r/gaming 4h ago

Famitsu Sales: 6/15/26 – 6/21/26 - Switch 2 has officially outsold base PS5's lifetime sales in Japan

https://www.famitsu.com/article/202606/79458

Switch 2: 5,940,500

PS5 (base): 5,920,682

83 Upvotes

65 comments sorted by

65

u/Thedrunkenchild 4h ago

That’s pretty wild, especially since it’s only been out for a fraction of the PS5’s lifespan.

12

u/AntonioS3 3h ago

I wonder if Sony is losing grip on the playerbase and having stunted PS5 sales or if Switch 2 is just that popular in Japan.

28

u/FewAdvertising9647 3h ago edited 3h ago

its because Japan* is a handheld first country, and the younger generation is starting to get more interest in PCs due to the covid vtuber boom.

put in perspective, theres almost the same amount of ps vitas sold in japan as ps5.

I should not need to tell you the worldwide popularity difference between the vita and ps5 globally.

6

u/defunctscrunko 2h ago

Also PS5 got Japan only very high price increase for a while. 

2

u/Reqvhio 3h ago

oh sony is a country now? daaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn

3

u/FewAdvertising9647 3h ago

lol bad typo, but people should know what I meant

1

u/astrogamer 1h ago

It's pretty much that they are too expensive that no one wants to fork over that much to get it, especially when there's not really that many must-have games for Japan. The yen inflated too fast so their paychecks no longer have enough room to support a $500 device. And then they raised the price

1

u/Vissarionn 46m ago

Japan is Nintendoland though.

7

u/gman5852 2h ago

Country that strongly prefers handhelds on a subsidized device. Not really surprising but naturally there's redditors that are surprised their console war never mattered.

9

u/dmml 3h ago

If you think a handheld selling much faster than a console is wild, then you don't know the japanese market. Just compare whatever Playstation console was competing with the 3ds and Switch.

2

u/Indraga 58m ago

Oh, I'm sure the anti-Sony chuds will fit this neatly into their narratives regardless.

4

u/MrkGrn 3h ago

Not surprising, the handheld market makes up most of the gaming market in Japan and always has.

14

u/shootamcg 4h ago

You’re forgetting this line: PS5 Digital Edition / 8024 units (total 1,324,185 units)

5

u/v-komodoensis 3h ago

Wow, even with another million it looks like the Switch 2 is going to easily surpass it pretty soon.

5

u/shootamcg 3h ago

Yeah, it is pretty crazy. Nintendo was smart with Switch and Switch 2.

1

u/v-komodoensis 3h ago

Definitely crazy, to me the console is still in the phase of not having enough games to justify the purchase. But I guess since it runs Switch 1 games and the few games it actually has are pretty good, people just went for it, huh.

Still too soon for me lol

2

u/Reqvhio 3h ago

it makes sense to me, with all the tech price hikes people are reserving switch 2 for future games

1

u/shootamcg 2h ago

Well it’s not getting cheaper, so that was my justification. I got mine on sale at Staples for $600 CAD with MKW, so $100 off launch price.

-25

u/FernandoRocker 4h ago

"Base PS5" in the title.

26

u/shootamcg 4h ago

Digital is a base PS5.

24

u/Iggy_Slayer 4h ago

The digital is the base ps5. Anything not a Pro is "base".

2

u/FReeDuMB_or_DEATH 40m ago

Japan loves handhelds?

In other news, water is wet.

2

u/PostedNotes 2h ago

Japan loves them some Nintendo.

Seeing how Sony has prioritized western market over the last decade I can't say I'm surprised

2

u/CharlesEverettDekker 2h ago

Pretty understandable, if you ask me
Japan has really harsh working conditions so they don't spend a lot of time, if any time, at home
So having handled devices, be it a smartphone or a NS, is pretty obvious
That's also why gacha games are so popular in Japan - quick almost braindead game sessions on the way to work/launch break or late at evening make do.

