Switch 2 Outsells Wii U and PS Vita in Just 7 Months - Sales
by William D'Angelo , posted on 26 January 2026 / 9,388 Views
Nintendo's latest video game console, the Nintendo Switch 2, has outsold the lifetime sales of the Nintendo Wii U and PlayStation Vita in just seven months, according to VGChartz estimates.
The Switch 2 has sold an estimated 15.59 million units worldwide through December, while the Wii U sold 13.56 million units lifetime and the PS Vita sold 13.13 million units.
Up next for the Switch 2 is the Sega Master System, with 20.84 million units sold lifetime, followed by the Nintendo GameCube, with 21.74 million units sold, and original Xbox, with 24.65 million units sold.
Breaking down sales by region, the Switch 2 has sold an estimated 4.96 million units in North America, 3.59 million units in Europe, 4.10 million units in Japan, and 2.93 million units in the rest of the world.
This compares to the Wii U, which sold 6.15 million units in North America, 3.27 million units in Europe, 3.33 million units in Japan, and 0.82 million units in the rest of the world.
The PS Vita sold 2.70 million units in North America, 2.89 million units in Europe, 5.73 million units in Japan, and 1.81 million units in the rest of the world.
Further breaking down Switch 2 Europe sales, the console has sold an estimated 0.75 million units in the UK, 0.71 million units in Germany, and 0.67 million units in France.
The Nintendo Switch 2 launched worldwide in June 2025, while the Wii U launched in North America and Europe in November 2012 and in December 2012, and the PlayStation Vita launched in Japan in December 2011 and in North America and Europe in February 2012.
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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Switch 2 outselling Wii U before receiving an original mainline 2D/3D Mario or Zelda is wild! Six months is all it took.
smash brothers, and you know more animal crossing and pokemon
and the heavy hitters are coming
Some big-brain takes going on in these comments.
Surpassing WiiU and PS Vita its nothing to brag about, in fact by comparing it with those two failed consoles(even with a positive aim) doesn't put Switch 2 in a good light.
We're going to forget that Wii U nearly bankrupt Nintendo? Switch 2 does have strong early sales, but they've jumped the shark tank with this one. This is the N Cube all over again, their next console will have to be a banger
Nintendo was far from being bankrupt.
They had 2.35~ billion dollars cash in hand and a further 4.45~ billion in cash/deposits prior to the Switch launch.
Then they had over 10~ billion in assets they could have liquidated.
Plus... Nintendo was garnering significant investment during that period thanks to games like Pokemon Go which also helped the balance sheets.
Nintendo also had the 3DS, which despite not being the biggest success ever... Was still a platform with 75.94~ million hardware units (Xbox 360/Playstation 3 equivalent) and brought in solid revenues thanks to software sales.
So your doom and gloom and baseless assertions are false.
I've heard that Nintendo could have 3 more flops like Wii U without going bankrupt, because they made so much money during the Wii/DS era, not counting the even more profitable Switch.
Nintendo runs a very lean ship which has enabled them to react successfully to good/bad console generations, helps that they have a fair amount of assets that can stop them from going under.
Nintendo did not technically lose money on the Wii U generation - but just about made even:
FY2012 (Ending Mar 2012): -$417 million loss (£-43.2 billion yen) - Wii U launch/Weakness
FY2013 (Ending Mar 2013): ~$86 million (£7.0 billion yen)
FY2014 (Ending Mar 2014): ~$229 million loss
FY2015 (Ending Mar 2015): ~$367 million (£41.8 billion yen)
FY2016 (Ending Mar 2016): ~$165 million (£16.5 billion yen)
With that minimal loss, the urban legend underestimates Nintendo's ability to survive. Given their profits during the Wii era, they would have sustained more than ten such generations.
I didn't realize Switch 2 was doing so good. Its basically just a machine that plays old games priced at $70.
Time to open your eyes
Switch 2 is both building on the massive hype of Switch and its own strengths. Wii was dying out when Wii U launched, same with PSP as Vita came out.
Switch 2 was the fastest-selling console in history for a while, but we'll have to see if it can keep that up.
I’d say with the Wii, Nintendo was more “killing it” than it was dying out. This was Nintendo not re-examining what a successful generational transition would look like… because it’s not the first time they screwed up after a successful console: the SNES to N64 was also a massive fumble. With the Wii, they went with what worked from Gamecube to Wii, but ignored the fact that Gamecube was a failed generation while Wii was successful.
By mid-2010, Nintendo was already winding down on the Wii with an abrupt decline in major software releases and even VC releases suddenly became irregular with lots of software still on the shelf. Features began to shut down and advertisement would soon decline, and even localizations of existing games started to decline. It wasn’t an organic thing because the passion was still hot: massive numbers were begging for localizations in numbers and organizations not seen before or since. By 2011, aside from Xenoblade Chronicles and Skyward Sword, the games were all mostly “Nintendo Published” and these two in-house games were only in 2011 because of substantial delay, Skyward Sword would have been 2010.
The Wii/Wii U transition was the same outdated thinking that handed over the majority of the fanbase to kickoff PlayStation. In 94 to 96, few people cared about the PlayStation (it had sold only . But when 97 came around and the N64 came out of the blue while SNES was buried, gamers already had a better option than the N64. The same thing happened with the Wii/Wii U transition, Nintendo handed Xbox 360 and PS3 a late generation boost in players, and then the PS4 after.
Ideally, Wii U would have been Wii 2 or Wii HD, and instead of shutting stuff down in preparation for something new, they’d push through and improve them on the succeeding hardware. That’s what they did with the Switch ' the backwards compatibility felt like the earlier part of a continuation rather than a tack-on mode with different controls. The core features of Switch became part of the overall Switch 1&2 ecosystem rather than segregated the way Nintendo did with “Wii features” and “Wii U features”.
Perhaps there was a technical limitation, I don’t know. But in the end it worked out (potentially for the better) because Switch’s architecture, media, and form-factor feels like a much longer term strategy than a couple of generations. There is also a lot of space for highly versatile game types on the Switch, it is doing its thing now, but is very capable of Wii-style games.
Some Nintendo platforms could've sold more if Nintendo did a few things differently.
If DS didn't come out until November 2005, GBA clears over 90 million. Wait to release it until some point in 2006 and GBA probably clears 100 million units. GBA was popular throughout its life even when DS replaced it but could've done more without DS in the picture.
Wii likely would've sold over 110 million units if Nintendo gave it better first-party support from 2011 onward.
Switch would've outsold PS2 (or about to get there right now) if Nintendo would've priced it cheaper. Especially before the US tariffs came into play. Nintendo likely still would've profited on hardware sales if the Switch SKUs were slashed by $70-$100 before the tariffs.
