Josh has been playing video games for longer than he can remember, kicking things off with a Master System before upgrading to a Mega Drive. Covering the industry since 2018, if a game has a strong story – or even better, the decisions you make determine the course of that story – odds are he’s going to like it. Or, you know, put Sonic or Pikachu on the cover and that’ll get his attention too.
The Nintendo Switch 2 was always going to outsell the Wii U, and pretty quickly. However, for Nintendo’s newest console to have already outsold the one it wishes we’d all just forget about in the UK after only six months is pretty incredible.
When it comes to worldwide Nintendo sales, we have to wait for quarterly financial results. Christopher Dring has provided a mid-quarter update via data shared by NielsenIQ, revealing that the Switch 2 hasn’t just outsold the Nintendo console that came two generations before it in the UK, but also the Sega Dreamcast and the PlayStation Vita.
The Switch 2 Overtaking The Wii U This Quickly Is More Impressive Than It Seems
You might look at that console line-up and shrug at the news that the Switch 2 has managed to outpace their lifetime British sales. The Wii U was a huge failure for Nintendo, the PS Vita didn’t hit like the PSP and brought the curtain down on PlayStation’s two-gen handheld adventure (for now), and the Dreamcast sold so poorly that it forced Sega to get out of the hardware game entirely.
Even though all three are admittedly examples of lowpoints for each console creator, they’re still major consoles that were on the market for years. None of them were pulled from store shelves after a few months. They were all the primary consoles for their respective creators at the time. So for the Switch 2 to swoop in and sell more units in half a year than all of them achieved over their entire lifetimes in a market as significant as the UK is quite something.
Dring didn’t share the exact sales figures, but did note that the Switch 2 has sold “way more” than 600,000 consoles in the UK. As for worldwide sales, sorry, Sega fans, but the company’s final console was left behind by the Switch 2 a while ago. Nintendo’s latest numbers confirmed it had sold more than ten million Switch 2s by the end of November. The Dreamcast ended its run on just 9.14 million.
The Switch 2 Has Probably Outsold The Wii U Worldwide, Too
It’s also entirely likely that, even though we won’t know for sure until next year, the Switch 2 has outsold both the Wii U and the PS Vita on a global level, too. The Wii U managed 13.56 million sales before Nintendo hurried the Switch out the door to alter the course of history, while the Vita’s sales are estimated to be anywhere between ten and 15 million.
The gaming world views Nintendo as an unstoppable juggernaut now. Between the success of the Switch, its successor, series that sell tens of millions of copies, and those same series being turned into billion-dollar movies. It’s hard to remember that, less than a decade ago, the Wii U placed Nintendo firmly in the gutter. The Switch 2 outselling it in six months will help further distance Nintendo from those darker days.
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