfway between the Japanese and N. American releases of the NES). Meanwhile, the N64, GameCube, and Wii all had terrible post-replacement legs. With their handhelds, the GBA and 3DS did have decent legs late in life, but that's because the DS and Switch were not their "official" replacements in the way that the GBA was the Game Boy's replacement and the 3DS was the DS's replacement.

The Switch has been declining at a rate only slightly slower than the DS did after it was replaced. In terms of total sales volume, it's way behind what the DS was selling after the 3DS was released. The DS didn't even sell 3M units after 2011, which may give us a sense of what the Switch is looking at in the coming quarters. The Switch was down 70% worldwide in Q4 2025, and that was after steadily growing YoY drops. If shipments drops another 70% this calendar year, it will ship only 1.35M units. If I had to guess, Nintendo might ship another 2M this year and next year total, maybe 2.5M optimistically. It will clear 157M, but probably fall short of 158M.

Last edited by Shadow1980 - on 05 February 2026