The king is dead, long live the king. Nintendo’s Switch has officially knocked the DS off its throne as the company’s best-selling console of all time, racking up 155.37 million units sold as of December 31, 2025. The DS, which launched way back in 2004 and stopped production in 2013, managed to sell 154.02 million units during its run.
That’s a pretty tight race when you think about it. Just a million units separating two completely different eras of gaming. The DS dominated the mid-2000s with its dual screens and touch controls, while the Switch redefined what a console could be by refusing to pick a side between handheld and home gaming.
The Holiday Push That Made History
Everyone saw this coming back in November when Nintendo reported the two consoles were practically tied. The holiday season was always going to tip the scales, even with all the buzz around the Switch 2 announcement. Nintendo sold 7.01 million original Switch units between October and December, up from 4.54 million the previous quarter.
That’s actually kind of wild considering the company has been pushing the Switch 2 pretty hard. But people clearly still want the original model, whether it’s for the lower price point or the massive library of games that already exists for it.
Nintendo isn’t satisfied yet though. They’re keeping the original Switch in production because they’ve got their eyes on an even bigger prize: Sony’s PlayStation 2, which sold over 160 million units during its 13-year run before being discontinued in January 2013. That’s the ultimate boss battle in the console wars.
Switch 2 Is Already Breaking Records
Meanwhile, the Switch 2 is putting up numbers that would make most console launches look embarrassing. It’s sold 17.37 million units since launching in June 2025, which means it beat the Wii U’s entire lifetime sales of 13.7 million units in less than a year. Ouch.
The Business side of things is looking pretty healthy too. Nintendo’s net profit jumped 51 percent in the first nine months of their fiscal year, hitting ¥358.86 billion (around $2.31 billion). Net sales nearly doubled to ¥1.906 trillion, which is about $12.2 billion compared to last year’s $6.1 billion.
Nintendo is forecasting 19 million Switch 2 units sold by the end of this financial year. If they hit that target, it’ll cement the Switch family as one of the most successful Technology platforms in gaming history.
What This Actually Means
Here’s the thing about console sales records: they’re fun to talk about but they don’t tell the whole story. The DS succeeded in a world where smartphones weren’t ubiquitous yet. The Switch succeeded despite smartphones eating into handheld gaming time.
Different eras, different challenges, different contexts. But numbers are numbers, and Nintendo can now officially say the Switch is their most successful console ever made. Whether it catches the PS2 remains to be seen, but at this pace, Sony should probably start getting nervous.
The real question is how long Nintendo keeps pushing the original Switch while simultaneously trying to get everyone to upgrade to the Switch 2, because that balancing act could get messy if they’re not careful.
