Nintendo

No surprise, Nintendo games lead Amazon's best sellers list for 2021

It marks the second consecutive year.

Will Gendron

It’s pretty funny to reflect now on Nintendo’s position heading into the release of the Switch. Coming off the disaster that was the Wii-U, it was important to sell console units — and boy did the Switch deliver. Although Sony’s PS5 just recently ended a 33-month reign atop U.S. monthly hardware sales, Nintendo’s dominion continues to be inevitable. For the second year in a row, Switch games are the first ones off the board in Amazon’s best sellers list.

Amazon keeps an annual list of the best-sellers within a number of categories that is updated daily. It’s like a real-time, jumbotron scoreboard for the platform. Within the video game category, the first, actual game that comes up is Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury.

Here’s a full list of the top 20 best-selling games on Amazon:

  1. Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury
  2. Just Dance 2022 (Nintendo Switch)
  3. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
  4. Pokemon Brilliant Diamond
  5. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
  6. Mario Party Superstars
  7. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
  8. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
  9. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
  10. Metroid Dread
  11. Pokemon Shining Pearl
  12. Super Mario Odyssey
  13. New Pokemon Snap
  14. Minecraft (Nintendo Switch)
  15. Just Dance 2021 (Nintendo Switch)
  16. Luigi’s Mansion 3
  17. Mario Golf: Super Rush
  18. Super Mario Party
  19. Carnival Games (Nintendo Switch)
  20. Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe
  21. NBA 2K22 (PS4)

Same Story, Different Year — Despite a full year of Sony and Microsoft releases for the PS5 and Xbox Series X respectively, Nintendo continued to dominate the charts. Some of the titles, like Animal Crossing and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe have been out for at least a year now. The first non-Nintendo game on the list doesn’t occur until 20 spots in, with NBA 2K22 (PS4) landing at 21.

Worth noting is that games for other systems are available on a number of other platforms, like the Playstation and Xbox digital storefronts, as well as Steam, so this chart doesn’t reflect what games are the most played, necessarily.

Still, the Nintendo brand is stronger than ever right now and last year’s results were largely the same.