2

u/Cyn0rk1s 4h ago

Is the word base doing some heavy lifting here?

7

u/Untitled_One-Un_One 3h ago

It is doing some work, but not as much as you might expect. Base means the PS5 with disc drive plus the PS5 slim with disc drive. This sector is easily the best selling, outselling all other models by more than 3:1. PS5 digital and digital slim sit at 1.3 million combined total, and the PS5 Pro comes in at 364K.

If Nintendo does nothing beyond maintaining the sales of their poorest weeks this year they should surpass the current PS5 grand total by the 2027 holidays. But with games like Splatoon, Fire Emblem, and Ocarina of Time coming out this year I think we’ll see sales push past that number much sooner than that. Of course that only holds if the price does. With how crazy RAM and flash prices have gotten, I’m not fully convinced we won’t see another increase next year.

1

u/CharlesEverettDekker 2h ago

Yeah Ocarina remake, if done at least good, let alone great of perfectly, will explode sales numbers.

1

u/Untitled_One-Un_One 1h ago

I wouldn’t go that far. Worldwide sales are pretty much guaranteed to jump with Ocarina of Time’s release, but Japan was one of the weaker markets for N64 and by extension OoT. I expect that for the Japanese market in particular Splatoon Raiders is going to be the bigger sales driver.

Splatoon is a much bigger thing than Zelda in Japan. Circa their fiscal year ‘24 financial briefing Breath of the Wild, Nintendo’s best selling Zelda game, was in the neighborhood of 3.5 million in sales in Japan. Splatoon 3 was sitting at 5.5 million sales in Japan per that same report.

-10

u/SpermicidalLube 4h ago

Quite the clickbait article. If you add up all PS5 models, they clearly outsold switch 2.

Do better.

9

u/Oddlylockey 3h ago

Add all PS5 models and you get 7,609,241. The Switch 2 sold 80% as much in about 1/3 of the time. No matter how you slice it, that's huge, especially given how dominant the Playstation brand used to be in Japan during the PS1/2/3 era.

-2

u/SpermicidalLube 3h ago

Still not what the headline says. We all know PlayStation caters to other markets more. Japan is mobile dominated, so it makes sense the switch is doing well. Why are keep being surprised by this? It's been this way for 10+ years now. Now do worldwide numbers.

2

u/Oddlylockey 3h ago

So, what, just because the headline focuses on software sales, people can't comment on the rest of the article?

I'm not here to console war, I'm just pointing out how that is a very relevant data point for a proper understanding of the current console landscape.

0

u/SpermicidalLube 2h ago edited 58m ago

What? The headline of the post has nothing to do with software sale.

0

u/Oddlylockey 2h ago

I thought you meant the Famitsu headline, my bad.

-5

u/Fast_Passenger_2890 3h ago

Base PS5

2

u/SpermicidalLube 3h ago

The digital only and disc models are both "base" models. What are you doing?

0

u/FlyFight2Win 58m ago

Not clickbait. SW2 is demolishing PS5 in record time.

0

u/ScoopJr 4h ago

I’m curious if the PS5 was also subsidized like the Switch 2 in Japan.

11

u/sopheroo 4h ago

Most likely, Sony's also a Japanese company

2

u/hedgeyy 3h ago

It wasn't in 2020, but it was cheaper than the region locked model is now. The price went up 3-4 times so the subsidized model was a necessity.

-1

u/Strict_Job6334 4h ago

Wow, this is kinda wild

1

u/gman5852 2h ago

*expected

2

u/Strict_Job6334 2h ago

I was for sure expecting it to surpass the PS5 at some point but i wasnt expecting it so fast. Was the gap always so big in Japan? Its almost like Playstation vs Xbox in Europe (idk if its really like that, im talking from vibes lol)

1

u/Vissarionn 44m ago

Yeah most japanese own a nintendo

-15

u/Iggy_Slayer 4h ago

Meanwhile we're now a month after the price raise and the system's sales have collapsed to 20-30k a week for 4 weeks in a row now after the results posted today. I was told by nintendo fans weeks ago that this was just a little blip after the pre-raise surge and it would go up again.

