A few days ago, news spread that Nintendo’s Switch 2 had apparently sold 5 million units. Unfortunately, as it turns out, that wasn’t really news at all.
The earliest that we can find this claim was in a ResetERA thread. Someone noticed that Nintendo’s official investor relations website had a page showing Switch 2 console sales, including breakdowns per region, as well as figures for Switch 2 software sales, and Switch console and software sales as well.
Hours after this spread, however, Bluesky user Nintendo Patents Watch made this revelation:
The “5 million units” Switch 2 sales figure that’s now going around was seen on the Nintendo IR site as early as 06-24, therefore it can’t be a real number for the quarter but placeholder or projection. Reddit is going reddit, but the gaming outlets should’ve done a bit more research before posting.
As we saw reasons to doubt this claim, even if it was found on Nintendo’s website, we decided not to go forward with reporting it. Today, Nintendo has officially denied this claim, and explained what happened.
This comes from financial analyst David Gibson of MST Financial. He shared this information on his Twitter:
I asked @Nintendo about the “leak” of Switch 2 data and they replied – “It appears that test data prepared for a web site update was unintentionally made publicly accessible. .. Temporarily visible data was for testing purposes only, and is not accurate and not related to any sales result or projection of Switch 2. “So do not take it that 5m Switch 2 sell-in for June. I am expecting 5.4m when results are announced Aug 1st.
To clarify further, Gibson works for MST Financial in Japan, so he was able to ask Nintendo Co. Ltd. directly, as opposed to Nintendo of America. In any case, Gibson highlights that the 5 million figure is actually credible, given the trajectory of the console’s sales. It just so happened that this time, even when gamers and news outlets sourced Nintendo themselves, that information turned out to be inaccurate.
Not to belabor the point, but after selling 3.5 million units in 4 days, Nintendo has already set new records for the most successful launch of any video game console. While Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa says they aren’t making enough consoles to meet demand, the rumor going around is that they are ramping up to manufacture and assemble 3 million consoles per month.
If Nintendo hits a new landmark, you can rest assured that they will let us know, and they’ll make sure to release an official English statement for the whole world to know too. This is just one of those cases where we do have to make sure to get that official statement first.
