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The story
According to data from gaming information site gamesdata.info, weekly sales figures for the second year after launch show the 3DS at 72,032 units versus the Switch 2 at just 23,059 units — meaning the Switch 2 is now falling behind where the 3DS stood at the same point in its lifecycle. The figures were posted on 5ch’s Hardware/Industry (Geha) board, sparking a mixed discussion: some pointed to the price gap between the 3DS, which launched at 15,000 yen, and the Switch 2, now priced around 60,000 yen after a hike, while others cited data showing that despite struggling domestically, the Switch 2 is up 70% month-on-month in the UK following its own price increase there. Opinions in the thread were split.
Year-Two Sales
3DS Switch 2
Week 01: 72,032 23,059
Source: gamesdata.info / Original article here
What people said
Just pick any random PlayStation, that'll do
Don't underestimate it that much
This is what happens when you jack the price up like a moron
At the same point in its life cycle, the original Switch was actually below the Wii
Third parties had a lot of exclusives back in the 3DS days too, but now it's just downgraded multiplatform ports or leftovers
You still need people buying software after that — if momentum stalls, the whole move was pointless
Remember, the 3DS sold so badly it got an immediate price cut.
Well, the main cause is that Nintendo itself isn't coming up with any way to turn things around
is the ultimate dream machine, able to hold more kinds of games than any console before it, right?
Is there any other console with that much coverage?
Not even close.
Its yearly release count doesn't even reach a tenth of Steam's
Well, I think 20 million is a safe bet.
The original Switch getting close to 40 million was largely thanks to demand from China too.
A Switch 2 confined to the Japanese-language market has no way of reaching that level
Is that because everything else gets treated as already finished?
Well, PlayStation is in such rough shape it's not even worth discussing
But in the UK, where they raised the price in September, didn't September hardware sales actually beat pre-hike August?
In second place was the Nintendo Switch 2, up 70% compared to August and up 17% compared to last September. Overall, Switch 2 sales are up 13% year-to-date.
https://www.thegamebusiness.com/p/how-did-ps5-boxed-games-sell-in-september
If anything, it just proves how deep-rooted the overseas obsession with graphics is — all they did was make it prettier with barely any real new content, and it's still getting that much hype
It's the kind of point that just ends with 'so what?'
Nintendo's only way out is to drop a strong title, but they're holding back way too much.
Honestly, I figured they'd bring out at least something like Smash Bros by year-end 🤔
I don't think they're deliberately holding back, honestly.
They were planning to sell the Switch 2 for a bit over 40,000 yen and timed their flagship software releases backward from that price.
Then it ended up at 60,000 yen, and now there's just no software people feel is worth paying that much extra for (´・ω・`)
Yeah, they got the software lineup strategy wrong.
The plan was probably to flood the market with casual-friendly titles to drive adoption, while fobbing gamers off with remakes and remasters.
But the casual crowd never bit, and hardcore gamers did instead — so the sense of a software drought keeps getting stronger
Aside from Mario Kart, which had that 4,000 yen pricing period, sales across the board are basically dust.
Air Riders stalled at 1 million, Bananza stalled at 750,000.
Z-A grew a bit further from 1.15 million.
Working backward from Pokoa, that's just under 1.5 million domestically.
Next month's earnings report should reveal Air Riders' numbers, but that's probably around 1 million domestic too.
Even more of a problem than that is the complete flop of the mid-tier software lineup.
Zelda Musou (Hyrule Warriors), Tennis, and Yoshi all have disastrous sales.
The gap between Nintendo's own titles keeps widening
It's clearly selling well by any measure, yet people keep saying it's 'not selling' — that's the real obstacle.
With that kind of warped perception, there's no way your predictions are going to be right
Background and Key Points of This Topic
The 3DS struggled badly right after launch, and in a price cut rare for the industry, Nintendo slashed it from 25,000 yen to 15,000 yen just five months after release, in August 2011. The weekly figure of 72,032 units in its second year comes from the period after that price cut had already turned things around. The Switch 2, on the other hand, launched at a price point with no real room for a cut, which makes a simple unit-count comparison a poor way to capture the difference in pricing strategy. In the thread, contrasting data — a domestic slowdown versus growth in the UK following its own price hike — sat side by side, splitting opinion on how to read the ‘slump.’ There were also comments pointing out that software sales outside of Mario Kart have broadly stalled, suggesting the relationship between price and buying appetite needs to be viewed across both hardware and software.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch Hardware/Industry (Geha) board thread “Switch 2’s Historic Slump — Already Being Overtaken by the 3DS.”
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