Mario Kart 8 may not reach Wii Sports but it’s going to come close
Although the successor for the Nintendo Switch is apparently on the horizon, games for Nintendo’s seven-year-old hybrid console are still selling like crazy.
Nintendo just recently updated their quarterly financial details and video game sales, which reveals Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has officially crossed another huge milestone while a different Switch game is in the running for the best-selling the company has ever put out.
Just ahead of its sixth anniversary, Smash Ultimate has now reached a whopping 35.14 million copies sold worldwide as of September 30, 2024.
That puts the landmark platform fighter as selling an additional almost 500,000 units over the past quarter for a game that hasn’t received a major update or DLC release in years — though there was a small patch just last month.
And compared to a year ago, Smash has pushed almost 3.5 million copies into the hands of players who somehow didn’t already have it.
Smash already broke the record for best-selling fighting game ever five years ago when it toppled Street Fighter 2’s combined 15 million copies that stood for decades.
For its closest competition this past generation, Mortal Kombat 11 did hit 15 million in 2022 and Tekken 7 crossed 11 million — so even those added together with Street Fighter 5’s 7.6 million don’t quite match Ultimate.
With the Switch itself now reaching 146 million systems, that gives Smash Ultimate an impressive attachment rate of just under 25%, which is pretty wild for a fighter on that scale.
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U did have a ridiculous 40% attachment rate for the last system, but the Switch has also outsold it now more than 10 times over.
That level of success and some other potential indicators point towards something like a Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Deluxe being a strong possibility for the Switch’s successor though obviously nothing is confirmed on that front yet.
And even if Smash Deluxe isn’t being made, at least we know now that Ultimate will be playable on the Switch 2 through backwards compatibility that was just confirmed.
Series creator Masahiro Sakurai recently revealed that he is already working on his new game project, but the way he’s talked about it so far makes it sound like it may not be connected to Smash.
And speaking of deluxe, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has also reached an astounding 64.27 million copies by the end of the last quarter.
For comparisons, the original Super Mario Bros. has sold somewhere in the ballpark of 58 to 65.9 million copies depending on how you want to count the various different versions / bundles.
Mario also got a major boost from coming bundled with the NES too.
On a similar note, Wii Sports is still technically Nintendo’s best-selling game ever at 82.9 million copies, but a majority of them came bundled with the Wii too.
If we combine the sales of MK8D with the original on Wii U, that gives a total of 72.73, so that puts it almost within 10 million of the game that almost no one bought by itself.
We do have to point out, however, that the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe plus Nintendo Switch bundle has been one of the most popular ways to get the system for over six years now — so it’s likely received millions of additional copies for that reason too.
With Nintendo set to reveal their new console sometime this fiscal year, MK8 may not ever quite manage to surpass Wii Sports, especially if a new Mario Kart is coming alongside the system too, but it’s crazy the game has made it this far.
So what have we learned from all this? Packaging games with your consoles is a great way to get a ton of sales if you’re Nintendo.