Come along and I’ll tell you how the Nintendo Switch was doing in April 2019. For a while the internet had been talking about new models of the console, and many people expected to see one of them at the June E3. The one who threw cold water on that expectation was Shuntaro Furukawa, Nintendo’s president, during the earnings presentation to investors.
He said: “We are always working on new devices, but we will only announce them when we are ready to sell them. There are no plans to do so at E3 in June.”
In the same presentation, Nintendo showed that the Switch had already passed 34 million units sold worldwide since its launch in March 2017. Among games, the big highlight was Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which came close to 14 million copies in about four months since its debut on December 7, 2018. Another piece of news at the time was the license granted by the Chinese government for selling the Switch in China, in partnership with Tencent, still depending on the approval of games, one by one.
What came next
Furukawa kept his promise: E3 2019 passed without a new console, and the announcements came later. In July 2019, Nintendo revealed the Switch Lite, a handheld-only version with a 5.5-inch screen and fixed controls, released on September 20 that year. In August, a revision of the original model hit stores, with the Tegra X1+ chip and 4.5 to 9 hours of battery. The launch in China happened on December 10, 2019, through Tencent. In October 2021 came the OLED model, with a 7-inch screen.
And the Switch kept going strong: it passed 155 million units by December 2025 and became the second best-selling console in history, behind only the PlayStation 2. Smash Ultimate also never stopped, with more than 37 million copies, becoming the best-selling fighting game of all time. The successor, the Nintendo Switch 2, arrived on June 5, 2025, compatible with most of the library. What a lovely trajectory!
Where to buy
Source: Nintendo, via Eurogamer.
Lady Combo
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