Nintendo teased Ultimate in March 2018 and revealed it at E3 2018 the following June. It was released worldwide on December 7, 2018. The game received universal acclaim, with some critics calling it the best of the series. They praised its amount of content and fine-tuning of existing Smash gameplay elements, although its online mode received some criticism. By June 2019, the game had sold over 14.7 million copies worldwide, making it the fastest-selling Switch game and the best-selling fighting game of all time