Partially due to the release of Nintendo’s newest console, the Nintendo Switch, sales of the company’s Wii and Wii U consoles fell to **** in 2018. During the product’s run as Nintendo’s flagship console, the Wii spawned some of the best-selling console games of all time, such as Wii Sports, Mario Kart Wii and Wii Sports Resort, each selling tens of millions of units. Nintendo Nintendo began as a small Japanese playing card manufacturer in 1889. Today, as one of the biggest names in the video game industry, the company ranks among the most valuable brands in the world and generates billions of dollars each year through the sales of its consoles, games, and merchandise. Console Gaming Magnovox released its Odyssey console in 1972, making it the first video game console ever made. Throughout the decades since, console gaming has exploded in popularity and become a massive global industry. Modern consoles regularly sell tens of millions of units throughout their lifespan, and the most popular products, including PlayStation 2, Nintendo DS, Game Boy, and Nintendo Wii, boast sales of over 100 million units.

In Nintendo's fiscal year 2023 (April 2022 to March 2023), approximately 120 thousand units of gaming software for the Wii U console were sold worldwide. The Wii U gaming console was launched by Nintendo in late 2012 as a successor to the immensely popular Wii and is part of the eighth generation of gaming consoles.

This statistic shows unit sales of Nintendo Wii U game consoles worldwide from 2013 to 2017. In 2015, global sales of Wii U consoles amounted to **** million units.

As of March 2025, Mario Kart 8 was the bestseller for Nintendo's Wii U gaming console, with 8.46 million units sold. Second-ranked Super Mario 3D World generated approximately 5.89 million lifetime unit sales.

In the company's fiscal year 2025, Nintendo sold nearly 11 million units of the Nintendo Switch, a significant decrease in the number of units sold compared to the previous year. Sales of the Nintendo Switch peaked in 2021, when the company sold over 28.8 units. Nintendo Console Sales The Japanese multinational company Nintendo is a name well known all around the world thanks to their long history of producing a range of high-quality video game consoles. Despite being one of the largest video game companies in the world, Nintendo’s net revenue has steadily decreased recently, registering a low of around 4.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2016. The sales of the Nintendo Switch comprised the vast majority of the company's sales among its gaming consoles. Over the last decade, Nintendo’s home consoles sales were focused on five different products – Nintendo 64, GameCube, Wii, Wii U, and the new Nintendo Switch. The Nintendo 64 dominated the market in the late 90s and early 2000, while the GameCube became popular in 2002. The Wii is Nintendo’s best selling console; despite the release of its successor. About 26 million units of the Wii were sold in 2009, the highest number to date. Overall, Nintendo sold about 100 million units worldwide since 2007. Wii sports, Mario Kart Wii and Wii Sports Resort are among the best selling Nintendo Wii titles worldwide. Nintendo's newest home console is the Nintendo switch, which was released worldwide on March 3, 2017. The Switch sold around 2.74 million units in its first month, making it Nintendo's fastest selling home console and exceeding initial projections. The Switch is mainly a home console, but also has the ability to be used on the go through an LCD touchscreen. This has led Nintendo to consider the Switch a "hybrid" console. Nintendo’s best-selling handheld gaming product is the Nintendo DS. Sales of the Nintendo DS peaked in 2009, when the company sold over 30 million units worldwide. Since then, sales of Nintendo DS have been declining. The top selling Nintendo DS titles worldwide are Super Mario Bros, Nintendogs, Mariokart DS and Brain Age. The company has also enjoyed a great deal of success with the GameBoy, Nintendo DS predecessor, and the Nintendo 3DS over the years.

This statistic displays the unit sales of the Nintendo Wii U gaming console in Europe from 2012 to 2017. Sales of the WiiU exceeded *** thousand units in 2014 and fell to roughly ** thousand units by 2017.

This statistic shows data on the number of Nintendo Wii U gaming consoles sold in Germany from 2012 to 2017. In 2017, roughly ***** Nintendo Wii U consoles were sold in the German market.

First released in November 2006, the Wii is a video game console developed by Nintendo. As of July 2025, it had sold ***** million units across the world, including over ** million units in Europe. Nintendo history Nintendo is a multinational consumer electronics and software company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. Founded in September 1889 as a small Japanese firm producing handmade playing cards, Nintendo has evolved into one of the largest video game manufacturing companies. Operating as a single business segment, Nintendo’s operations are categorized by product type such as video game platforms, mobile, and playing cards. Most of Nintendo’s revenue is generated through sales of video game platforms. Nintendo home consoles Nintendo released its first series of home consoles in 1977 with the Color TV-Game. In 1983, the company released the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), a console that has recorded close to ** million lifetime sales globally. This was followed by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), Nintendo 64 (N64), and Nintendo GameCube, respectively. In 2006, Nintendo released the Wii, the popular home console with motion control features, with its successor the Wii U released in 2012. Nintendo’s latest home console, the Nintendo Switch, was first released in 2017.

This graph presents the number of Wii U, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One games consoles sold in Germany from 2013 to 2018. In the latter year, Sony sold roughly *** million PlayStation 4 games consoles.

