We’re big fans of the Switch, which has proven time and again how cool casual gaming can be. Playing “for fun” and with your family is a discipline that you immediately associate with Nintendo.

An exciting year lies behind Nintendo’s hybrid console, especially due to the incredible success of games like “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom”. But after gamescom is before Christmas, so 2023 has really only just begun.

 

 

At the end of August, Nintendo announced the Mario Red Edition Switch, which will be released in October. Also in October, 2K Games will release Borderlands 3 Ultimate Edition for the Switch. Rumours at this year’s gamescom also hinted at a Switch successor. It sounds like this year’s Christmas shopping season is going to be exciting.

In addition to these exciting announcements, Nintendo kept showing off gameplay from new games like Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe or Pikmin 4 at past Nintendo Live 2023 events, so the hype is definitely real, as they say.

Against this background, the question arises as to which games are currently generating the most players and sales. Newzoo has investigated this question in its latest report. The data from its own Game Performance Monitor was used to determine the top 10 games in the USA and Great Britain for July 2023.

The Nintendo Switch games with the most monthly active users (MAU) in July 2023 were Fortnite and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and by a significant margin in the US and UK. Fortnite showed promising growth in MAU, while Hyrule active users decreased month-on-month. Nevertheless, the blockbuster Zelda recorded the most new MAUs among all titles in July’s top 10.

Positive growth in active users was also seen by games such as Mario Kart 8, Minecraft, Fall Guys, Pokémon Scarlet & Violet and Fortnite.

Half of the top games with positive MAU growth were first-party titles, but third-party studios like Epic Games and EA also attracted many active players to the hybrid console.

Of course, Fortnite, Rocket League and Fall Guys are all free-to-play and popular with younger players (a key target group for the Switch). Both factors contributed significantly to the high monthly active users (MAUs) of these three titles.

After a ten-year wait since the last Pikmin adventure, “Pikmin 4” was released on 21 July to mostly positive reviews and impressive sales figures.

In the US and UK, the game achieved the highest sales on the Switch in its release month. It topped the sales charts against heavyweights like Tears of the Kingdom, Mario Kart 8 and Fortnite, despite only being released at the end of July.

Mario fans can look forward to the end of 2023 in particular. On 20 October, Nintendo will release Super Mario Bros Wonder, the first traditional Super Mario game since 2012’s New Super Mario Bros U, followed by WarioWare: Move It! November on 3 November. An enhanced version of Super Mario RPG will be released on 17 November.

Hogwarts Legacy will be released for the Switch on 14 November. This will please all those who don’t really like Mario and Co. but would also like to play a “real” game on Nintendo’s console. It will be interesting to see how the game performs at the end of the year and whether the sales figures live up to expectations.

We took all this and much more from Newzoo’s latest ranking, which can be found at their blog. The very detailed article also contains many other findings on the topic of games on the Switch.