Roughly 300m consoles, 427m portables
As someone who has bought at least one of every Nintendo system since the NES, it’s incredible to see just how much the company has sold throughout my lifetime.
According to public data straight from Nintendo, the publisher has reached a milestone of over 700 million systems sold — both of the console and portable variety. Breaking it down, consoles from the NES to the Nintendo Switch era hit 300.54 million units sold, and portables from the Game Boy to the 3DS sailed to 427.11 million.
Comparing consoles the Wii is by far the greatest success, it’s not even close, at 101.63 million units. Of course the Wii U is the worst at 13.56m, and incredibly the Switch (19.67m) is already approaching the GameCube’s lifetime sales (21.74m) in just over a year — next stop, The Nintendo 64 at 32.93m.
In the portable arena everything has hit a respectable 70 million markat minimum. The DS towers above the rest with 154.02m, followed by the Game Boy (and Game Boy Color) at 118.69m, then the Game Boy Advance at 81.51m, and the 3DS at 72.89m. You can really start to see some trends form too, with every other generation generally hitting a stride — especially on the portable side.
The full list is available here, which also includes software sales. You can also find a full chronological breakdown from us starting with the most recent systems below.
Hardware:19.67million unitsSoftware:86.93million units
Nintendo 3DS
72.89million units367.84million units
13.56million units102.28million units
101.63 million units919.94 million units
154.02 million units948.62 million units
81.51 million units377.42 million units
118.69 million units501.11 million units
21.74 million units208.57 million units
32.93 million units224.97 million units
49.10 million units379.06 million units
61.91 million units500.01 million units
