Nintendo has provided updated sales figures for its best-selling games on Switch, giving us a great look at which titles have performed the best since the console first launched more than four years ago.
It's a very familiar list, with most of the system's best-sellers holding their positions from previous reports. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Animal Crossing: New Horizons continue to dominate, both extending their leads at the top, with the former selling strongest during Q1 2021.
Elsewhere, Ring Fit Adventure is perhaps the most noteworthy name on the list, as sales continue to turn it into an evergreen star. The game has broken into the top ten by outselling New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe and seems to be showing no signs of slowing down.
Below, you'll find the Switch's best-selling games as of 30th June 2021. Note that the data only includes Nintendo-published titles.
Top Ten Best-Selling Nintendo Switch Games (as of 30th June 2021):
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - 37.08 million
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons - 33.89 million
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - 24.77 million
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 23.20 million
- Pokémon Sword and Shield - 21.85 million
- Super Mario Odyssey - 21.40 million
- Super Mario Party - 15.72 million
- Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! / Let's Go, Eevee! - 13.57 million
- Splatoon 2 - 12.45 million
- Ring Fit Adventure - 11.26 million
The numbers above are worldwide sales and include retail, digital, and copies bundled with hardware all combined. Nintendo has also revealed that Switch hardware lifetime sales have now reached more than 89 million units.
Any surprises in that top ten? Feel free to share your thoughts below.
[source nintendo.co.jp]
Comments 58
I don't see Minecraft in this top. I'm happy about it.
Mario Kart is such a huge franchise. 8 has sold over 45 million units between Wii U and Switch. That's a staggering amount.
Also, Animal Crossing at 33 million units in a year. There cannot be many other games that can match/ top that.
People wonder why Nintendo aren't doing the things they want them to do (including me). These sales figures are why. They are making money hand over fist.
I own 2
I don't Smash, I don't Pokemon, I don't Splat, I don't Party and I'm already fit.
That is all about to change with the amount of pre-orders I have coming in the next few months though
The quiet before the storm
Can't wait.
Marios , Zeldas, Pokémons. Must be a Nintendo console..
Finally NSMBUDX is out of that list
I know it is wishful thinking based on previous sales in the series, (best-selling entry was 2.83 million I believe), but I would love it if we saw a Metroid Game on that top 10 sometime next year.
@Vyacheslav333 They only count first party game which Minecraft is not.
@NinChocolate they only count Frist party game what did you excpect?
@MS7000 I don't think it will break the top 10 but it will certainly be the best selling Metroid by some margin. The install base will make sure of that and Nintendo will push the OLED marketing alongside it. About 5 million units sounds right.
@Jey887 Yeah, 5 mil is pretty much what I am thinking as well. If it somehow surpassed expectations and managed to break into the list, I would consider that a great victory for Nintendo's lesser appreciated games. Nothing would make me happier than games like F-Zero, Wario Land, and Wave Race getting another chance to see sunlight.
Heck, I am still genuinely surprised that Advance Wars is returning even if only a remake being developed by a third party. I am kind of hoping that at least breaks one million
Need something to knock the Let’s Gos off that list... I suspect Diamond and Pearl will come close, and Splatoon 3 is in with a shout. Not sure what makes Metroid Dread a success - five million? - but I don’t expect to see it there.
Wonder where Minecraft and MH Rise would be in an overall list.
Edit: just noting that while writing my reply, two posts above me also predict five million sales for Metroid Dread! Confirmed!
On this list I own only not the pokemon games... for I own the only pokemon game that matters: New Pokemon Snap!
Hello, I am the one person with a Switch who doesn't own Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (never saw the point of upgrading from the Wii U version tbh. Looks like I have owned the rest of the top 10 at some point though!)
@Vyse195 Oh... Then I understand, why Minecraft is not in top.
Switch still staying strong. Very strong
By next quarter MK8DX will become the best selling Mario Kart of all time, ouselling Mario Kart Wii, right ?
Sword/Shield has a very good chance of becoming the 2nd best selling Pokemon games (only beaten by Red/Blue/Green).
@Tom-Smo I mean, if you include the original Mario Kart 8 on Wii U, then it has already been surpassed a while ago, but yes, I believe another 120,000 copies and it will have beaten Mario Kart Wii.
Only games I don't have are Ring Fit and Super Mario Party. Becaue I hardly ever play docked.
Own 9 of them. Don’t have ring fit adventure
Milestones:
> Mario Kart 8 DX was ~300,000 copies away from outselling Mario Kart Wii as of June 2021. It has almost certainly outsold it by now, making it the 3rd best-selling Nintendo game of all time.
> Animal Crossing New Horizons has outsold Wii Sports Resort and is the 5th best-selling Nintendo game of all time.
> Super Mario Party has outsold Mario Party 1 through 7 combined.
For titles outside of the ones listed in the article:
> Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury has outsold the Wii U version. It has also outsold Super Mario Sunshine.
> It took 1 week for Mario Golf Super Rush to outsell every other Mario Golf game outside of Mario Golf 64, which it has likely outsold by now.
