Today’s Media Create released its sales charts for the Japanese market, and combining them with historical data, we find out that the Nintendo Switch achieved another milestone. On top of that, its games have dominated sales during the Christmas week.
Below you can check out the software sales chart related to the period between December 25th and December 31st. Like every year, it was released a few days late, due to the Holidays. The second number for each game represents its local lifetime sales.
- Super Mario Odyssey – Switch – 105, 551/1,397,332
- Splatoon 2 – Switch – 96, 404/1,764,870
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – Switch – 87, 356/1,132,793
- Pokémon Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon – 3DS – 61, 698/1,407,660
- Mario Party: The Top 100 – 3DS – 52, 181/New
- Yo-kai Watch Busters 2: Sword/Magnum – 3DS – 38, 141/431, 420
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Switch – 33,024/771, 050
- 1-2-Switch – Switch – 21, 235/349, 929
- Earth Defense Force 5 – PS4 – 16,522/181, 466
- ARMS- Switch – 16,463/313, 954
- Pokkén Tournament DX- Switch – 13,650/191, 485
- Xenoblade Chronicles 2 – Switch – 12,779/156, 717
- Yakuza Kiwami 2 – PS4 – 11, 806/184, 445
- Call of Duty: WWII – PS4 – 10, 153/348, 704
- Kirby Battle Royale – 3DS – 9, 679/125, 003
- FIFA 18 – Switch – 9, 131/62,783
- Animal Crossing: New Leaf – Welcome amiibo – 3DS – 7, 953/344, 495
- Snipperclips – Switch – 7,388/34, 619
- One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 Deluxe Edition – Switch – 7,003/23,014
- Dragonball Xenoverse 2 – Switch – 6,878/96,040
And here is the hardware chart:
- Switch – 134,519
- PS4 – 37,175
- New 2DS XL – 20,409
- New3DS XL – 12,542
- PS4 Pro – 12,456
- PS Vita – 7,970
- 2DS – 3,700
- Xbox One – 335
- New 3DS -163
- PS3 – 58
- Wii U – 44
- Xbox One X – 23
We learn Nintendo’s console passed the whole local lifetime sales in Japan of its predecessor, the Wii U. Today’s tally (which is up to December 31st) sees the Switch having sold a grand total of 3,312,619 units on the local market, while the Wii U has sold 3,329,127 units to customers. Considering that we’re already over a week beyond that, it’s absolutely safe to assume that the Wii U has been overtaken.
It’s worth mentioning that Famitsu marked the overtake with the prior week’s numbers, but Media Create is normally considered more reliable than the popular magazine, and often used by Nintendo itself for its official communication.
Considering that it can’t have taken more than a day or two for the Switch to have sold over 17,000 additional units at the current pace (and New Year is an extremely busy sales period in Japan, due to the Otoshidama money gifting tradition within families), The Switch probably overtook the Wii U pretty much exactly on its ten month anniversary on the shelves, which was on January 2nd.
This is remarkable considering that the Wii U has been available for over five years.
More good news for Nintendo is that the Switch’s games absolutely dominated the Christmas week, exactly like the console dominated the earlier part of the Holiday Shopping season. This is almost surely going to extend to the first week of January.
On Sony’s front, while the PlayStation 4 did not pull stellar numbers during the Japanese Holiday season, it’s worth mentioning that the PS4 Pro has seen a rather nice buff to its sales, selling about 25% of the PS4 family’s units, indicating that many Japanese gamers may be preparing for the impending release of Monster Hunter World.
If you want to compare, you can check out last week’s results.