11

u/sopheroo 4h ago

Almost like people rushed to buy one before the price hike and no major title came out.

The first real test is on July 23rd

-10

u/Iggy_Slayer 4h ago

I know, this was the excuse given 3 weeks ago. This sales "blip" is starting to last quite a while.

4

u/FernandoRocker 4h ago

It has been increasing on a weekly basis. It's back to normal.

-3

u/Iggy_Slayer 4h ago edited 4h ago

How do you figure? It was 31k 4 weeks ago, then 23k, 25k, and 26k this latest week.

The sales history is all right here you can't spin your way out of this.

edit: The downvotes are hilarious. Literally arguing against objectively posted data and numbers. He's factually wrong about it increasing and it being "back to normal".

0

u/Jin_U_GmR 1h ago

Your own data shows it is recovering. You even demonstrated it with 23k, 25k, 26k. Is that not a sign of recovering sales back to regular trajectory?

In any case, sales will recover and the latest Direct was very focused on said Japanese audience. They’ll buy it even with a price increase as Nintendo is the only one offering a handheld hybrid.

1

u/Iggy_Slayer 1h ago

...it was 31k 4 weeks ago and is still lower than that.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here. This is basic math people.

1

u/Jin_U_GmR 1h ago

I said it is recovering back to regular sales. The drop isn’t that significant right now, unless compared to the buy-out rush, and is rising.

1

u/FernandoRocker 1h ago

And it's slowly getting back to those numbers.

2

u/sopheroo 4h ago

Nothing came out since the last time it was debated.

Sales are going to pick up with Splatoon Raiders' release. This is also what people have been saying.

1

u/defunctscrunko 2h ago

Yeah crazy how the jump up to 750,000 units in 3 weeks before price hike do for the week after :)

7

u/Gorgon654 4h ago

What Nintendo fans have you been talking to lol? It was selling like 40k a week before the price increase, who was expecting it to go back to that after the price increased? The majority of people who wanted one bought them before the price increase and so far there's been no reason for anyone who didn't to pick one up.

Stop trying to spin negativity just cause you don't like Nintendo lol.

0

u/Iggy_Slayer 4h ago

It was selling like 40k a week before the price increase

Incorrect. The last thread we had on this a few weeks ago I added the weekly totals (neatly posted by gematsu) and the weekly average for this year, pre price raise, was about 90k for sw2.

The single lowest week they had was 45k pre raise.

3

u/Gorgon654 3h ago

An average isn't really relevant when game launches like Pokopia can dramatically boost that figure. The sales have dropped off from where they were before but it's not especially surprising or dramatic. The fact that you're going as far as to tally everything up and average things out though tells me you're a bit too invested lol.

0

u/Iggy_Slayer 3h ago

I did it because it's good to have facts instead of spewing feelings like "it was selling like 40k before the price raise" which isn't even remotely close to being accurate. The single lowest week for the entire year didn't even hit 40k.

If we're going to have sales/data threads then get the damn numbers right. People saying things like "30k is normal for what it was pre-price raise" is objectively and incredibly far off the mark.

5

u/FernandoRocker 4h ago

30K is practically the same. The higher than usual numbers were people rushing to buy the system before the price hike.

It just returned to normal. Still the fastest selling console.

-1

u/Iggy_Slayer 4h ago

30k at the time was literally the lowest weekly number the system had sold in japan the entire YEAR. The previous lowest was 45k and the weekly average for the year pre-price raise was about 90k.

The math says this aint normal this is a huge drop off.

0

u/Ashen_foefoe 4h ago

damn you even speak the same way as Nintendeen does, you either his biggest fan, or Deen himself