The holidays are coming and many of you will have likely felt the struggle of trying to find a new console in time for December 25. Not just the one-year-old PlayStation and Xbox consoles, but also the Nintendo Switch. Lockdowns throughout the pandemic have resulted in more people than ever turning to gaming, and the Switch has been the first port of call for a lot of those people. Especially since finding a PS5 or an Xbox Series X remains almost impossible.
The uptick in Switch popularity combined with Nintendo's own issues nailing down components has resulted in its own shortage. Nintendo clearly hasn't been hit quite as hard as its competitors, though. The Switch was once again the best-selling console in November 2021 according to Business Wire. 1.13 million consoles sold across all three models, more than half of which found new homes over Black Friday weekend.
An incredibly impressive number and one that brings the Switch more than a million sales closer to breaking the Wii's final number. The number is actually down from last year though, which makes sense for a number of reasons. For starters, this time last year we were still very much in the midst of parts of the world being locked down and people searching out new hobbies. Plus, despite something like a pandemic changing the course of history, a console's sales are almost always going to drop with each passing year.
Nintendo topping the chart in November is a win over PlayStation and Xbox for a number of reasons other than the obvious. According to Daniel Ahmad, this wasn't a close-run thing. While the exact numbers are unclear, apparently the Switch sold better than the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S combined last month. A telling sign when it comes to what casual and non-games are looking for this holiday season, and another sign that next-gen consoles are as scarce now as they were when they first launched over a year ago.
In fact, November marks the 35th month out of the past 36 that the Switch has topped the list of best-selling consoles. The only time it has been dethroned over the course of that three-year period was in September of this year when the PS5 took the crown for the first and so far only time. That can possibly be attributed to those looking to buy a Switch waiting until October when the OLED model launched.