Super Smash Bros is by far one of the most popular fighting games, regularly held up one as one of the best-selling. When you consider it has multiple installments which are all in active play, there’s potentially a huge answer to how many people play Super Smash Bros regularly.
All the biggest fighter franchises have released new installments in the last few years, but what about Smash? We’re currently in the largest gap we’ve ever seen between titles in the series. Has this affected the player count?
Source: Nintendo
For a game like Smash only available on one platform, it’s tricky to nail down a player count. There just isn’t the data out there. We do have some information though, namely sales. From this, we can get a good idea of the total player count for Smash.
Looking at how many people play Super Smash Bros, we really have to look at different games in the series. A new Smash doesn’t mean the old ones don’t get played. Well, Smash 4 Wii U isn’t at tournaments anymore but that’s the exception.
To consider how many people play Super Smash Bros, we have to look at all the active Smash games.
Ultimate is the latest and biggest version of Smash Bros. It’s probably most people’s favorite Switch fighting game, but how many people play it? In terms of sales, we have a pretty good idea of the total amount of people who have played Smash Ultimate.
At the most recent update, it had passed 33 million copies sold. It’s a huge number compared to more standard fighters and Smash being both a competitive and casual game likely helps it here. It’s even the third best-selling Switch game as a whole and the best-selling individual fighting game.
How many of those people still play though? The short answer is that we just don’t know.
Nintendo doesn’t provide figures for the number of active players Smash Ultimate has. It’s likely a lot lower than 33 million. Although, it’s still pretty quick to get a match online in most regions. Unfortunately, Nintendo is unlikely to ever release the exact Super Smash Bros player count. Since the series is exclusive to their consoles, we can’t even extrapolate from Steam figures like with other games.
Anecdotally, games aren’t hard to find at peak times for Smash. There are likely at least a few tens of thousands online at any one time. There is no physical way to know the exact Smash ultimate player count at any given time though, just the total.
That’s Ultimate, but what about Melee? The GameCube classic is still actively being played and is even the focus for a lot of Smash Bros esports players. SSB Melee sold 7 million copies.
Like Ultimate, there’s no way to know the active player count if that’s the number you’re looking for. Believe it or not, the amount of people with a decades-old GameCube game turned on somehow isn’t tracked!
Given the vast difference in install base for GameCube versus Switch, the difference in sales makes a lot of sense. A factor we have to keep in mind for how many people play Super Smash Bros Melee though is the title is often emulated.
While pros try to stick to official hardware, using emulation can make the game much easier for new players to get into. Securing older hardware and physical discs isn’t always the cheapest. With this in mind, we can only really say the Melee player base is somewhere over 7 million for those using the official version of the game.
It isn’t really right to count those who played a ROM of the game. Just like the actual discs, this is also an offline endeavor and there’s no way to track active players. Judging from tournament entrants though, there are at least a few thousand grinding this old game weekly. There isn’t a number available for the people actively using a retro offline game though. Tracking that would be impossible.
Source: Nintendo
Smash is more than just Ultimate and Melee! Although, these games are definitely the most popular. For a total Super Smash Bros player count, we can look at every game in the series. This is how the sales broke down for each.
All games before Ultimate have their online shutdown, so their active player count will be much smaller. As we can see though, Super Smash Bros is a fighting game series that has a player count that dwarfs most other franchises.
The game series has never released “active” player numbers. These sales figures are the only measure of the player count we get, the raw total. Smash still feels plenty active when you jump in online though.
LOL
CS2
Dota 2
Valorant
Fortnite
Call of Duty
Mobile Games
Gaming
EN Global 
JP 日本語
BR Português