• Switch 2 launch numbers

    Nintendo just confirmed that the Switch 2 sold over 3.5m units in 4 days, making it the fastest selling console in history.

    Official numbers are available in the following threads, globally, for Japan, for the UK, for Spain, for France

Switch 2 Launch - Market Watch [First numbers: UK >160K, Spain 108K, France 169K, all far above Switch 2017 launch]

First of all, thanks for your reporting (y)
Second, if I'm allowed to ask:

- does the lack of reporting on Cyberpunk 2077 and Bravely Default among your releases mean that there have been no preorders for the game at the store you have visibility for?
- would you be able to provide some further context with regards to the preorder figures that can be moved at your store? Basically, how other recent releases on other platforms have done pre-order wise in the last few months.
No pre-orders for cyberpunk; 1 for BDHD lol that was me, no other 3rd party games are pre-ordered. With my current store being more PS centric we usually have Pre-orders skew to that platform. When comparing DKB, so far the biggest pre-ordered game for NSW2 it is below AC Shadows, higher then MHW, below Astro bot, below SM2, below GOWR. If compared to PS games that haven't released its higher then LSA, DS2, & GOY, those games always pick up right before release. Xbox gets virtually 0 pre-orders & that is largely the case for every store i have been at unless its madden or COD, we had more pre-orders/copies of Doom & Indiana jones on PS then we did Xbox. The previous store I was at which is more Nintendo focused had 80 total NSW2 pre-orders available (55MKW bundles & 30 standalone) We had 125-130 but the Pre-orders they have for MKW & DKB is not far from us, they have MKW with 19 pre-orders & DKB with 24 Pre-orders.
 
No pre-orders for cyberpunk; 1 for BDHD lol that was me, no other 3rd party games are pre-ordered. With my current store being more PS centric we usually have Pre-orders skew to that platform. When comparing DKB, so far the biggest pre-ordered game for NSW2 it is below AC Shadows, higher then MHW, below Astro bot, below SM2, below GOWR. If compared to PS games that haven't released its higher then LSA, DS2, & GOY, those games always pick up right before release. Xbox gets virtually 0 pre-orders & that is largely the case for every store i have been at unless its madden or COD, we had more pre-orders/copies of Doom & Indiana jones on PS then we did Xbox. The previous store I was at which is more Nintendo focused had 80 total NSW2 pre-orders available (55MKW bundles & 30 standalone) We had 125-130 but the Pre-orders they have for MKW & DKB is not far from us, they have MKW with 19 pre-orders & DKB with 24 Pre-orders.
Thanks again for the reporting and the further context. Still, rather than first-party titles my curiosity is far bigger for third-party games despite the far smaller pre-order figures, so if it's not much of a bother, I would definitely appreciate even more comparisons but with lower-tier releases compared to games such as AC Shadows, Spider-Man 2 and God of War: Ragnarok: Doom: The Dark Ages, Expedition 33, Split Fiction, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, the Suikoden remaster and those likes.

Anyway, looking back at the figures you previously shared (where you also highlighted figures for Doom: The Dark Ages as of the end of April)

Had a shift at my local GameStop they need some help with NSW2 so they asked me to come help & i saw our numbers after everything was said & done Here are the numbers we are a bigger store in terms of revenue so expect higher volume stores to get these kind of allocations. Games were lower then I expected DK (23) copies pre-ordered & MKW (20) copies pre-ordered. SF 6 (4) copies pre-ordered. Unrelated to NSW2 we had a stupid amount of XSX copies for C33.. which is odd so did other stores we got more copies of that then we did Indiana Jones. The GameStop exclusive deluxe editions & collector’s edition are being re-sold for $200-$300 dollars.. also 0 pre-orders for Doom (XSX) & (2) for PS5. Lastly I checked Death stranding 2 which had (6) pre-orders, I worked the original release of Death stranding & if I remember correctly we had about (80) pre-orders total. Figured I would share because I haven’t been in the store since January.

it appears that Street Fighter VI used to have four preorders at the store you have visibility on, while now it's at 2, so there must've been some cancellations of sorts. Also seeing Rune Factory as the third-party game with the highest amount of pre-orders is...probably not something that's happening that broadly in the US in all honesty, even beyond your own impression of this store being more skewed towards Sony 😅
 
For a big game from Nintendo there has been very little marketing for DKB for now. Mario Odyssey had the short footage without a title in the reveal video, a trailer that hid the core gameplay loop in the Switch 1 presentation, a big trailer at E3 2017, a big overview and gameplay trailer at the September direct in 2017 and marketing like a musical trailer and a live flash mob on launch day.

