How Many People Play Super Smash Bros in 2024?

What does the Super Smash Bros player count look like in 2024? It’s 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.

The biggest fighter franchises have released new instalments in the last year 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?

Player Count in 2024

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.

How Many People Play Super Smash Bros Ultimate?

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.

Super Smash Bros Melee

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. This version of the game sold 7 million copies.

Given the vast difference in install base for GameCube versus Switch, this 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.

Super Smash Bros Player Count in Other Games

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.