The Nintendo Switch has smashed yet another sales record – overtaking the titanic PlayStation 4 to become the fourth best-selling video game console of all-time worldwide. The news comes from VGChartz, who calculates that the console’s Black Friday week sales of just under 1.3 million bring the console’s lifetime total to 117.22 million units sold, narrowly eclipsing the PS4’s 117.03 million units sold lifetime.
Technically, the PS4 is still on the market, so it could take the lead again in theory… but the chances of that happening are pretty much nil. The sequel console PlayStation 5 has been out for a couple years, and the Switch is achieving this milestone after about five and a half years of release (with several more years on the horizon), whereas the PS4 has been out for nine years. The PS4’s total unit count may rise marginally by the time its production ends, but it has far less upward momentum than the Switch.
Next on the best-selling console list is the Game Boy at 118.69 million units, only 1.47 million more than the Switch currently has. It seems inevitable that that threshold will be crossed too. But the gap between the silver and bronze medals is much wider – the Nintendo DS stands at 154.02 million units sold, over 35 million more than the Game Boy. Just beyond that is the PlayStation 2 with over 155 million units sold. Time will tell if the Switch can reach the proverbial mountaintop, but it still has years left on the market, so we’ll see.
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Written by Amelia Fruzzetti
A writer and Nintendo fan based in Seattle, Washington. When not working for NinWire, she can be found eating pasta, writing stories, and wondering about when Mother 3 is finally going to get an official localization.