Since its launch on March 3, 2017, the Nintendo Switch has sold over *** million consoles worldwide as of March 2025. Following the poor sales of its predecessor, the Wii U, the Switch was seen as the new hope for Nintendo in the ongoing battle with other console giants, Xbox and PlayStation. The Switch sets itself apart from its competitors by the fact that it can be used as both a stationary console and a portable device, meaning that gamers can play from the comfort of their own homes or on the go. Nintendo cashes in on exclusive titlesOne of the key reasons for the Switch’s success is undoubtedly the popularity of Nintendo’s first-party titles. Blockbuster series such as The Legend of Zelda, Mario, and Pokémon are all exclusive to Nintendo, meaning that fans can only play their favorite games on Nintendo consoles. Unsurprisingly, these Nintendo exclusive games dominate the list of top selling Switch titles worldwide, with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe sitting top of the pile. Can Nintendo keep up with Microsoft and Sony?Thanks to the success of the Switch, Nintendo has once again been able to stake its claim as one of the big players in the console gaming market. Until 2022, Sony could still claim to be king of the consoles, with unit sales of its PlayStation 4 exceeding the *** million mark in 2019. As of 2023, Nintendo surpassed Sony, having sold over *** million units of the Switch. Microsoft’s contribution, the Xbox One, is lagging some way behind as sales of the consoles are still below ** million units worldwide.

In 2020, retail software revenue for Nintendo's console segment (including the Wii, Wii U, and the Nintendo Switch) amounted to **** billion U.S. dollars. The majority of consumer spending on Nintendo gaming software took place in the online segment, with digital downloads, gaming subscriptions like Nintendo Online, and microtransactions generating **** billion U.S. dollars during the same period. For the Japanese company, physical gaming sales have always been dominant, but it is a sign of the times that even Nintendo is now making more money via digital. In the fiscal year ending March 2021, downloadable versions of packaged gaming software accounted for 59.3 percent of Nintendo's digital gaming sales.

In 2020, Nintendo's console gaming software revenues for Wii, Wii U, and the Nintendo Switch amounted to approximately ***** billion U.S. dollars, ranking second behind Sony's PlayStation revenue. Nintendo's gaming software sales are estimated to increase until 2022, before setting up for a decline. This projected decease in revenue is due to the phasing out of older Nintendo systems, as well as the lifecycle of the Nintendo Switch console. The Switch is part of the eighth generation of gaming consoles, and whereas Sony's PlayStation and Microsoft's Xbox have had their ninth generation consoles launched in fall 2020, the Switch is still going strong as-is and Nintendo so far has only announced an OLED model upgrade but no true sucessor model.

In 2020, Nintendo's consoles Wii, Wii U, and Switch's gaming hardware revenue amounted to *** billion U.S. dollars. The revenue from hardware sales is forecast to decline in the following years, with no new Nintendo console announcements since the launch of Switch in 2017.

A sequel to the original Splatoon released on Wii U, Splatoon 2 is a third-person shooter game first released for the Nintendo Switch in 2017. The game has proven to be especially popular in Nintendo's homeland, Japan, where it has sold over ************* units as of August 2020.

First launched in 2002, the Xbox Network is an online multiplayer service associated with Microsoft’s Xbox line of consoles. As of December 2022, Microsoft's online gaming service had approximately 120 million monthly active users, up from just under 40 million at the beginning of 2016. The service was known as Xbox Live before rebranding into Xbox network in March 2023 and to differentiate it from the Xbox Live Gold subscription service offering.

Xbox Live perks Xbox network is available as a free service, but it also has a paid tier called Xbox Live Gold. Many of the key features that gamers look for in the service, such as online gaming and access to exclusive games, are restricted to the Gold service. The Gold service also includes a Games with Gold program, in which gamers are offered access to digital downloads of games every month. Xbox One gamers have access to two games every month, with the cumulative retail value of these games reaching a combined 712 U.S. dollars throughout 2022.

 King of the consoles? The Xbox Series S/X is the current generation of Xbox consoles and competes neck-to-neck with Sony's PlayStation 5 which were both released in November 2020, as well as the Nintendo Switch console which was launched in March 2017. When looking North American sales, the Xbox Series S/X has already surpassed the Nintendo Wii U and the Dreamcast but still is lagging behind the PlayStation 5. Additionally, the majority of Xbox gaming revenue is not derived from hardware sales but through gaming content and service sales.

Die bislang meistverkaufte Spielkonsole aller Zeiten ist die PlayStation 2 von Sony. Weltweit konnten rund 160 Millionen Exemplare der im Jahr 2000 erschienenen Konsole verkauft werden. Auf dem zweiten Platz folgt die Handheld-Spielkonsole Nintendo DS mit 154 Millionen Verkäufen. Die Nintendo Switch und Nintendos Game Boy folgen mit 150,7 Millionen Verkäufen bzw. 118,7 Millionen Verkäufen auf den weiteren Plätzen. Die meistverkauften Videospiele Das bislang meistverkaufte Videospiel der Welt ist das Spiel Minecraft. Die Rechte am ursprünglich vom schwedischen Studio Mojang entwickelten Videospiel sind mittlerweile im Besitz der Microsoft Corporation. Bisher wurden weltweit rund 350 Millionen Einheiten verkauft (Stand Mai 2025). Grand Theft Auto V kommt mit 215 Millionen verkauften Einheiten auf den zweiten Platz. Auf dem dritten Platz folgt Wii Sports. Vom Computerspiel, das von Nintendo stammt, wurden rund 82,9 Millionen Einheiten verkauft.