Nintendo Switch is the Best-Selling Console in U.S. History Over One Year

The Nintendo Switch had a great first year. How great? Well, record-setting great. According to the NPD Group, an American market research company, over the first twelve months on the market, the Nintendo hybrid console achieved the highest install base for a console platform in US history.

What this means is that the Nintendo Switch, in the United States, has sold more units during its first 12 months (first year) on the market. More than the PlayStation 4. More than the PlayStation 2. And even more than Nintendo's last sensation, the Wii (not to be confused with the Wii U, which sold abysmally).

The only thing slightly dampening the achievement for Nintendo is that dedicated handhelds are not included in the parameters. If they were, the Switch wouldn't be the best-seller, another Nintendo product would be: the Game Boy Advance.

As mentioned above, Nintendo's previous console outing was a catastrophic failure. To date the Wii U is said to have sold roughly 13 million units. To put that number into perspective, the Nintendo Switch in one year on the market has already sold better than it. To put it further into perspective, the closet consoles to it in terms of sales are the Sega Game Gear and the PlayStation Vita, which is company you do not want to be in.

But that's the past, and Nintendo has found its place back in the market with the Switch. The question becomes, where's the ceiling? It's hard to estimate responsibly, but it's safe to say Nintendo will hope the Switch finds Wii-levels of success, which sold over 100 million units since its launch in 2006.

It's worth pointing out that for the month of the February, the PlayStation 4 was the best-selling console on the market in the US, beating the Nintendo Switch by 30 percent. Whether this will be the pattern of 2018, who can say. Last year, the Switch was often winning the hardware battle each month in the US, but the PlayStation 4 had a nice share of victories, and even Microsoft enjoyed some success. But if Nintendo can mirror its fortunes of 2017 in 2018, the Switch will be comfortably over 30 million units in two years, which would be very impressive.

Source: NPD Group