A Neogaf user named Celine has painstakingly culled available data from sources and created a few handy charts outlining the sales of all Nintendo consoles and best selling games for the last 30+ years.
The information is pulled from Nintendo’s own in-house numbers and other reports that utilize the data, so there may be some bias and unintentional fudging. Also, given the thousands of titles that the House of Mario has shipped in that time, only one million sellers are represented.
For all games released pre-DS, the figures go up to 2006; all others (Wii, 3DS, Wii U) are as current as numbers can be found.
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So, what do we learn? Well, for starters, the Nintendo DS was a beast of a machine, selling over 150 million units. In fact, Nintendo’s handhelds have a fairly great market saturation, with the original Gameboy selling 118 million units worldwide. The Wii remains Nintendo’s most sold home system at over 100 million, which given the cultural impact of the Wii feels odd. I had a Wii and I was one of the only people in my circle who did; yet, growing up, everyone had an original Nintendo or Super Nintendo, whose sales combine for roughly 110 million total.
Different times, different priorities. Video gaming was not as well accepted back in the 80s and 90s as they are today.
Pokemon dominates the handheld market, with three of the four best sellers on the various portable systems being Pokemon titles. Red/Green/Blue is the clear winner, with 31 million sold for the Gameboy. While GBA titles Ruby/Sapphire, Red Fire/Green Leaf and Emerald claim the hat trick with approximately 35 million sold.
The best selling game of all time, hands down, is Wii Sports with 80 million copies. The game shipped with the Wii console and as previously established, that’s the clear winner in terms of home console sales. Super Mario Bros for the original NES shipped 40 million copies.
The list is populated by the titles you would expect from Nintendo: Mario, Zelda, Metroid, party games, casual titles. All told, the best selling games for Nintendo have sold over 1.5 BILLION copies in 30 years. Check out the full post over at Neogaf.