Donkey Kong Bananza had 1 trailer that did show a lot in a vacuum but then again not that much, and some very curated gameplay of a small section. They also seem to again hide what seems like a big part of the games premise considering the artwork leak.

The game is only 2 months out, 6 weeks after the launch.
They’ll have to be gearing up for a pretty intensive marketing blitz. I wonder if they will start before the launch or immediately after.
 
Quoted by: Mio
Thanks again for the reporting and the further context. Still, rather than first-party titles my curiosity is far bigger for third-party games despite the far smaller pre-order figures, so if it's not much of a bother, I would definitely appreciate even more comparisons but with lower-tier releases compared to games such as AC Shadows, Spider-Man 2 and God of War: Ragnarok: Doom: The Dark Ages, Expedition 33, Split Fiction, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, the Suikoden remaster and those likes.

Anyway, looking back at the figures you previously shared (where you also highlighted figures for Doom: The Dark Ages as of the end of April)



it appears that Street Fighter VI used to have four preorders at the store you have visibility on, while now it's at 2, so there must've been some cancellations of sorts. Also seeing Rune Factory as the third-party game with the highest amount of pre-orders is...probably not something that's happening that broadly in the US in all honesty, even beyond your own impression of this store being more skewed towards Sony 😅
The fact that Rune factory even has 4 is surprising to me, cancellations are pretty common typically moved towards another pre-order or not interested. I actually close tonight so i will take some more pictures but with games like C33, FF, ETC. Those smaller-ish titles, after COVID they are very hit or miss some stores might not even get a copy. The current store I am at is considered a high volume store so we always get at least something on release date. (Even if we have 0 pre-orders). FF had 0 excluding me but we still got some copies, Split fiction we had 0 as well, suikoden we had 1 which was me. They are very conservative on what ships to stores lol like a week after release we might get some copies in if we didn't but smaller-ish titles pre-covid had some decent pre-orders, Trails through cold steel III is one i remember where we had like 10-15 pre-orders, that game now from the stores i have been at might get like 2. Usually people get upset when we don't have copies & GameStop has even cut down the pre-order window, you use to be able to pre-order literally the day before, sometimes you get away with that now but not likely especially if our point of sale does not allow it. The odd thing is at least from what i have seen those same consumers still show up trying to buy a copy & are upset when we don't have any. Its tricky making comparisons because its not what it use to be unless your a major triple A game. Super bomber man had more pre-orders then DKB when i worked the NSW midnight.
 
The fact that Rune factory even has 4 is surprising to me, cancellations are pretty common typically moved towards another pre-order or not interested. I actually close tonight so i will take some more pictures but with games like C33, FF, ETC. Those smaller-ish titles, after COVID they are very hit or miss some stores might not even get a copy. The current store I am at is considered a high volume store so we always get at least something on release date. (Even if we have 0 pre-orders). FF had 0 excluding me but we still got some copies, Split fiction we had 0 as well, suikoden we had 1 which was me. They are very conservative on what ships to stores lol like a week after release we might get some copies in if we didn't but smaller-ish titles pre-covid had some decent pre-orders, Trails through cold steel III is one i remember where we had like 10-15 pre-orders, that game now from the stores i have been at might get like 2. Usually people get upset when we don't have copies & GameStop has even cut down the pre-order window, you use to be able to pre-order literally the day before, sometimes you get away with that now but not likely especially if our point of sale does not allow it. The odd thing is at least from what i have seen those same consumers still show up trying to buy a copy & are upset when we don't have any. Its tricky making comparisons because its not what it use to be unless your a major triple A game. Super bomber man had more pre-orders then DKB when i worked the NSW midnight.

Yeah, the reason why I've brought up comparisons with recent releases is due to how much the market has changed between Switch came out and now: not just in terms of share of overall software sales coming from physical, but also (if not especially, in this scenario) in terms of how much GameStop's own share of the physical software market has changed.

