Nintendo has dropped the big announcement less than a week into the Switch 2’s launch.
They shared this press release today:
Nintendo Co., Ltd. (HQ: Kyoto, Minami-ku, Japan; Representative Director and President: Shuntaro Furukawa, “Nintendo” hereafter) announced that its new game system, Nintendo Switch 2, sold over 3.5 million units worldwide in the four days following its release on June 5, 2025*. This is the highest global sales level for any Nintendo hardware within the first four days.
Several analysts have chimed in as well. As Niko Partners Daniel Ahmad stated on Twitter;
This makes it not just the best selling Nintendo console in the first 4 days, but the fastest selling home video game console of all time.
Dan went on to explain that the PlayStation 4 took two weeks to sell 2.1 million units and six weeks to sell 4.2 million units. The PlayStation 5 took seven weeks to sell through 4.4 million units.
Dan also pointed out that the PlayStation 5 was supply constrained at launch. This was because both it and the Xbox Series X|S were caught in the middle of the lockdowns and quarantines at the onset of the pandemic. PlayStation 5 continued to have supply issues for about a year longer than Xbox Series X|S, but as we know it did end up outselling Xbox anyway.
As Dan says, the Switch 2 didn’t have supply constraints at launch, but that was barely the case. The sudden announcement of Liberation Day tariffs put the global markets in panic, and Nintendo had to worry about whether their consoles would deal with these steep tariffs.
Nintendo was rumored to have sent as many Switch 2 consoles assembled in Vietnam as possible to the US, but fortunately for them, the US government stepped down from those tariffs. Nintendo also made mitigation plans around the tariffs by putting emphasis on their local Japanese market.
For those keeping track, yes, the rumor earlier this week that the Switch 2 may have already sold 3 million units in the first 24 hours, if not confirmed word for word, was definitely on the money. Nintendo Prime’s sources, two of whom remain anonymous and one being Paul Gale, likely had contacts in the industry. This was probably the initial estimates going around, but Nintendo waited to confirm their numbers before making their announcement.
Nintendo’s big estimate is that they would sell 15 million units by the end of this financial year, on March 31, 2026. They’re already 1/5ths of the way towards that goal. Hopefully, this does carry over to the industry as a whole, as DFC revealed that everyone making video games hopes that the Switch 2’s success will be the rising tide that lifts all boats.
