It’s official: No Nintendo console has lasted as long as Switch without being replaced

The Nintendo Switch has now officially had the longest lifespan of any Nintendo home console pre-successor.

Since its worldwide launch on March 3, 2017, 2,687 days have passed without the arrival of a successor console, meaning Switch’s lifespan has officially beaten Nintendo’s previous longest-lasting console, the Famicom (2,686 days).

Assuming the successor to Nintendo Switch doesn’t launch before March 1, 2025, Switch could go more than 2,920 days without the launch of newer hardware.

Since Nintendo’s first breakout hardware, the Famicom (known as Nintendo Entertainment System outside of Japan), the gap between hardware launches became progressively shorter, until its previous best-selling console, Wii arrived in 2006 and lasted almost exactly 6 years before Wii U launched.

Wii U, which turned out to be one of the company’s biggest sales flops, then enjoyed the fewest days pre-successor (1,566) as Nintendo rushed ahead with its plans for Nintendo Switch.

Of course, Nintendo Switch is a hybrid console which can also be played portably, and in terms of Nintendo’s longest-lasting handhelds, Switch is still far behind the original Game Boy, which enjoyed a massive 4,352 days before the launch of its full successor, the Game Boy Advance.

Switch does, however, beat the Nintendo DS – the company’s best-selling hardware ever – which lasted 2,288 days until the Nintendo 3DS.

For our methodology, we’ve used each home console’s first launch date globally, and not included the end date in our calculations.

Nintendo confirmed in May that it will announce its next console “this fiscal year”, meaning the Switch’s successor will be revealed by the end of March 2025 at the latest.

“This is Furukawa, President of Nintendo. We will make an announcement about the successor to Nintendo Switch within this fiscal year,” a statement read. “It will have been over nine years since we announced the existence of Nintendo Switch back in March 2015.”

In its financial results published the same month,