The Game Boy Advance only had some three years on the shelves before the Nintendo DS came out, but managed to amass one of the best video game libraries of all time, sell 82M copies, and is still a top 10 best selling console of all time, 20+ years later. Three years.

What a f*cking warrior.

You could also use the argument that the PS2 was dirty cheaper for the 2nd half of its life at only 100$, which is a huge reason why it got to 160 Million, it was impulse buy cheap and its immediate successor had a disastrous launch priced at 600$ which is equivalent to 1000$ in 2025 inflation, so that forced many more potential consumers to buy the cheaper PS2.

The Switch didn't have any of those advantages, not only stayed at 300-350$ for the entirety of its life, the price would actually RISE during the time period where consoles would need a price cut the most which is towards the end of its lifecycle. This makes the Switch 1 not impulse buy cheap and has less of an advantage in that area, so despite that people still purchased it as much as the dirt cheap PS2 which is highly impressive and truly shows just how much stronger the appeal is for the Switch.

Then again ps2 also didnt have the social media advantage.

Nor the covid advantage.

Also it didnt had a cheaper handheld only mode that people count as a " switch" sale even thou its a deticated handheld and it cant" switch" 

And before you give the argument of" but it plays all the switch games"

So did the ps2 play all the ps1 games 

The switch in todays time is " dirt cheap" its 299 against 550 ps5.

Its a verry easy impulse buy if you low on money. Or have a family

What i mean to say is verry simple,they both had some advantage of why they sold crazy amount of units.

If it matches it going forward it'll end up at almost exactly 159m though with the forecast adjustment I don't see it shipping 2m this holiday so it should be further behind by the end of the fiscal year. The estimates are actually very reliable in this case since the DS's final sales total and shipments for each quarter are known alongside the date from Famitsu and whatnot. With the Switch and Switch 2 only needing to be adjusted slightly in response to this quarter it's quite reliable for current consoles too with the possible exception of the Xbox Series due to a relative lack of data for that one.

The Xbox One's final total was originally at 50.5m on here but then it was randomly revealed to be 58m some time later so the Xbox Series could be a couple to few million off. Though even if that happens the current estimates will still be close enough that the overall picture will stay the same so the estimates even for that are still valuable.

My guess would be by Holidays 2027, the Wii sold another 5 to 6 million after dropping to around 500K per quarter, the Switch is at 900K and has higher support now than the Wii did at that phase.

This is if things go business as usual. There’s always the opportunity for price drops or new models.

I've now updated the OG post, with a comparison table of the shipment numbers of both consoles, you can look at this there, and also added total lifetime table for the PS2 as well as some extra info under the tables which you can take a look at. When you look at the comparison table of the shipments, it looks like everything is in favor of the Switch. It's still doing shipments near the 1M mark each quarter, and on top of that it's lifetime difference is 20M+ as of this moment. The last quarter ending in September, was the same quarter ending in September for the 2008 year for the PS2 which was at 133.4M at this time, more than 20M behind Switch latest number of 154M. Also we barely passed the point (looking at lifetime) where Switch was at the top of it's difference with the PS2 at 24M advantage in the end of 2023. It's difference is now dropping, but it only dropped less than 4M for 2 years, and if you look at it from this side, it looks like it's impossible that difference to drop to 0 or even in the minus (which will be the case if it doesn't reach the 160M in the end). Irony of ironies: the two most successful consoles, the PS2 and the Switch, launched almost on the same day - March 4th and March 3rd respectively - making them a perfect fit for period-based comparisons, including fiscal years and of course sales.

Poll renewed! The chart in the original post with the PS2 is also updated with the latest data!

Now that the holiday season data is finally out, let's see what the votes will be and if someone has changed his opinion. Write down below.
Switch sold units are 153.75M as of January 3rd 2026. If the forecast is met or at least close, Switch should have shipped at least 156M as of March.
How will 2026 and 2027 be for the system?

(As always the previous polls can be found at the bottom of the first post).

I got inspired by @Shadow1980's post in the other thread, and did PS2 vs NSW shipments bar chart.

• All of those are fiscal years, therefore 1999/2016 for example is the year ending in March 31st, 2000/March 31st, 2017. Also I put 4M for the NSW FY 2025 (ending in March 2026, just to be complete, it will end around 4M anyway).

It should be noted that Switch is ahead of where the PS2 was in 2012, so that graph could be a bit misleading.

Really, it will depend on pricing and how long Nintendo decides to keep Switch on shelves. A single price drop or a new budget model like Switch TV or a Switch with some of the Switch 2 tech (like the new Joy Cons) could end this quickly. But IMO, anything beyond a price drop are distant possibilities at this point. My guess is Nintendo's priority is Switch 2, and getting to 50 million in the next 20 months. So, if Switch passes PS2, it will be at least a year and a half away.

