Nintendo Switch: From shaky start to world domination –

In many ways, it almost feels a bit surreal trying to sum up the Nintendo Switch. What an incredible journey it has been, where it is no exaggeration to say that it beats everything else in the gaming world, with possibly only the Mega Drive, the first PlayStation and the Xbox 360 as competitors. We are talking about a console that came out of nowhere, yet managed to make a splash and today is well on its way to becoming the best-selling gaming device of all time.

But. I think we have to start at the beginning. And for me that’s 2012 and the launch of the Wii U. Nintendo had their biggest console success to date with the Wii and wanted to follow that up. They had an idea of a console that would let us play in a new way and have a screen that would enable new ideas and let us play wirelessly at home, even without a TV. If you squint your eyes, the Wii U Gamepad reminds you a bit of the Switch, and it’s easy to see that this is the basis for the latter.

However, the Wii U was a giant flop and nothing went the way Nintendo wanted. Gamers didn’t like having to look at the Gamepad and TV at the same time, many were confused by the name and marketing and didn’t realize it was a new console rather than a Wii accessory, and the hardware was complicated for third parties leaving it. That left Nintendo almost alone in a situation reminiscent of the Nintendo 64 era, but even then they at least had the most powerful console to brag about at the time, and cartridges offered some advantages (and disadvantages) over the slower CDs.

The Gamecube was considered a major flop a decade earlier after selling 22 million copies during its lifetime, but the Wii U didn’t even reach 14 million. Worse, the Nintendo 3DS had also lost momentum and was not nearly as popular as the Nintendo DS. Nintendo doing a Sega and quitting consoles was increasingly seen as a reasonable scenario, and perhaps the next Mario game would be released for the PlayStation and Metroid would find a natural home on the Xbox.

The Wii U slowly fell asleep, and four years after its launch, it was confirmed that Nintendo was working on a device with the working name NX, which was unveiled in October 2016 and named Switch. To say people were baffled was an exaggeration. Here are some of the comments from Gamereactor readers:

“I think it’s Nintendo’s dumbest console they’ve ever made, utterly! They should have made a new portable or desktop console, not a hybrid! I don’t see the point in carrying the console around, it’s too big, has too bad battery life and is generally poorly designed.”

“As I said, it’s a Wii U 2.0, but with detachable controls. Without knowing anything about longevity, range, performance and resolution, I feel like I’ll probably wait and see.”

“… It’s way too big to be anything.

“Jack of all trades, master of none”.

“I hope this is a Wii U-like fiasco.”

“Switch is too expensive, and that seems to be the common opinion online. Seriously, £300 or even more for this?”

“Will be a total flop, old games released years earlier on the other consoles and lots of Wii U ports…. This is the Wii U 2”.

And so on and so forth. Of course, there were also optimistic voices, but it was a very negative mood from some quarters. A very large crowd had completely counted Nintendo out, and the idea of a Wii U-like console costing even more seemed to be the definition of a one-way ticket out of console making. While these were all as wrong as they could ever be, I still understand them. I did it myself when I predicted for Gamereactor magazine that the Nintendo DS would flop and lose the race to the PSP…. after which it became the second best-selling format of all time. Ouch!

Switch came, saw and conquered, and this time Nintendo had done their homework. While I think their vision of people taking the Switch with them and playing multiplayer on the go with their own Joy-Cons is pure fiction (those who play portable games mainly play alone, although there are exceptions), there was certainly a pent up need for a hybrid console. This way, Nintendo itself could stop making separate games for portable and desktop devices, which sped up releases considerably, and the performance was good enough for most people. In addition, they had the Wii U library that almost everyone missed because it sold so poorly, which served as a good starting point throughout the generation for filling the release lists with remasters, not least Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which became the best-selling game of the format, with over 67 million copies sold.

Nintendo, like Sega during the Dreamcast era, has proven to be particularly good with a knife edge, and despite the Wii U’s flop, many great games came to the console, and Switch started extremely aggressively with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild at launch, shortly followed by the aforementioned Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Splatoon 2, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, and another month later Super Mario Odyssey.

This battery of strong titles was enough to send the device flying off the shelves, which in turn woke up third parties, not least indies. Success leads to success, and despite a slightly slower first half of 2018 in terms of sales (with games like Bayonetta 2, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Mario Tennis Aces and Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker ), the ball was already rolling. As usual, Nintendo also wanted to offer something new and presented the cardboard concept Labo, which allowed us to play in entirely new ways. It was not a success either, but the quirky idea contributed to Nintendo’s sense of innovation and surprise.

If the first half of 2018 saw slightly lower sales than Nintendo’s biggest titles usually deliver, the second half was even crazier. That’s when Super Mario Party, Pokémon: Let’s Go Pikachu /Let’s Go Eevee and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate were released, three games that together reached 72 million copies sold. And then they kicked off in early January 2019 with New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, a game that sold nearly 20 million copies.

By now, it was clear that Nintendo had achieved the impossible. The Wii U had already been forgotten and the Switch was flying off the shelves as sales record after sales record was pulverized. Proof of this came from then Xbox boss Phil Spencer (now general gaming boss at Microsoft) who decided to work with Nintendo rather than against them, launching Xbox-exclusive Ori and the Blind Forest for Switch and having Banjo-Kazooie appear as a DLC character in Smash Bros.

Another thing that somewhat oddly helped consolidate the Switch’s popularity was actually the pandemic. People were sitting at home and where most others abandoned local multiplayer, Nintendo invested extra hard in this very thing. And Animal Crossing: New Horizons did best, released in March 2022, just when it was declared that the pandemic had conquered the West. People built cities, greeted each other and enjoyed their isolation, and New Horizons, with just under 48 million copies sold, is the second-best-selling game on the format.

The rest, you might say, is history. Around 2022, after five years on the market, rumors began to surface that it was time for a replacement. Not least because Microsoft and Sony launched the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in late 2020. The Switch was already considered weaker in hardware performance when it was released, and against the new competition, it was practically the Stone Age.

However, Nintendo clearly stated that it was not yet time to replace the console, a message they gave publicly to their backers and made sure no one could really misinterpret the message. Switch still had a few years left in it. Yet, since 2022, the rumors have slowly but surely become more frequent and coming from good sources as leaks have appeared. Not surprising in itself, since those who wanted to release games around launch should reasonably have been in full production. This was a break in the trend that seems to have surprised even Nintendo itself, it’s just not possible to keep secrets anymore, everything will leak.

And the leaks continued. Today we know that the Switch 2 will be shown again on April 2 and will reportedly launch just a few months after that. Recently we saw what is probably the last Nintendo Direct dedicated exclusively to the Switch, and after 151 million units sold, it is about to get a replacement, which will lead to declining sales. It seems very likely that it will overtake the Nintendo DS with 155 million, making it Nintendo’s best-selling device ever. However, whether it will also pass the PlayStation 2 with just over 160 million remains to be seen.

Clearly, it is now on its last legs. Still, the console will be fully supported for at least another year (games have already been announced for 2026 and later this year Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and Pokémon Legends: Z-A ). In addition, we should not rule out the possibility that Nintendo has something more to announce as a sort of farewell. In a few days, however, it will be all about the replacement, where despite looking almost exactly like the Switch 1, people don’t seem to be so adamant about it flopping. We can thank the Switch for that, the console that went from the failures of the Wii U and an uncertain future to dominating the gaming world and making Mario bigger than ever.