Sega’s latest Sonic game sales are eclipsing Zelda and Metroid on Nintendo Switch

I’m personally pretty nosy when it comes to learning about game companies, their profits, and what titles do particularly well for them. So when it’s time to release the figures, I’m there reading and waiting. And now it’s official: Sega is releasing its sales figures for two recently acclaimed Sonic games: Sonic Superstars and Sonic Frontiers. The figures are a little surprising and may hint towards the company’s success, as Frontiers’ 4.57 million units surpass Nintendo Switch games like Metroid Dread and Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom.

In the new documents, Superstars performs slightly lower than Superstars, with 2.43 million units sold, making it equivalent to games like the Switch version of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, though the latter has been out for seven years already, and Superstars only came out in 2024. Sega’s latest Integrated Report also sheds light on its Sonic mobile game, Sonic Dash, which has racked up a total of 676 million downloads. Sounds like a lot, right?

Well, it is, given that one of the best mobile games of all time, Pokémon Go continues to claim billions of downloads. Over half of that is an extremely respectable figure, even if it isn’t reaching quite the heights of the smash hit Pokémon game. Both Sonic Frontiers and Superstars were deeply hated by some Sonic fans online, so it’s amusing to see reactions to the decent sales figures. But will a new gaming king be crowned?

Well, despite some promising figures, it looks like Sega will stay behind Nintendo for now. Ultimately, Nintendo’s broad variety of titles and deep commitment to its IPs win. Sega relies somewhat upon Sonic, and to some extent, the Persona series. Nintendo’s dominance with Mario, Animal Crossing, Zelda, Pikmin, and many more flagship IPs is a lot for any company to face off against. If Sega wants to catch up, it’ll need to manufacture some hit franchises. Or just make another 15 Sonic movies, I guess.

Mario Kart 8 is still the biggest and best Switch game of all time, with 68.86 million sales, while Sega’s biggest-selling game, the original Sonic the Hedgehog from 1991, sold over 40 million copies. Because Sega backed out of the hardware game, it couldn’t rely on sales from that to keep its foot in the door, either. Not that the Dreamcast went particularly well for it. It seems like we will continue to worship our one true god, Mario-sama.

If you want to catch up on all the latest Nintendo Switch goodness, check out our guide to upcoming Switch games, and be sure to check out our favorite free Switch games, too.