Nintendo Switch

The Nintendo Switch emerged from a low point. The Wii U had flopped, confusing shoppers and starving Nintendo of the momentum the Wii once gave it. Rather than retreat, Nintendo unified its two historically separate businesses, home consoles and handhelds, into a single device, an idea it had circled for years and finally executed.

The concept was elegant. A tablet-like screen slides into a TV dock for living-room play, then lifts out for handheld gaming on the go, its detachable Joy-Con controllers snapping to the sides or splitting for instant two-player sessions. It was not the most powerful machine of its generation, using a mobile-class Nvidia chip, but the flexibility made raw specs beside the point.

What truly launched it was software. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild arrived on day one and was hailed as a landmark, a wide-open reinvention of the series that alone justified the purchase. Super Mario Odyssey, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and Splatoon anchored a relentless first-party lineup, while Animal Crossing: New Horizons became a cultural lifeline during the 2020 pandemic. The Switch also became an unexpected haven for indie developers and Japanese role-playing games, its portability perfect for both.

Commercially it was a juggernaut, selling over 150 million units and closing in on the all-time records set by the PS2 and Nintendo's own Game Boy and DS. Nintendo extended the family with the handheld-only Switch Lite in 2019 and a sharper-screened OLED model in 2021, keeping momentum alive across an unusually long generation.

The Switch's legacy is a redemption story and a reinvention. It rescued Nintendo, validated the hybrid form factor, and proved once more the company's core belief that a distinct idea beats a spec race. By reconciling the two ways people had always played Nintendo games, it created a machine that felt genuinely new, and the industry took notes.