After multiple successful console launches, Nintendo has now sold over 725 million video game consoles. Not only is this a massive milestone in Nintendo's history, its a big milestone for the video game industry in general.
Nintendo's dominance of the video game industry began in the 1980s. The Nintendo Entertainment System, commonly abbreviated as NES, was a massive success that quickly became a must-have for both children and adults. The NES introduced gamers to many now iconic video games like Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. The console was so popular that Nintendo released the NES Classic in 2016, which was a miniature version of the NES with 30 games built into the unit. After the success of the NES, Nintendo released several more consoles and handheld consoles including the Game Boy, SNES, N64, GameCube, Wii, DS, and Switch, along with many other variations. With this many triumphant consoles, it shouldn't come as a surprise that they've reached such an impressive sales number.
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By using sales figures from the official Nintendo website, Gamnesia cracked the mystery as to how many consoles Nintendo has actually sold over the years. Gamnesia broke down the sales figures for each of the consoles, and came to a grand total of 727.65 million consoles sold. This includes not only home consoles but handheld consoles as well. When comparing the models, it was revealed that the DS was the overall best selling console, with 154.02 million units sold. As for home console sales, the Wii comes in first place with 101.63 million units sold.
Nintendo may have been the dominating force behind video game sales for a while, but that was before Sony launched their first version of PlayStation and Microsoft launched the Xbox. All three companies have done well over the years, and Sony just revealed a limited edition PS4 Pro to celebrate selling 500 million PlayStation consoles. Video games are now just as big an industry as movies, contrary to the initial perception of them as a distracting hobby designed for kids.
Video games have come a long way since Pong was invented in 1958. The graphics and game engineering have only continued to get better as the years have gone by, and as technology has become more advanced. Each video game company has given players something new, but Nintendo will always have a special place in history because of the NES, and their multiple other consoles that have become worldwide sensations.
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Source: Nintendo (via Gamnesia)
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