Still, once again thank you for your availability :D
 
Yeah, the reason why I've brought up comparisons with recent releases is due to how much the market has changed between Switch came out and now: not just in terms of share of overall software sales coming from physical, but also (if not especially, in this scenario) in terms of how much GameStop's own share of the physical software market has changed.

Still, once again thank you for your availability :D
No problem, funny enough I haven't really thought about it but we don't even really track or push pre-orders nearly as much as we use to. Each store was given a certain number of pre-orders to hit for certain games; Pokémon was usually the biggest always at least 200 plus, then we had the "five to drive" every month. Certainly will be interesting to see what the trends are for the NSW2, i will be working our midnight so i can post final pre-order numbers for launch line up. If we still tracked pre-orders as much as we use to i could make more comparisons but mainly going off memory.
 
For a big game from Nintendo there has been very little marketing for DKB for now. Mario Odyssey had the short footage without a title in the reveal video, a trailer that hid the core gameplay loop in the Switch 1 presentation, a big trailer at E3 2017, a big overview and gameplay trailer at the September direct in 2017 and marketing like a musical trailer and a live flash mob on launch day.

Donkey Kong Bananza had 1 trailer that did show a lot in a vacuum but then again not that much, and some very curated gameplay of a small section. They also seem to again hide what seems like a big part of the games premise considering the artwork leak.

The game is only 2 months out, 6 weeks after the launch.
They’ll have to be gearing up for a pretty intensive marketing blitz. I wonder if they will start before the launch or immediately after.

The focus is on the launch game AKA Mario Kart World, understandably so. Donkey Kong Bananza will get its marketing blitz just after the launch week so there's nothing to worry about imo
 
Some good insights on software. Thanks. We have no way to compare with previous launches so not much to say. I do hope third parties find success on the platform as they do seem to be making more of an effort.
No problem, funny enough I haven't really thought about it but we don't even really track or push pre-orders nearly as much as we use to. Each store was given a certain number of pre-orders to hit for certain games; Pokémon was usually the biggest always at least 200 plus, then we had the "five to drive" every month. Certainly will be interesting to see what the trends are for the NSW2, i will be working our midnight so i can post final pre-order numbers for launch line up. If we still tracked pre-orders as much as we use to i could make more comparisons but mainly going off memory.
 
Switch 2 preorders sold out in Saudi Arabia. Looks like a successful launch for a new-ish market on Nintendo's side.

It's great that Nintendo is managing to do increasingly well in the fast-growing middle eastern markets, there's a strong potential growth there. Also hoping they'll manage to grow fast in Eastern Europe which is a place where Nintendo could do better and would contribute to make Europe an even bigger market for Nintendo at a time when the US market is less reliable
 
Nintendo has the means to produce 20M+ consoles during the current FY.

Nintendo Co. has turned to Samsung Electronics Co. to help make the main chips for the Switch 2, a move that may help the Japanese company ramp up production of the gaming console enough to sell a higher-than-projected 20 million units by March 2026.
Nintendo had worked to boost Switch 2 production even before it began taking pre-orders, and has asked suppliers to step things up to sate strong demand, the people said.

 
That could be Nintendo's strategy. Make a 15 million forecast and then aim for 20 million unit sales internally, to then get a big boost from investors when they have overperformed compared to their initial forecast.
 
Good, scalpers be damned.
The initial goal was probably 20 millions, but the tariff lunacy made them go more conservative.
I don't think Nintendo would be so bold and just expect a new system to sell 20m first year. They already said they are taking precautions against scalpers, so the goal was always to be able to produce more systems than they might sell in the first year.

At the end of the day its still their most expensive system yet and it would have been the case with or without tarrifs.
 
If they announce more titles next month from third party publishers including confirmations of COD and other F2P games, mmm, then yeah, shipping 20 millions this FY isn’t something impossible.
 
Looks like Nintendo's been cozying up to Samsung recently (between this, microSD Express and OLED screen + some other stuff I'm probably forgetting). Not sure it's a deliberate strategy, but not surprised they're trying to make the most of it.
Samsung fits the business case for Nintendo, their chips are less expensive and less in demand than TSMC chips, meaning they get them for cheaper and have bigger opportunity to scale up production quickly. So makes sense for Nintendo to use them, instead of something more expensive and more in demand from bigger companies than Nintendo.
 
microSD Express
Nintendo will apparently be doing branded cards with both Samsung and SanDisk, though currently they are only offering one card (256GB) with the former at launch.

