The Nintendo Switch 2 might have been the talk of the gaming industry in 2025, but that doesn’t mean it has met all the company’s lofty goals, with CEO Shuntaro Furukawa admitting that the hybrid console’s holiday sales have fallen short of expectations outside of Japan.
Speaking to shareholders, Furukawa said that, “While our forecasted global hardware and software sales volume remains unchanged, the breakdown by region and product is based on different assumptions from the revised forecast announced at the time of our second-quarter financial results announcement… As you understand, domestic hardware sales volume exceeded our expectations, while overseas sales were slightly weaker than our expectations.”
As reported by TheGamer, the Nintendo Switch 2’s holiday sales period was down 35 percent over its predecessor’s historic first Christmas season in the United States, whereas the United Kingdom saw the same drop, this time by 16 percent. Over in France, which has historically been a moneymaker for the console, saw a 30 percent drop compared to the original Switch, while even Japan’s domestic sales took a slight hit, with sales figures down by 5.5 percent.
Still, these figures merely cover the console’s most recent sales performance and don’t consider the fact that the Nintendo Switch 2’s lifetime sales have already outperformed what the original managed in its first year, with time to spare.
To explain why hardware sales in Japan were performing better, Furukawa highlighted the release of two games in particular, Pokémon Legends: Z-A Nintendo Switch 2 Edition and Kirby Air Riders, that have resonated with the local audience, explaining that the two titles release during the holiday shopping season led “to a relatively high trend of existing Switch owners switching to the Switch 2 compared to overseas.”
On the other hand, titles that are positioned more towards the Western audience, such as Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, have gotten off to a slower start in comparison, with next to no mention of the title in Nintendo’s recent financial overview, and the game is also absent from its list of million-copy-selling games.
Still, the Nintendo Switch 2 remains the company’s biggest console launch of all time, and with upcoming first-party titles or exclusives like Pokémon Pokopia, Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave, and FromSoftware’s The Duskbloods, let’s see if the console can eventually hit Nintendo’s lofty ambitions in the future.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
