Neither Kirby makes Nintendo Switch sales recover in Japan

Nintendo Switch sales continue to decline as it nears the end of its life cycle. Week after week the Nintendo console has to settle for second places in various parts of the world and last week was no exception, but it shows that even the big franchises of the brand can no longer raise sales of the console as much as to beat PlayStation 5.

Week 8 of 2023 was a very busy week in terms of releases, since the 3 major productions debuted Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe, OCTOPATH TRAVELER II, Like a Dragon: Ishin!, ARK: Survival Evolved (NintendoSwitch), Digimon World: Next Order and Horizon Call of the Mountain.

The first place, however, was easily taken by the new game of Kirbywhich sold 189,031 units only in physical format in Japanese lands, according to Famitsu (via Gematsu).

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Related Video: News Roundup for Week 8 of 2023

Kirby Couldn’t lift Nintendo Switch sales enough

Of course, this is a monumental success of Kirby, but sales were somewhat low if we take into account other installments of the franchise. In fact, the previous title, Kirby and the Forgotten Land (2022) was the main series game that has had the best debut in Japan selling 380,060 in its opening week.

Perhaps the lack of interest from Japanese players is due to the fact that it is a game that originally debuted on Nintendo Wii with some extra elements, such as an unpublished epilogue starring a new playable character.

What was most striking is that the sales of this game boosted the sales of Nintendo Switch in Japan a bit (almost 12,000 units more than the previous week), but it was not enough for the console to return to the first place, rather that PlayStation 5 held it back by selling just under 92,000 units, around 4,000 more consoles than the previous week. The PlayStation 5 family of consoles have been leading the sales chart in Japan for 6 weeks now.

Next we leave you with the list of sales of hardware and software in physical format.

In case you missed it: even Xbox consoles sold more than 2 Nintendo Switch models in Japan.

software sales

• Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe —189,031
• OCTOPATH TRAVELER II (Nintendo Switch) — 53,995
• Like a Dragon: Ishin! (PlayStation 4) — 35,897
• Like a Dragon: Ishin! (PlayStation 5)—31,439
• Pokémon Scarlet & Violet —23,703
• Hogwarts Legacy (PlayStation 5)—21,932
• splatoon 3 —14,858
• OCTOPATH TRAVELER II (PlayStation 5)—14,422
• ARK: Survival Evolved (Nintendo Switch)—13,200
• Mario Kart 8 Deluxe —10,159

hardware sales

• PlayStation 5—77,281
• Nintendo Switch OLED—40,992
• PlayStation 5 Digital Edition — 14,448
• Nintendo Switch—11,226
• Nintendo Switch Lite—9166
• PS4—1646
• Xbox Series X—595
• Xbox Series S—132
• New Nintendo 2DS LL—72

What do you think of the Nintendo Switch situation in Japan? Tell us in the comments.

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Related Video: Did PlayStation Lose To Nintendo In Japan?

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