More than five years after the release of Nintendo’s comeback kid hardware, Mario Kart Switch sales still dominate the catalogue of games available on the handheld console. Even after the pandemic boom of Animal Crossing, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe continues to be the best-selling game on Switch, and with new tracks arriving as part of the ongoing Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack offering, it’s only set to keep racing ahead of its opponents.
The actual number of Mario Kart Switch sales is rapidly approaching 50 million, with less than two million to go until it reaches the landmark. There’s some other surprising results included with the rest of the forecasts, including the fact that Xenoblade Chronicles 3, one of our few 10/10 titles from this year, has so far been beaten out in sales by another third entry in Splatoon 3 by over four times the amount of units moved.
Unfortunately, Mario Strikers: Battle League hasn’t had quite as successful a launch as Nintendo might have hoped, with the title languishing behind other 2022 titles such as Kirby and the Forgotten Land and Nintendo Switch Sports by a fair margin. Still, the biggest hit of this year is quite clearly Pokemon Legends: Arceus, with more than double the sales of both Kirby and Switch Sports.
We know all this information thanks to the Japanese Nintendo Twitter account sharing a bunch of financial information from the developer, offering us a rare insight into just how successful the Switch era has been. Just the top sellers alone tot up to nearly a quarter of a billion – yes, that’s right – titles sold. As Mario himself might say, oh boy!
There you have it, all you need to know about the continued success of Mario Kart Switch sales. For more of the moustachioed plumber, see our 9/10 Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope review to see why we loved the crossover comeback so much.