Nintendo Switch reigns supreme in overall console sales for 2020 in the USA, Japan, UK, and Australia

There seems to be no decrease in popularity for the evergreen Nintendo Switch, which will be enjoying its fourth anniversary in March 2021. Even though we had the huge next-gen console releases of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S in 2020, a combination of last-quarter launch dates and stock shortages meant that the Nintendo Switch was still the sales champion of the year in the USA, Japan, UK, and Australia.

Unsurprisingly, the Nintendo Switch hogged most of the console sales in Japan in 2020. According to a report from Famitsu, via GamesIndustry.biz, 6.85 million devices were sold in Japan last year and 3.9 million of those were regular Nintendo Switch consoles and 2 million were the Switch Lite variants, giving Nintendo 87% share for the year. There was stiffer competition in the UK, especially from the PS4, but the Nintendo Switch still came out as the top dog for 2020 with the device enjoying sales that were up by 52.2% over 2019.

There was a similar but even more impressive situation in the video-game market in Australia, where the Nintendo Switch enjoyed an increase in sales over the previous year by a whopping 88%. In the US, the Switch was the best-selling console in December and over the whole year, and it even managed a very impressive sales record according to industry advisor Mat Piscatella. He stated: “Annual dollar sales of Switch hardware were the 2nd highest for a platform in U.S. history. Only the 2008 dollar sales of Nintendo Wii were higher.”

It seems more than likely that 2021 will be the year of the PlayStation 5, and to a lesser extent the Xbox Series X|S. But 2020 was definitely Nintendo’s year thanks to the global sales of the Switch consoles, which now have a cumulative lifetime tally of over 68 million units shipped (57.93 million Switch; 10.36 million Switch Lite). With a possible hardware revision or console refresh in the works, the Nintendo Switch line should keep growing even with the latest competition from Sony and Microsoft.

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