The Nintendo Switch outsells every prior Nintendo hardware launch
A hybrid handheld-console breaks US launch records against a skeptical market
Quick facts
- Manufacturer
- Nintendo
- Worldwide launch
- 3 March 2017
- Launch title
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- March 2017 US software sales
- 1.3 million units
What happened
Nintendo released the Switch worldwide on 3 March 2017, a hybrid device that functioned as a home console docked to a television or as a handheld with detachable Joy-Con controllers clipped to its sides, succeeding the commercially disappointing Wii U. According to NPD data reported by Nintendo Life, the Switch's March 2017 launch became the second-best hardware launch for any video game platform in the US since NPD began tracking sales in 1995, and the best launch of any Nintendo platform, selling 31,000 more units in its debut month than the previous record holder, the Game Boy Advance. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a launch title, sold over 900,000 physical copies in the US in March alone and became the top-selling Adventure-genre game since 1995 tracking began, while total Switch software sales reached 1.3 million copies and helped push US hardware sales up 91 percent year over year.
Why it matters
The Switch's launch proved Nintendo could recover from a genuinely weak console generation by rethinking what a console even was, rather than only refining its predecessor, and its hybrid design became the reference point other manufacturers measured their own portable and cloud-gaming ambitions against.
How we know
Nintendo Life's contemporaneous report on the official NPD sales results quotes NPD analyst Sam Naji directly and lays out the specific US launch-month sales figures and comparisons to prior Nintendo hardware.
Sources
- Nintendo Life. NPD Results Highlight Record-Breaking Nintendo Switch Launch · Reputable sourcenintendolife.com · The domain "nintendolife.com" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Nintendo Life. Anniversary: Nintendo Switch Launched On This Day Eight Years Ago · Reputable sourcenintendolife.com · The domain "nintendolife.com" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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