April 10 2008, Nintendo release Mario Kart Wii, it would go on to become the highest selling unbundled retail game for a single platform in history, and is still selling tens of thousands of copies annually to this day. Nintendo sold a whopping 40,410,000 software units. This was a new record for Nintendo and would hold for 12 years, when it was finally shattered by the Switch with 50,430,000 sales in Q1 2020.
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2009/090730e.pdf
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2020/200806e.pdf
As a software seller, the Nintendo Switch is now hotter than any Nintendo console has ever been in the history of the company.
While not entirely a home console, the Nintendo Switch sold 5.68 million units, which surpassed the Wii’s 2008 hardware record set at 5.17 million. The Wii went on to sell 26 million units for the year - both all time records for all dedicated home consoles.
The DS holds the all time record for all dedicated video game systems with 6.94 million sold during Q1, and 31 million for the year.
Unfortunately, Sony doesn’t do quarterly software, but for the first half year of 2017 - Sony sold 78.7 million pieces of software - I’m unsure if that is PS4’s record due to missing data, but both Switch and Wii killed that number. https://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/er/pdf/18q1_supplement.pdf
Sony’s top selling Q1 hardware for PS4 was 3.5 million in 2016. Nowhere near the Wii or Switch.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/222403/unit-sales-of-sonys-gaming-hardware-by-category/
I’ll update this when I am on a PC and can search through PS2 quarterly sales data (Unless someone wants to do that for me). I don’t think Switch beat PS2’s software record which hit something ridiculous like 252 million units for the year (I believe in 2005), but it might have. The Switch can conceivably beat 252 million software units this year. I am fairly sure Switch beat PS2’s hardware record for Q1; but it needs confirming.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
(mostly)