@XtremeBG I was fortunately able to make calendar year graphs for the Switch & DS since Nintendo has complete quarterly shipment data going back to 2004. Before that it was limited to six-month periods or entire fiscal years. Sony has complete quarterly data for the PS2 out through the end of 2011, but they started to combine PS2 & PS3 shipment data for a couple of years. Unless that split is buried somewhere in their reports, there doesn't appear to be any data available to make a complete set of calendar year shipments. Another thing about the PS2 was the offset launches. It was released in Japan seven months before it was released in North America, hence those weak shipment numbers in its first FY.

Anyway, the PS2 benefited from strong post-replacement legs, selling far more after it was replaced than any other system before or since. Meanwhile, though the Switch has had considerably weaker legs, it has benefited from an abnormally long primary life cycle (8-­¼ years vs. only about 6 years for the PS2; only the Game Boy lasted longer before being replaced). So, both advantages result in a relative wash. Kinda like how the DS had better yearly average sales than the Switch during its primary life cycle, but said life cycle was cut short with the release of the 3DS. If Nintendo had waited another year then perhaps the DS could have cleared 160M. There's all sorts of factors that influence the sales of a system... which sadly some people treat as more than just matters of academic curiosity, but that's a topic for another discussion.

Speaking of factors influencing sales, the regional dynamics between the PS2 & Switch are also interesting. While we never got a final official regional split for the PS2, we can make reasonable guesses.

The final tally in Japan was about 22M. That was the last time a home console sold well in Japan, with the Wii selling only 12.7M and subsequent PlayStation systems not even selling half what the PS2 did. Meanwhile, handheld and semi-handheld systems have continued to do well in Japan. The PSP sold almost as well as the PS2 did there, and where even the 3DS did well enough to become the new #4 console of all time.

While the U.S. is the majority of sales for its region, the splits are kinda all over the place for systems where we do know the final split. For Nintendo systems that's typically been around 85-90%, but interestingly enough the U.S. was only about 75% of the share for the PS1. That gives us a wide range, one that puts lifetime sales in NA somewhere in the neighborhood of 52-55M assuming a Nintendo-like split and as high as 62M assuming a PS1-like split (VGC has it at 53.65M). However, it's entirely possible that said split was skewed because of how the N64 was far more popular in the U.S. compared to other countries in the region, relative to the size of the market, which may have depressed the U.S.'s share of sales for the whole region. It's entirely possible that with the PS2 being much bigger in the U.S. than the PS1 in both absolute terms (54% gen-over-gen improvement) and market share, its share of sales for the region may have improved and that 52-55M range is more probable, and that 75% share was anomalously small.

That leaves as much as 83-86M for Europe, the rest of Asia, and other smaller markets, though possibly as low as 76M. The last update we had for PS2 shipments in Europe had it at 48M as of May 2008, and since it was on the market for another several years after that it had to have shipped at least 50M in Europe (VGC has it at 55.3M). So, that leaves at most around 33-36M for smaller markets.

The Switch has far surpassed the PS2 in Japan, having sold over 36.5M units and counting, a lead of over 14.5M units. In the U.S. it is just barely ahead of the PS2 as of the end of 2025 (~48.5M, vs. 46.5M for the PS2), and it's reasonable to assume a similarly slim lead for NA as a whole. Meanwhile, in Europe & ROW it's way behind the PS2. As of Dec. 31, Nintendo has shipped 39.91M units to Europe and 17.87M to other markets outside the main three. That's a total of almost 57.8M units, far less than the well over 80M units the PS2 had to have sold outside NA & Japan.

Or if you want to simply things, U.S.+Japan sales were 68.5M for the PS2, leaving 91.5M for all other countries. Meanwhile, U.S.+Japan sales for the the Switch was at ~85M as of the end of 2025. Leaving, say, 1M of shipped units left unsold worldwide at the end of 2025, that would leave ~69.4M for LTD sales in all other countries, a difference of about 22M in the PS2's favor, enough to offset the combined lead of 16.5M for the U.S.+Japan. And thus the roughly 6M deficit it currently has.

While the Switch was a hit everywhere, the scale of its success varied from region to region. This is why worldwide sales don't ever tell us the whole story by themselves. Every region has its own idiosyncrasies, with customers having different buying habits. Handhelds do better in Japan relative to the size of the market. Europe is "PlayStation Country" for the most part (and in fact was a small market for consoles prior to the PS1). The U.S. & Canada are more flexible and seem to exhibit less brand loyalty overall. As a result, every system has different splits across the various major markets.

Of course, the Switch is still selling and probably won't be discontinued for at least a little while longer (maybe the end of FY2027-28), so its U.S.+JP lead will grow and its combined deficit in other countries will shrink. But as I pointed out in the "Road to 160M+" thread, the Switch is trailing the DS considerably in terms of post-replacement shipments/sales globally, with the situation being kept from being worse only because of Japan, and even there it is quickly losing steam. If it continues at that rate, it won't come close to the nearly 6M more it needs to reach 160M. So to answer the OP's question, my answer is "It won't." It should clear 157M, but ~158M is about as high as I'd go.