Nintendo's actually part of the SD Association now. A bunch of game related companies seem to be in fact; Microsoft, Sony, Nvidia, AMD, Amazon, Intel, Valve, Bandai Namco, Sega (Fave/Toys), Konami (Gaming), Square Enix (Taito) and Sunsoft.
 
That could be Nintendo's strategy. Make a 15 million forecast and then aim for 20 million unit sales internally, to then get a big boost from investors when they have overperformed compared to their initial forecast.
This will never work in reality.

If you overshoot at the start -> stock goes up -> miss forecast -> stock goes down
If you undershoot at the start -> stock goes down -> surpass forecast -> stock goes up

It kinda evens out, i think Nintendo was just really scare of tariffs

Edit: except when you are TESLA, you show nothng and you still go up. meme stock
 
An OLED 120hz panel with VRR?

Sure Jan

For 2029 it's not unreasonable to expect.
I really don't think Nintendo will fuck over launch users by simply swapping the panel out in a couple of years, it will be integrated in a new, pricier, revision.
 
the problem is even making such a panel. I don't think such a panel even exists for a low power draw and price. maybe if a couple years. maybe
I wouldn't be shocked if this kinda of panel would result in a long term commitment from Samsung that might not just include the Switch 2 OLED but the Switch 3 at the same time.
The screen will be a USP Nintendo can use in the future against SteamDeck 2/PS Portable/Xbox Portable because they might not be able to justify spending that amount on the screen when they haver to spent more on SoC, storage etc. just to get the basics done, so their current get games can run on portables.

Switch 2 already has a very good LCD, so the jump to make a revision worthwhile has to be exceptional for most people - it would absolutely be a premium device.
 
I mean, i know it's a super long shot but Samsung does AMOLED (which is techincally an OLED) with VRR on 7-8inch screens, not too far fecthed.
 
I mean, i know it's a super long shot but Samsung does AMOLED (which is techincally an OLED) with VRR on 7-8inch screens, not too far fecthed.
Yeah, in the end i doubt they would push for something they can't actually provide when it's time to deliver. It's mostly about getting the right price and enough advantages for Nintendo. Doubt they wanna break that 500€ barrier so they might take a wait and see approach for the next 2 years.
 
It seems a Italy Marketing presentation was leaked, I only took a quick glance to it and talks about the launch, details of the in-person events, ads, target demographics, etc. Not sure if I can share here if someone wants to dissect it, it has been uploaded to archive.org.

EDIT: Link removed due to sensible private content, marketing-wise
 
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the part where it says women is very important as Switch was clearly very popular with women like the DS. I'd suspect it's probably 45/55 F:M ratio.

It also is another point that Sony saying that they hve 41% of players being women is pure nonsense. I'm not sure why these companies lie about this apart from the fact ''it looks good'' because I have an incredibly hard time imagining 48M PS4s are played primarily by women. Anecdotes don't tell the whole story and many times are false but I have a tough time thinking that Sony is anywhere near Nintendo and it's most likely a falsely constructed premise just like how them saying 70% of their game sales are digital is another lie when they count them differently.

Given Sony is most likely fluffing up data and lying, I'd expect the amount of females on PS4 to have been between 15-20%. PS5 could definitely be higher but it seems impossible that PS4 was more than 25%.
 
the part where it says women is very important as Switch was clearly very popular with women like the DS. I'd suspect it's probably 45/55 F:M ratio.

It also is another point that Sony saying that they hve 41% of players being women is pure nonsense. I'm not sure why these companies lie about this apart from the fact ''it looks good'' because I have an incredibly hard time imagining 48M PS4s are played primarily by women. Anecdotes don't tell the whole story and many times are false but I have a tough time thinking that Sony is anywhere near Nintendo and it's most likely a falsely constructed premise just like how them saying 70% of their game sales are digital is another lie when they count them differently.

Given Sony is most likely fluffing up data and lying, I'd expect the amount of females on PS4 to have been between 15-20%. PS5 could definitely be higher but it seems impossible that PS4 was more than 25%.
This is nonsense, nobody is lying. Framing can be deceiving but if a hard figure is officially given, then it is legit.
 
Can you come up with worse reasons to claim that Sony is lying?
I haven't met anywhere near 41% of PS4 owners being mainly played by women in the UK/Portugal whilst that's a very normal thing for the Switch and PC audience. I can definitely see 20% but 41% seems very hard for me to believe.

