Nintendo Switch: From shaky start to world domination

In many ways, it feels almost a little surreal to try to summarise the Nintendo Switch. What an incredible journey it has been, where it's no exaggeration to say that it beats everything in the gaming world, with possibly only the Mega Drive, the first PlayStation, and the Xbox 360 as competitors. We're talking about a console that came from next to nothing, but still managed to make a splash and today is well on its way to becoming the best-selling gaming device of all-time.

But... I think we should start from the beginning. And for me, that's 2012 and the launch of the Wii U. Nintendo had their biggest console success to date with the Wii and wanted to follow it up. They had an idea of a console that would let us play in a new way and have a screen that would enable new ideas and also let us play wirelessly at home even without a TV. If you squint, the Wii U Gamepad reminds you a bit of the Switch, and it's easy to see that it's the basis for the latter.

However, the Wii U was a gigantic flop and nothing went the way Nintendo wanted. Gamers didn't like having to look at the Gamepad and the TV at the same time, many were confused by the name and marketing and didn't realise it was a new console rather than a Wii accessory, and the hardware was complicated for third parties who abandoned it. That left Nintendo almost alone in a situation reminiscent of the Nintendo 64 era, but even then at least they had the most powerful console to boast about at the time and the cartridges did offer some advantages (and disadvantages) over the slower CDs.

The Gamecube had been considered a major flop ten years earlier after selling 22 million units in its lifetime, but the Wii U didn't even reach 14 million. Worse still, the Nintendo 3DS had also lost momentum and was nowhere near as popular as the Nintendo DS. Nintendo doing a Sega and quitting consoles was increasingly seen as a reasonable scenario, and perhaps the next Mario game would be released for the PlayStation, and Metroid would find a natural home on the Xbox.

The Wii U slowly fell asleep and four years after its launch, it was confirmed that Nintendo was working on a device that went by the working name of NX, which in October 2016 was unveiled and named Switch. To say people were stunned was an exaggeration. Here are some of the comments from Gamereactor readers:

"I think it's Nintendo's stupidest console they've ever made, utterly idiotic! They should have made either a new portable or a new desktop console, not a hybrid! I see no point in taking the console on the move, it's too big, has too poor battery life and is generally poorly designed."

"As I said, it's a Wii U 2.0 but with detachable controls. Without knowing anything about battery life, range, performance and resolution, I feel I'll probably wait and see."

"...it's way too big to be anything".

"Jack of all trades, master of none".

"I hope to god this is a Wii U type fiasco."

"Switch is too expensive, and that seems to be the common opinion online. Seriously, £300 or even more for this?"

"Will be a total flop, old games released on the other consoles years before and a lot of Wii U ports... This is Wii U 2".

And so on, and so on. Of course, there were also optimistic voices, but it was a very negative mood from some quarters. A very large crowd had completely counted Nintendo out, and the idea of a Wii U-like console that cost even more seemed to be the definition of a one-way ticket out of console-making. While all of these were as wrong as they could ever be, I still understand them. I've done it myself when I predicted for Gamereactor magazine that the Nintendo DS would flop and lose the race to the PSP... whereupon it became the second best-selling format of all-time. Ouch!

Switch came, saw, and conquered, and this time Nintendo had done its homework. Although I think their vision of people taking the Switch with them and playing multiplayer on the move with their own Joy-Cons is pure fiction (those who play portable games mainly play by themselves, although there are exceptions), there was certainly a pent-up need for a hybrid console. This way Nintendo themselves could stop making separate games for portable and desktop devices, which sped up releases considerably, and the performance was good enough for most people. Plus, they had the Wii U library that almost everyone missed because it sold so poorly, which throughout the generation served as a good starting point for filling out the release lists with remasters, not least Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which has become the format's best-selling game, with over 67 million copies sold.

Nintendo, like Sega during the Dreamcast era, has proved to be particularly good with a knife a its throat and despite the flop of Wii U, many great games came to the console and Switch started extremely aggressively with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild at its launch, shortly followed by the aforementioned Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Splatoon 2, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, and another month later Super Mario Odyssey.

This battery of strong titles was enough to send the device flying off shelves, which in turn woke up third parties, not least indies. Success breeds success, and despite a slightly slower first half of 2018 in terms of sales (with games like Bayonetta 2, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Mario Tennis Aces, and Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker), the ball was already rolling. As usual, Nintendo also wanted to offer something new and presented the cardboard concept Labo, with which we could play in completely new ways. It wasn't a success either, but the quirky idea added to the feeling that Nintendo is innovating and surprising.

If the first half of 2018 saw slightly lower sales than Nintendo's biggest titles usually deliver, the second half was even crazier. That's when Super Mario Party, Pokémon: Let's Go Pikachu/Let's Go Eevee, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate were released, three games that together reached 72 million copies sold. And they then kicked off 2019 with New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe in early January, a game that sold nearly 20 million copies.

By now, it was clear that Nintendo had achieved the impossible. The Wii U was already forgotten, and the Switch was flying off shelves as sales record after sales record was pulverised. Proof of this comes from then Xbox boss Phil Spencer (now overall gaming boss at Microsoft) who decided to start working with Nintendo rather than against them, launching Xbox-exclusive Ori and the Blind Forest for Switch and allowing Banjo-Kazooie to appear as a DLC character in Smash Bros.

Another thing that somewhat strangely helped to consolidate the Switch's popularity was actually the pandemic. People sat at home and where most others abandoned local multiplayer, Nintendo has instead invested extra hard in this in particular. And Animal Crossing: New Horizons did best, released in March 2022, just as the pandemic was declared to have conquered the West. People built towns, greeted each other, and enjoyed their isolation, and New Horizons, with just under 48 million copies sold, is the second best-selling game on the format.

The rest, you could say, is history. Around 2022, after five years on the market, rumours began to emerge that it was time for a replacement. Not least because Microsoft and Sony launched the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in late 2020. The Switch was already considered weaker in hardware performance when it was released and against the new competition it was practically stone age.

However, Nintendo clearly stated that it was not time to replace the console yet, a message they publicly gave to their financiers and made sure that no one could really misinterpret the message. Switch had several more years in it. But still, since 2022, the rumours have continued to slowly but surely become more and more frequent and from good sources, while leaks have appeared. In itself, not so strange, as those looking to release games around the launch should reasonably have been in full production. This was a break in the trend that even seems to have surprised Nintendo themselves, it's simply not possible to keep secrets anymore, everything will leak.

And the leaks continued. Today we know that the Switch 2 is set to be shown off again on April 2, and it will allegedly launch just a few months afterwards. Recently, we saw what is likely to be the last Nintendo Direct dedicated exclusively to the Switch, and after 151 million units sold, it's about to get a replacement, which will lead to declining sales. It seems very likely that it will overtake the Nintendo DS at 155 million, making it Nintendo's best-selling device ever. However, whether it will also pass the PlayStation 2 at just over 160 million remains to be seen.

Clearly, it is now on its last legs. Still, the console will be fully supported for at least another year (there are already games announced for 2026 and later this year Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and Pokémon Legends: Z-A). In addition, we should not rule out that Nintendo has something more to announce as a kind of farewell. In a few days, however, it will all be about the replacement, where despite looking pretty much exactly like the Switch 1, people don't seem to be as adamant about it flopping. We can thank the Switch for that, the console that went from the failures of the Wii U and an uncertain future to dominating the gaming world and making Mario bigger than ever.