On March 3, 2017, Nintendo did something nobody expected.
It launched the Nintendo Switch alongside The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – a game that didn’t just serve as a flashy launch title, but redefined what an open-world game could be, offering players a level of creativity and freedom rarely seen before.
Nine years on, it’s worth reflecting on just how seismic that moment was – and how its legacy is still being felt right now, in 2026.
The Switch itself was a bold gamble. Coming off the back of the Wii U – a console that struggled to break 14 million units sold – Nintendo needed a reinvention.
What they delivered was one of the most elegantly simple ideas in gaming hardware history: a device that worked equally at home on your TV and in your hands on a commute.
In doing so, Nintendo essentially invented a brand-new sub-genre of gaming – playing AAA titles on the go – something that felt genuinely transformational at the time.
Breath of the Wild: The Game That Changed Everything
It’s difficult to overstate how important Breath of the Wild was to both the Switch’s success and to gaming at large.
Changing the very fabric of the Zelda series and challenging its pre-established conventions, Breath of the Wild offered massive amounts of player freedom and continues to have a major influence on open-world titles to this day.
Before BotW, Zelda games were beloved but commercially modest.
After 30 years, no Zelda game had sold past 10 million units – and then Breath of the Wild released as the Switch game to own, reforming the series to its core idea: have an adventure.
It went on to sell over 32 million copies on Switch alone, becoming one of the best-selling games the platform has ever seen.
The community’s affection for the game hasn’t dimmed either.
This year, fans noted a striking coincidence: on the 9th anniversary of BotW’s release, a real lunar eclipse produced an actual blood moon – the same eerie mechanic that signals danger throughout Hyrule in the game.
It’s the kind of serendipity that only a truly iconic game inspires.
Nintendo Switch Sales: A Historic Legacy in Numbers
The commercial story of the Switch is one for the record books.
In its financial results for the nine months ended December 31, 2025, Nintendo confirmed the Switch had reached 155.37 million units sold – officially overtaking the Nintendo DS as Nintendo’s best-selling console of all time.
Total software shipments reached approximately 1.416 billion units by June 2025, generating an attach rate of around 9.24 games per console – a remarkable figure that speaks to how deeply engaged Switch owners have been with its library.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe alone has moved nearly 69 million copies, while Animal Crossing: New Horizons sits at over 48 million.
The Switch 2 Era Begins – But the Original Lives On
The arrival of the Nintendo Switch 2 in June 2025 didn’t signal the end of the original – it extended it.
The Switch 2 sold 3.5 million units in its first four days, making it Nintendo’s fastest-selling console launch ever, with first-month sales more than double those of the original Switch’s comparable period.
The bad news that remerged recently however, is that the Nintendo Switch 2 could soon face a price hike amid global hardware shortages.
Crucially, both Breath of the Wild and its sequel Tears of the Kingdom were given Switch 2 editions at launch, and Nintendo has continued to support the original titles.
In early 2026, Nintendo released new updates for both games, including general fixes and Thai language support added to Breath of the Wild for Switch 2 players.
The fact that a studio is still patching a game from 2017 says everything about its enduring place in the canon.
Check out GamesHub’s five top Switch 2 games that have already hit the shelves 2026.
Why the Nintendo Switch Still Matters in 2026
Nine years is a long time in gaming. Consoles usually fade into nostalgia well before the decade mark.
But the Switch has done something different: it became infrastructure.
It changed where and how people play, it proved that raw graphical power isn’t the only measure of a great console, and it launched with a game that has inspired an entire generation of open-world design.
With the Zelda franchise’s 40th anniversary falling in 2026 and a live-action movie currently in production, the world that Breath of the Wild helped build shows no sign of shrinking. If anything, it’s expanding.
Nine years ago, Nintendo changed gaming. The Switch and the world of Hyrule are proof that the best ideas don’t just endure – they grow.
