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GamesRadar
GamesRadar
Technology
Catherine Lewis

Nintendo Switch overtakes the DS as Nintendo's best-selling console of all time, and with its sales figures still growing, it's closing the gap with the PS2

Mario and Luigi in still from Mario & Luigi: Brothership.

Its successor may have launched last year, but the Nintendo Switch just became Nintendo's best-selling console of all time, finally surpassing the DS.

Per Nintendo's newly updated sales figures, as of December 31, 2025, the Switch had sold 155.37 million units. That gives it a comfortable lead over the DS family, which sold a total of 155.02 million units across its lifetime, securing a figure that's only now been toppled.

These figures also mean that the Switch is still closing its lead on the PlayStation 2, which remains the best-selling console of all time at over 160 million sold. As you'd expect, the pace of Switch sales is now slowing down, given that the Switch 2 is on the market, but could the slightly older Nintendo hardware have what it takes to pull off one final push and topple the 2000 Sony console for good? We'll just have to watch this space.

Speaking of the Switch 2, it's now sold over 17.37 million units, meaning it took under seven months for it to surpass the Wii U's lifetime sales. It felt inevitable that it was going to happen eventually, but it certainly did so quickly.

What's more, in its latest financial results, Nintendo notes that the latest hardware continues to outpace the Switch, explaining that with a cumulative global sell-through of 15 million units by the fourth week of December 2025, it's the "fastest-selling dedicated video game platform released by Nintendo to date."

At not even a year old, it's still relatively early days for the Switch 2 – who knows, at the pace at which it's selling, it could end up surpassing both the Switch and the PS2 eventually. For now, though, the regular ol' Switch is Nintendo's big winner, and its successor still has a lot of catching up to do before it even comes close.

Be sure to check out our roundup of the best Switch games you can play today.

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