- Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa has told shareholders that Western hardware sales for the Nintendo Switch 2 were “slightly weaker than our expectations”
- Furukawa says sales in Japan “exceeded our expectations” by the end of 2025
- He adds that Pokémon Legends: ZA Nintendo Switch 2 Edition and Kirby Air Riders contributed to sales in Japan due to their popularity
Nintendo has informed investors that Western hardware sales for the Nintendo Switch 2 were not as strong as they expected by the end of 2025.
“While our forecast 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,” Furukawa said (via IGN and machine translation).
“In addition, as you understand, domestic hardware sales volume exceeded our expectations, while overseas sales were slightly weaker than our expectations.”
According to Furukawa, a major contributor to stronger domestic sales was the launch of the Pokémon Legends: ZA Nintendo Switch 2 Edition and Kirby Air Riderswhich are hugely popular franchises in Japan.
“We believe that the reason for the stronger than expected hardware sales in Japan is that amid the continued momentum of the initial launch of the Switch 2 hardware, new titles such as Pokémon Legends: ZA Nintendo Switch 2 Edition and Kirby Air Ridersreleased during the Christmas shopping season, [leading] to a relatively high tendency for existing Switch owners to switch to Switch 2 compared to overseas,” the president explained.
It seems that while Pokémon and Kirby Air Riders in Japan contributed heavily to positive sales due to their popularity in Japan, the same could not be said for their influence in the West.
The Game Business reported last month that an unnamed senior Nintendo source blamed the “complicated” economic climate and the “absence of a major Western game” at the end of the year for lagging sales in the US and Europe.
This is despite the launch of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond in December 2025, which, while popular with dedicated fans, is not a Nintendo hit like its other franchises.
Another report indicated that performance lagged in the West, with US Switch 2 sales during the holiday period down 35% compared to what the original Switch achieved, and 16% lower than what the Switch managed to achieve in the last eight weeks of 2017.
In its first year, Switch 2 sales in the UK were 6% higher than what the original Switch managed in its first year, which TGB notes “was also on sale for an extra 14 weeks”, but sales in France suffered the most, falling “over 30%” from the Switch 1 in its first year.
In other news, we have a new Nintendo Direct to look forward to today, which has the potential to showcase some of the biggest upcoming games of 2026.
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