What Is the Best-Selling Game Console of All Time?
For the longest time, industry observers and pundits thought the PlayStation 2's overall global sales were unattainable by any other platform. After all, its successors never even managed to breach to 100 million mark, and neither did its contemporary rivals — with one notable exception. Nintendo's Wii, which was sold between 2006 and 2017 and therefore available four years longer than the PlayStation 2, racked up 101 million lifetime sales. Now, the Nintendo Switch, which has only been on the market for six years, has a real shot of dethroning Sony's iconic console.
As of December 31, 2023, Nintendo had sold more than 139 million units of the Switch, adding 15 million between April and December of last year. This can, at least in part, be attributed to the Japanese video game mainstay releasing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in May 2023. The successor to Breath of the Wild sold 20 million copies and was now the ninth-best-selling Nintendo title of all time by December 2023. Important to note: When factoring out the far less adaptable Lite version of the Switch platform, the hybrid console drops from second to third rank with 116.2 million lifetime units sold.
Apart from Nintendo's success, Sony has dominated the gaming landscape for the past two and a half decades, with three of its PlayStation consoles now in the top 4. According to official figures from Sony, the company has sold more than 155 million PS2 units since its launch, making it the most successful video game console for the living room, even though its lead is rapidly shrinking.
While its competitors Sony and Microsoft have already moved on to the next console generation in 2020, Nintendo still apparently has no plans to give up on its current hybrid console. A purported Switch 2 has yet to materialize and industry insiders and analysts are speculating that the refresh of the current generation Switch will arrive in late 2024. With no real successor on the horizon and a bit of creative number crunching, the Switch could very well become the best-selling home console of all time by the end of this year.