Today Marks The Longest We've Had To Wait For A New Nintendo Home Console

Summary

• Nintendo Switch breaks record with longest time period between home console launches on July 10, 2024.
• Switch's seven-year reign as the best-selling Nintendo console shows no signs of slowing down.

March 3, 2017, is a date that will live long in the memories of Nintendo fans. It's the day that the Nintendo Switch was released, arguably becoming the best console of all time.

The Best Nintendo Switch Games Of All Time

The Nintendo Switch has dominated since its launch in 2017, and now we have a vast selection of fantastic games to take on the go.

The console has broken plenty of records over its seven-plus-year life cycle, and now, on July 10, 2024, it's just broken another. The date marks the longest time period between the launches of two Nintendo home consoles.

How It Made Seven Years And 130 Days

As of today, as calculated by Reddit user Paidon23, the Nintendo Switch has been in players' hands for seven years and 130 days, eclipsing the seven years and 129 days between the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Super NES.

During that time, it became the best-selling Nintendo home console ever and the third best-selling console of all time, with the releases of the Switch Lite and OLED helping to bolster sales. It sits just behind the PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo DS overall and has sold over 141 million units, significantly more than the previous Nintendo record holder, the Wii.

The console is home to some of the best games, both AAA and indie, to ever have been released, including The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Hollow Knight and Hades. It's a library that's unparalleled and is likely to remain that way for a long time. Given this, the fact that it continues to shift millions of units each quarter and that it still has dozens of great games on the horizon, it's no surprise that the console is still in the wild.

The Hard Data

Prior to the Nintendo Switch, the only systems with a gap of over seven years between releases were the NES and SNES. The Wii and Wii U were the only consoles to have a six-year gap, and most other consoles lasted around five years and change.

The time between the Nintendo Switch and its heavily-teased successor, almost seven-and-a-half years, dwarfs that of the Wii U, the period with the shortest time between new consoles. Nintendo's innovative and highly underrated console only lasted four years and 105 days. Given the Wii U's commercial failure, it was unsurprising to see it shelved so quickly.

The only time period longer than that between the Switch and whatever comes next was back in the olden days, and it's going to take some beating. Nintendo fans had to wait nine years and 182 days between the original Game Boy and the Game Boy Color.

You can check out a breakdown of the Nintendo home console release periods below:

• Nintendo Entertainment System to Super NES - Seven years, 129 days
• Super NES to Nintendo 64 - Five years, 214 days
• Nintendo 64 to Nintendo GameCube - Five years, 82 days
• Nintendo GameCube to Nintendo Wii - Five years, 304 days
• Nintendo Wii to Nintendo Wii U - Six years, 6 days
• Wii U to Nintendo Switch - Four years, 105 days
• Nintendo Switch to Nintendo Switch successor - Seven years, 130 days+

Looking at the numbers above, the average time between releases of Nintendo home consoles is around 5.9 years, so the Nintendo Switch is comfortably outlasting that. The SNES and the Wii are the only other consoles keeping it company.

With the Switch 2, Super Nintendo Switch, Switch U, or whatever Nintendo decides to call it on the horizon, it'll be interesting to see whether the console breaks the eight-year mark.

Nintendo Switch

The Nintendo Switch is both a home console and a handheld gaming system in one package, with various versions offering better specs for dedicated enthusiasts.