Two weeks after launch, on December 7, 2018, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate kept piling up records in several markets at once. It is worth looking at each of them closely, because together they show the scale of the debut.
In the United States, the game sold more than 3 million copies in 11 days. In Japan, it sold 1.2 million in the first three days, a number that, a few days later, had already passed 1.6 million units. In Australia and New Zealand, Ultimate became Nintendo’s fastest-selling home console game in the region: in the first three days, sales were 80% higher than those of Super Mario Odyssey over the same period, according to Nintendo Life.
Adding it all up, the Japanese newspaper Nikkei reported that physical copies, digital units and console bundles had already passed 5 million worldwide, with a trend to grow even more over the holiday season.
Why so much demand
Part of the answer was anticipation. In November 2018, Nintendo had already said Ultimate was the most pre-ordered game in the history of the Switch and of the series. The other part was the content: 74 fighters at launch, all 63 from previous games plus 11 newcomers, around 103 stages, more than 900 songs and the World of Light adventure mode. For anyone who has played fighting games for a long time, it was the first time the series brought its entire roster together in one game, and that weighed in.
What came next
Critics gave it 93 on Metacritic, and sales did not slow down. Ultimate became the best-selling fighting game of all time, surpassing Street Fighter II. By March 31, 2025, the total had reached 36.24 million. The last fighter, Sora from Kingdom Hearts, closed out the roster in October 2021.
Source: Eurogamer / Nintendo Life / Nikkei.
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