> Miitopia on Switch was about ~100,000 copies away from outselling the 3DS version as of June 2021. It has almost certainly outsold it by now.
I own 6 of the games. I don't own either Pokémon games (tried past games and couldn't really get into it), Ring Fit Adventure, or Splatoon 2 (probably gonna just wait for 3 at this point). I really like all the games I do own from this list, though I am glad Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is 1st over Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It's an okay game, for sure, but not so great that I think it should be the best selling Switch game.
When it comes to solo "campaign" games, I always thought it was first Mario, Then Zelda and then Pokemon.
It would be cool if qe had those figures for solo franchises:
Sales for
1) Breath + Aeakening + Skyward
2) lets go + shiel/sword
3) odissey + new deluxe + 3d world
Who do you think would win then??
I really hope the BRILLIANT Mario 3D World/Bowsers Fury has sold well enough to place it on this list by next year
Daydreams that Captain Toad can one day make the Top 10 too
Nintendo has a huge amount of extra money now so they need to be investing more in riskier projects and/or new properties. If they are too conservative, they'll end up hurting themselves in the long run.
BoTW 2 and Pokémon Arceus will join this list.
I own all 10 of these
@Toads-Friend Me too . In my mind, SM3DW + BF has enough quality to compete with the big releases from other series.
@Vyse195 does it matter? Are there any third party games over 10M?
I own all 10 and much more first party titles. I love my Switch
Nintendo systems really are first party powerhouses.
And yet people will use this list to justify the myth that 3rd parties don't sell on Switch.
It's not that they don't. But it should be a given that games which are only on one platform will generally sell better on that platform than games available on almost or all major platforms.
@Heavyarms55
Well this list consists only of 1st party games to begin with, so you won't find any 3rd party titles no matter how successful or unsuccessful they are.
I own them all expect Pokemon Sword/Shield (and I never will)
Ring Fit being on the list is incredible. It's such a brilliant workout game and has truly helped change my life over the past year getting my diabetes under control. I can not recommend it enough and really hope we get more content or they use the Ring peripheral for something new.
GREAT JOB NINTENDO. keep up the great work. Just keep pumping out the great quality games like you always do. Like BOTW. MARIO GOLF. SMASH. SPLATOON AND the list goes on and on .just keep bringing us titles like metroid dread and the systems will keep selling. Almost at 100 million. Switch could end up being the over all best selling system of its life time and if they keep releasing great titles like they always do. Then they will reach this goal in no time.
Animal Crossing sales completely slowing down to a crawl
And that's why Nintendo's games don't go on sale.
Since I have owned my switch Minecraft is always top 5 in the charts on the eshop. Surprised that isn't in there.
A Zelda game outselling a mainline Pokemon and Mario game! Long may these numbers keep up!
Last I heard, New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe and Luigi's Mansion 3 are above 10M as well, but didn't quite make the Top 10.
No surprises on this list. Neat to see that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe still has a lead over Animal Crossing: New Horizons; I fully expected the latter to overtake it. Still a possibility.
@NinChocolate if it doesn't matter why would you bring it up then?
@Petew it's not first party so it's not on this list.
@Heavyarms55 anybody who says that I didn't read that this list only count the best-selling first-party games.
Racing games sell - let’s have some more!
I’ve bought Animal Crossing twice and I can just never get into it. I give it a chance but there’ll be like nothing to do day in and out for me and I get frustrated and never return to it.
@westman98 Thank you for the stats bro! It's amazing to see how these games are performing.
YES! SPLATOON TOP 10!
Wow... MK8DX is the new series best seller
With those sale levels, Nintendo proved that all you need are great games on your system,to gain that type of success.
I've got 'em all except Animal Crossing and Shield and the Let's Go 's.
Proud to say I dont own any of these bar zelda.
@Hero-of-WiiU it took me a few tries to get into it….after about fen hours, I was totally hooked. I have backed away, but I have 230 hours invested now…
I continue to be amazed that a launch title like MK8 is still topping sales so many years later over games like ACNH, BOTW and Smash. Certainly a testament to how appealing Mario Kart truly is.
i believe that the wii and wii u ports that were put on the switch outsold the older versions.
I saw this fun fact on twitter: all three top selling games on the switch have Isabelle in it.
@Jey887 I'm literally tempted to buy Mario Kart because of this. The numbers are ridic.
@BurgundyFlame I was a bit surprised that so many Switch owners apparently don't own Mario Kart!
I imagine single-player/handheld game enthusiasts may be more likely to land in the Animal Crossing/Zelda/Pokémon/Super Mario camps.
But MK8 is definitely a brilliant and genre-defining game.
@Grumblevolcano crystal versokn sold terribly b/c no one wanted/could affoerd to play johtoh a second time, back then. Moreover "i'll wait for the upgraded version" wasn't a thing yet.
SwSh already has sold better than GS (crystal excluded) and if you count DLC sales as seperate units it most definitely outsold Gen 2 entirely.
By the time legends rolls out gen 8 might easily be the best selling generation of all time
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