Rather than software numbers, what series do you think has the most potential to push people to buy a Switch 2, and what's your reasoning for why your pick is the one?

It think it's Pokemon. Pokemon has a very loyal fanbase of players who don't play almost anything other than Pokemon. It has potential to move easily from 15 to 20 million hardware units

No system with Pokemon ever sold less than 70 million units. The game even gave Game Boy an entirely new sales run, Pokemon is that big


In second place, I will be controversial and say it's Animal Crossing. I might be wrong but I feel after New Horizons it cultivated a following of Animal Crossing players, not exactly Nintendo fans, but Animal Crossing fans. Hardware numbers for next game will be huge, mark my words

Mario Kart. Probably why the console keeps breaking records.

If I had to rank them, purely in terms of system-sellers on an overall, worldwide scale:

1) Mario Kart
2) Pokémon
3) Smash Bros
4) 3D Mario
5) Zelda
6) Animal Crossing (If this were just Japan - It might be #1 or #2 behind Pokémon)

It's either Mario Kart or Pokémon, not Super Mario or The Legend of Zelda.
But it's tough to say because Switch had 2 Mario Kart titles (an enhanced port and a more niche and expensive AR game) while it had tons of Pokémon titles and a lot of them were RPGs. I don't believe we have data to say which motivated more sales, but I have to think it was probably Pokémon in the case of Switch.
For Switch 2, it might be Mario Kart. Its attach rate is insane and it's a new main Mario Kart game which has not happened in 11 years. I'm interested to see how much Pokémon Gen 10 will boost Switch 2's sales, because they're already record-breaking as is.

I get what you're saying about Animal Crossing and I don't doubt it'll do huge numbers when it launches.

The part where I hesitate is: How much of New Horizons' success was the game itself and how much of it was because of the pandemic?

Honestly, I think the game would've still more than doubled the sales of New Leaf regardless. And shoot, maybe more than that. But probably about 10 million of the 48 million and counting was from the release timing.

And I think the free update and Switch 2 Edition are going to help a little more too. Not a lot, I reckon, but they will help. 2026 will probably be the best year for the game's sales since about 2023. It sold like crazy at first and even had good legs in 2021 and 2022. 

Even if 100% of its sales were exclusively due to pandemic, the fact it's a game with pretty high staying power in player engagement means the game cultivated a specific audience of fans who are expecting a new game. Anticipation for next entry will be on the roof  

Depends on the consumer. If we’re talking about somebody who doesn’t play many video games? Then they’d likely be purchasing for get-together experiences (MarioKart & Smash Bros). If we’re talking about somebody who regularly uses their PC or PS5 for gaming? Then highly acclaimed, popular titles would be the main draw (e.g. BotW/TotK, SMOdyssey).

As far as known data is concerned, at least as far as NS1 goes, these are the titles with the consistently strongest legs: MK8Deluxe, AC:NH, Smash Ultimate, BotW+TotK (combined), Mario Wonder, the most recent mainline Pokémon.

That would be one of the three killer apps on the Nintendo Switch which are from the Legend of Zelda franchise, the Animal Crossing franchise, and the Mario Kart franchise.

Currently, on Switch 2, it is it's (once again) Mario Kart.

Mario Kart has likely been the most important (or one of the most important) franchises by Nintendo since the first game on SNES. Part of the reason that Gamecube and Wii U didn't sell very well was because of unremarkable Mario Kart releases. While Mario Kart 8 is similar to Mario Kart 8DE, it is lacking an adequate multiplayer feature, and that's why people were playing a lot of Mario Kart 7 instead; you could play 8 players, and everyone had their own screen. Mario Kart 8 on Wii U failed to move people off of Mario Kart Wii and Mario Kart 7 for this reason. Mario Kart 8DE presented a bunch of new, integral, features (especially the multiplayer) that finally made that game move substantial volumes of hardware... it very quickly overtook Mario Kart 7 as the preferred game to play in the multiplayer community (at least at my office).

As I mentioned, the key feature on MK8DE is local multiplayer on the handheld mode of the Switch. Everyone gets their own screen, and you can play massive games of 8 players on BT or 12 players local with a WiFi connection available. Plus, with a WiFi connection available you can fill up extra slots with online players, which is a step up from bots... but the biggest driving factor for Mario Kart has always been its local multiplayer, ever since the SNES when it was just two people split screen.

Legend of Zelda was single handedly carrying the Switch launch, and with Mario Kart, kept it off shelves for a very long time; while Mario Odyssey launched that quarter, it was more superfluous to the maxed out hardware sales; it's unlikely they would have changed. Breath of the Wild + Mario Kart was already enough. That's the thing about Nintendo, they have so many powerful system selling games that there's a ton of overlap. Who knows how well Super Mario Odyssey could have done without Zelda or Mario Kart? We can only guess.

Animal Crossing New Horizons was the game that drove Switch to peak sales. I don't think any other game franchise would have been capable of that. The franchise had already been rising in importance, and that became clear on 3DS.