Nintendo Switch Sold 139 Million Units, But Is Still Only The Third Best-Selling Console

Game consoles have been capturing the hearts of not only children but also grown-up gamers for several decades. It used to be the Game Boy, now it's the Switch that we pull out of our backpacks on the go. In the past, we stored our progress on PlayStation memory cards; today, everything is saved in the cloud of our PS5.

But one thing has never changed: our passion for video games. So, does it really matter which console ends up being the best? What? You still want to know which one sold the best? Sigh, okay then. Here are the numbers.

The Nintendo Switch Ranks Only Third With 139 Million Units Sold

Recently, Nintendo released the sales figures for the Switch up to December 31, 2023. They've sold a total of 139.36 million units, including the standard edition as well as the OLED and Lite versions.

That sounds like a lot, but they're still not the highest sales numbers a console has ever achieved. And they're also not the highest sales numbers a Nintendo console has ever achieved.

In second place of the most successful consoles is a quite familiar old friend: the Nintendo DS, which sold 154.02 million units in its lifetime. All models were included here: Nintendo DS, Nintendo DS Lite, Nintendo DSi, Nintendo DSi XL (the 3DS has its own separate ranking).

But what is the best-selling console of all time? I'm happy to tell you. With probably over 155 million units sold, Sony's PlayStation 2 is the most popular console ever. The "probably" comes from the fact that Sony eventually stopped releasing numbers. The last concrete update they gave us was on March 31, 2012, mentioning the 155 million, about a year before the production of the PS2 was discontinued.

For the curious statistics enthusiasts among you, we have a table with further rankings, according to Statista and Wikipedia.