Also, how would Nintendo have 'less competition' if Sony had the same amount of female users as them? The Wii, DS, Switch all have had more female users than any PS systems by a good margin that it gets noted at times. I even remember the Nintendo France manager noting the big role women played in 2019 but I've never heard of it for Sony and even less for Microsoft.
 
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I haven't met anywhere near 41% of PS4 owners being mainly played by women in the UK/Portugal whilst that's a very normal thing for the Switch and PC audience. I can definitely see 20% but 41% seems very hard for me to believe.
So therefore Sony is lying. Because you personally something something. That's not how this works.
I could say the exact opposite right now it would have zero meaning, just like what you just said.
 
41% does feel high, that's around what PSX managed in Japan in the 1990s iirc and something later PlayStations notably lost as a market base there, but I dunno, maybe the demographics end up being wider in the household with a shared console than we think? Lots of girls and women do play Fortnite, Genshin, Roblox, Minecraft, etc.
 
I haven't met anywhere near 41% of PS4 owners being mainly played by women in the UK whilst that's a very normal thing for the Switch and PC audience. I can definitely see 20% but 41% seems very hard for me to believe.
Imo survey have their limit, first because situation can vary depending on the territory (exemple: Switch have outsold PS4 WW but not in the UK currently) and also because depending on how many peoples you ask there is always some error margin.

However what your see IRL is not going to be more representative of the population than survey and Sony is not lying when they just repost informations from a survey.
 
I haven't met anywhere near 41% of PS4 owners being mainly played by women in the UK/Portugal whilst that's a very normal thing for the Switch and PC audience. I can definitely see 20% but 41% seems very hard for me to believe.

Personal and anecdotal experiences, especially if taken in isolation, tend to be nowhere near representative of the greater situation. The fact that you haven't met female players pretty often and Sony stating that 41% of their PS4 playerbase is made of women and girls are not in contradiction with each other.
 
So therefore Sony is lying. Because you personally something something. That's not how this works.
I could say the exact opposite right now it would have zero meaning, just like what you just said.
True, which is why I noted that anecdotes aren't the best.

But then how does Nintendo have "less competition" for female users if Sony has around the same level?? It doesn't make sense either.
 
Women in general play different types of games than men. You won't see many women if you play CoD. That doesn't mean that women don't own PS or Xbox.
 
True, which is why I noted that anecdotes aren't the best.

But then how does Nintendo have "less competition" for female users if Sony has around the same level?? It doesn't make sense either.
According to a survey from Circana published in 2023 for the US market:

41% of PS5s in the US are female owned
45% of Xbox Series consoles are female owned
52% of Swich consoles are female owned
50% of gaming PCs are female owned

Nintendo have according to this a bigger women audience than Playstation.
If it's also true in Italy once why they said that they have "less competition" on that audience.
 
True, which is why I noted that anecdotes aren't the best.

But then how does Nintendo have "less competition" for female users if Sony has around the same level?? It doesn't make sense either.
Different kind of games, for example I know that plenty of of women that love f2p dacha games like Genshin or Infinity Nikki - it's a massive market that Sony pretty much has on lock in consoles. The market is big and the audience is massive as well, there is. a lot of overlap with certain games but it's not a necessity. Then you have games like Fortnite, Roblox and co. that are played by a lot of children and a lot of them are girls as well.

I think men in general tend to underestimate how many women and girls actually play video games because they might not move in the same circles.
 
Imo survey have their limit, first because situation can vary depending on the territory (exemple: Switch have outsold PS4 WW but not in the UK currently) and also because depending on how many peoples you ask there is always some error margin.

However what your see IRL is not going to be more representative of the population than survey and Sony is not lying when they just repost informations from a survey.
Well on this particular topic there's also the part where different surveys (even from the same group just taken at different times!) can have wildly different results so it's kind of hard to trust any single survey when it's contradicted by the next one.

i.e. for the US in particular, here's a late 2022 poll with notably different numbers for all systems (edit: and reading the wording on Circana carefully I think "x% of consoles are female owned" is doing some 'technically correct' framing with systems in a mixed household)
 
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InstallBase has been around for a while but I just realised that Switch 2 is still gonna be our first big console launch. Kinda wild thinking about it.
 
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