The Nintendo Switch has reached a history breaking landmark.
No, we don’t know if it has outsold the PlayStation 2 quite yet. If it already happened, the data hasn’t come up for us to confirm it yet.
As Video Games Chronicle reports, the Switch now stands as the Nintendo console that has been for sale for the longest, without a next generation console to come after it. They note that the Switch has now been on sale for 2,687 days, making it one day longer than the Famicom, or as we know it in the West, the NES.
Now, before we get to the Switch’s achievement, we should discuss the amazing precedent set by the NES. When the console launched in 1983, Nintendo did not necessarily plan to make it as the first of many console generations. In fact, the Famicom was very successful for the first decade it was out in the market, and Nintendo would have been happy to keep selling it indefinitely.
It was the entry of the TurboGrafx-16 and the Sega Genesis in 1987 that drove Nintendo to announce their successor in that same year. And it still took three years after that for the Super NES to be released. And as unlikely as it sounds, Nintendo still held onto that market dominance for most of those three years.
That’s because this period was when some of the best NES games got released, including Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3, Final Fantasy 2, Dragon Quest 3, Ducktales, Mega Man 2, and more.
The Switch’s longevity is for a completely different reason than what the NES had. While there’s no question that it missed out on many games that needed more power than what was available on the Switch, Nintendo was able to successfully market the console as a hybrid device, to play on the TV or on the go.
But this wasn’t Nintendo’s only selling point, which actually kept changing in the past 7 years. When third parties were initially hesitant to come to the console, small and indie game developers came in, for a Steam like gold rush for potential players. And then, Nintendo was able to roll out their most popular games, including Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
In more recent years, the Switch received a last minute boost from the unexpected circumstances of the quarantine/lockdown period of the pandemic. While Sony and Microsoft had just launched their consoles and were struggling to ship them worldwide, the Switch was already widely available, and Nintendo had the good fortune to have an ideal lockdown game ready to go, in Animal Crossing New Horizons.
Nintendo themselves noted that they benefited in a very big way from the long tail of their biggest selling games, but there’s a time for everyone to go, and the rise of Steam Deck and PC gaming handhelds has already made the Switch incredibly obsolete, even more than before. But hopes are high that Nintendo’s successor will exceed, if not match, the Switch’s success.
