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Super Smash Bros. Ultimate earns title of best-selling fighting game in history

Aaron Mamiit
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Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for the Nintendo Switch has smashed its way into the record books, earning the title as the best-selling fighting game of all time.

The title was previously held by Street Fighter II, which sold 15.5 million units after releasing seven unique versions since its original launch in 1991. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, however, did not spend much time in chasing down the record,

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Super Smash Bros. Ultimate holds the distinction as the fastest-selling Nintendo game of all time, with 12.08 million units sold in just three weeks after its release on December 7 last year. According to Nintendo’s half-year financial report, that number stood at 15.71 million copies by September 30, which means that it took less than a year to surpass Street Fighter II.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has overtaken Super Mario Odyssey, with 15.38 million copies sold, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, with 14.54 million copies sold, to become the second best-selling game for the Nintendo Switch. The fighting game, however, is way behind Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which has sold 19.01 million copies as the best-selling title on the console.

The performance of its latest entry also cements the status of Super Smash Bros. as the most popular fighting game series ever, with sales of 53.03 million copies across two decades. In comparison, total sales for Tekken, Dragon Ball, Street Fighter, and Mortal Kombat are all between 45 million to 47 million.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the penultimate evolution of Nintendo’s brawler, as it offers a roster that includes every character in the series’ history, with a variety of options for single-player and multiplayer modes. The fighting game has proven to be so popular that Jeff Kaplan, the director of Overwatch, has even offered any character from the hero shooter’s lineup to join the fighting game.

Helping Super Smash Bros. Ultimate‘s path to the record books was the popularity of the platform where it was released. The Nintendo Switch recently achieved the milestone of 15 million units sold in North America alone, which is enough to surpass the global lifetime sales of 13.56 million units for the Nintendo Wii U.

As of September 30, Nintendo Switch sales were at 41.67 million units.

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