We discussed last week that Switch 2 sales in the US were down by 35% during the holiday season. The Switch 2 launched on June 5, 2025, shattering records with over 10 million units sold worldwide by September. This was twice the pace of the original Switch and the fastest console debut ever. Despite this, early 2026 reports show a lukewarm holiday stretch.
According to Automaton Media (with original reporting by Japanese media sites Kadokawa Game Linkage and Famitsu), Japan’s console market thrived in 2025. The country experienced a 138.8% year-over-year growth in 2025, reaching 418.13 billion yen (~$2.64 billion USD). This is largely fueled by the Switch 2 selling over 3.7 million units, outpacing the OG Switch’s first-year Japan tally. The data is based on physical software and hardware sales toward the end of 2025.
Japan Is Loyal To Nintendo
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Both Sony and Nintendo are Japanese companies, but Nintendo appears to get more love from the local crowd. According to Famitsu’s data from 2021, the PS5 sold 1 million units within its first year in Japan. That number is over triple for the Switch 2, and that data is only for six months!
Japan has a lot of passionate gamers, so it’s no surprise that hardware jumped 149.3% and software jumped 121% year-on-year. That’s without counting digital downloads, DLC, or in-app purchases, so the real numbers are probably even bigger. Even more surprising is that the original Switch sold 1.52 million units in 2025, easily beating the PS5’s 879,000 number for the year. Yes, a previous-generation console outsold a current-gen console. In case you’re wondering, Xbox doesn’t do well in Japan, and many reports suggest that lifetime sales for the Series X|S are somewhere in the 700,000 range.
Mario Kart World continues to be the Switch 2’s most successful game. It has sold nearly 10 million copies at the time of writing, and is still leading the sales charts in Japan. The game also won best sports game at The Game Awards, even though it had decent competition this year from Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds and EA FC 26. Sales are down for consoles and games in the US in general, but with the numbers Nintendo is pulling in Japan, there’s not much to worry about yet.
