It’s been over a month since the Switch 2 was released worldwide. Within just four days of being in the market, Nintendo had reported a record-breaking 3.5 million sales.
There was also a report that the Switch 2 had achieved 5 million sales within the first month of its release, but Nintendo would later clarify that this “leak” was simply a placeholder number and didn’t reflect the Switch 2’s actual sales for the first month.
“It appears that test data prepared for a website update was unintentionally made publicly accessible,” said Nintendo in a statement. “Temporarily visible data was for testing purposes only, and is not accurate and not related to any sales result or projection of Switch 2.”
Of course, it’s estimated that Nintendo’s actual sales figures for the Switch 2 still might be close to this number. Regardless, it would appear that the Switch 2 isn’t selling quite as fast as initially perceived.
According to Famitsu (via Gematsu and My Nintendo News), the Japan Switch 2’s week-over-week sales figures for the latest week have seen a sharp decline. While an eventual drop off from the initial amount of momentum for the Switch 2 was expected, this is a particularly sharp decline.
Within the report, it’s said that the Switch 2 was only able to push about 71,885 units during the latest week of sales (spanning from June 30 to July 6). The week before (spanning from July 7 to July 13) had the Switch 2 selling about 161,021 units. That’s more than a 55% decrease in sales.
It’s worth pointing out that these are only the week-over-week sales figures for the Switch 2 in Japan. Additionally, it’s known that North America tends to be Nintendo’s strongest market.
While this week-over-week data doesn’t paint the entire picture for the Switch 2, it does appear to provide a strong inclination that the Switch 2’s momentum is slowing down.
However, earlier this week on July 17, Nintendo released a highly anticipated game with Donkey Kong Bananza. It’s likely that this game could provide a sales boost for Nintendo’s next week-over-week figures.
Despite everything, it feels like the Switch 2 is still a contender for potentially becoming the highest selling console of all time. As of right now, that honor belongs to the PlayStation 2, which has sold over 160.63 million units at this point.
For now, the Switch 2 is continuing to outperform its predecessor, the Switch, which is known to be the be third best-selling console of all time with over 152.12 million sales. We’ll just have to see how things play out from here to find out what happens next.