Reggie Fils-Aime Says He'd Try to Make Sure Switch Outsells the DS If He Were Still at Nintendo - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 12 November 2025 / 2,711 Views
Former president and COO of Nintendo of America Reggie Fils-Aimé in an interview with The Game Business says if he were still at Nintendo he would do what it takes to ensure the Nintendo Switch outsells the Nintendo DS to become the best-selling Nintendo platform of all-time.
"I’m a very competitive person," said Fils-Aimé. "I like to win. If I were still with the company, I would be thinking about, how do we make that happen? Black Friday is a big opportunity for value-oriented programs.
"During my time with Nintendo, we use Black Friday to sell through remaining inventory of Game Boy Advance, of Nintendo DS, of the original Wii. And so, could they be thinking through how to maximize that selling opportunity to put Nintendo Switch over the top? I don’t know, but I’d be thinking about it."
He added, "I would think through the end of this calendar year might be their last opportunity. I don’t know if you noticed, but buried in their announcements, they did say that moving forward all of their development is going be focused on Switch 2. The opportunity to reach that milestone is essentially here."
Nintendo has shipped 154.01 million Nintendo Switch 1 consoles through September 30, 2025, which puts it just 10,000 units behind the Nintendo DS's 154.02 million units. Shipment figures of the Switch 1 likely surpassed the DS sometime in October.
Nintendo has forecast to ship four million Switch 1 consoles for the current fiscal year and if Nintendo hits the forecast the Switch 1 would be at 156.12 million units shipped at the end of March 2026.
Sell-through wise the Switch 1 is a little under two million away from outselling the DS, according to VGChartz estimates.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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It's already on track to do so.
Just enjoy your retirement, Reggie.
It would have been nice if he mentioned PS2 and how he would ensure Switch tops it. But sadly he didn't.
He probably thinks if Nintendo passes what Sony said the PS2sold, Sony will come out with a new number.
Switch: Hits 160.5 million units. Sony: Guys, PS2 sold 161.2 million units in its lifetime! I mean it's not a given but a funny hypothetical.
They already showed the last unit with its production number engraved. They can't change it without looking like liars.
They already look like liars.
Semantics aside, the Switch passing PS2 would be huge.
It wouldn't be a big deal to me, other than it being the best selling handheld in Nintendo's history. Why? Look at Japan. You take away the Switch's handheld abilities and suddenly, it sells half the volume in the region... at best.
There are a multitude of reasons why we have always separated the two (even this website use to do it), and I will continue to do so.
What are you talking about? This website treats the Switch as a console, not as handheld nor as a home console
There is a reason why we separate home consoles from DVD players, and yet we consider PS2 a console instead of a fancy DVD player, which is what it was for many people.
Seven of the top ten best-selling games of that gen were either PS2 exclusives, or PS2 timed-exclusives. So if this newfound fabrication that the PS2 only succeeded because it had a stupid DVD player in it were true... it certainly wasn't for long. (hint: I was there; there wasn't one damn person on forums like these, talking about how totally stoked they were to watch the new Star Wars box set on their PS2 in 2004; not one).
The reason PS2 obliterated everyone had everything to do with the fact that it had an NES-like lock on that gens best games, period. Everything else it could do was just seen as a bonus.
I literally used the PS2 to watch the six Star Wars movies, many times lol
I never said "it only succeed" because it played DVD, that would be like saying it wouldn't have cracked 10M without it.
The GameCube had a NES-like lock on the gen's best games too, as every Nintendo consoles does, but PS2 had many more games that were not as good as, say, Metroid Prime 1&2 or Twilight Princess or Melee or Double Dash (it did have games like GTA and GH, but the point is that the vast majority of games were not GTA or GH [and those were not even exclusives anyway, they just weren't on GameCube]), and the PS2 also had a headstart, and massive momentum coming out of the PS1 era.
If you truly were there, then you know how ridiculous you sound right now, which leads me to question whether or not it was wise to even reply to you. Back then, it was a PS2 industry and everything else was just background noise. It had a 75%-80% market share for dedicated home consoles, something only the NES has done. It was the be-all, end-all, and anyone who claims otherwise was either not alive yet, was a little kid, or simply has motives.
What sounds ridiculous? That many people got the console to use as a DVD player? I know people who did, it was far cheaper than a dedicated DVD player that had to pay fees to Sony to be sold.
It was not far cheaper. That is another truth distortion. How do I know this? Because my future wife and I LITERALLY bought a five-disc changer from Best Buy in the summer of 2000... for $299.99. Five-disc. You could get one for less if it was a single.
Something has happened in the years since to attempt to chip away at the PS2's accomplishments, and it's absolutely disgusting. I don't know what the reasons are or how it began, but I suspect it has something to do with the Gamecube kids of that era growing up and spreading their biased and distorted views all over the internet like they're facts. Because look at the stuff that comes up? It's all parrot-talk. It's all the same thing, over and over again. And if you bring facts to the party, like I did, and you show that DVD players were actually cheaper, and you show that seven out of the top ten GAME sales were PS2 games, and you show that DVD-player saturation was well over 50% by the time the PS2 was in its third year... AND in its third year, it sold better than it did in its first year... you get nothing but crickets. That's a sign of bias, my friend. 100%.
I was an NES kid. I would later become a SNES kid before briefly becoming a Genesis teen. I then got a PS1 and loved it for awhile, but when N64 came out, that was my thing until the following gen when it was Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox and Gamecube. After, I owned all consoles and all the best games worth buying, and that's who I still am today. There IS no desire to change the past. There is only a desire on my part to make sure the past is not distorted by people with motives. Kids today deserve to know what really happened, whether it's war, societal changes or something as frivolous as game consoles... and the idea that the PS2 dominated for anything other than having what gamers of that era considered the best games, is a bald-face lie.
It's not a distortion, because I KNOW, I was there, Jack, my household had multiple PS2s, because they were cheap (but kept malfunctioning too), we could get unlocked PS2 consoles for dirty cheap here in Brazil, and we could get games for dirty cheap too because piracy was stronger than the original game market in here. The number of people who used the PS2 as a DVD player is not insignificant. Heck, even me who was a gamer, used the fact it reads movie DVDs as a sales pitch for my parents to get me the first one lmao.
According to your age, yes. You were definitely there when the PS2 and Gamecube launched. But I have trouble believing a six/seven year old would be able to accurately recall much of anything, let alone what us teens and college-aged adults were doing.
The PS2 was USED as a DVD player, but it was not the main reason it killed the Dreamcast and utterly obliterated Xbox (which also had a DVD player in it) and Gamecube. That was strictly due to it having the games that gamers wanted back then, and the software sales objectively prove it.
Switch 1 has already passed or will definitely pass PS2 in *official number sales, meaning the last audit which is 155 millions. Sony has no way to prove that unofficial 160+ millions numbers - its just a number they made up right in the context of Switch closing in/to surpass the 155 official numbers, which is telling.
As of September 30, 2025 Switch 1 sold 154.01 million units.
So he'd do what pretty much any other executive would try to do: make their product a success.
Two things seems like off here to me.
1 - Why is he talking about the DS, when either way the Switch is passing it ? With him or without him It's already done it. It's like to say " If I were there I would make sure it will pass 120M ". What the heck ? it already did , why you are talking about something already happened ? What's the point ? It's like we are 2028, Switch is discontinued at 152M, and Reggies says " If i were there I would make sure the Switch would pass the DS ". In that scenario I get it but now ?
2 - If this was true, then why he didn't do it when he had the opportunity with the DS surpassing the PS2 back in 2013 and 2014 ?
I think Reggie is under the impression that NS1 hit a cliff immediately after the financial briefing and will consequenly not see more than 10k shipments LTD. Maybe those users who were predicting this fabled "The Cliff" for Switch were onto something...
It only took, what, 9 years and 154.01m Switch consoles, but they are finally vindicated.
It has. It's shipped enough to hit that and will sell-through.
It'd be a more interesting discussion if Reggie wanted to hit 161 million units or more to beat PS2.
I miss him. :(
I appreciate William/Trunks adding their expertise and knowledge to the end of the story.
I feel it rounds it out into a whole story rather than a few soundbites from Reggie.
I was hoping he would choose to go a little deeper on the topic and would have been a bit disappointed without Trunks’ additions.
Nintendo should really drop the price to "at cost"... whatever that may be
and do their best to run the numbers up to 165-180 million
Lofty goals that are likely out of reach but point remains they would milk it as much as possible
It already passed the NDS when Pokemon launched
Done.
