The first half of the Switch 2’s first year is in the books. Here’s how we graded it back in December. But now Nintendo’s latest earnings report is here to offer some hard numbers on how the Mario maker’s current next-gen platform shift is going. TL;DR: Incredibly strongly, though it’s still searching for that runaway hit no one can shut up about.
This week the company announced it had sold 7 million Switch 2 consoles during the 2025 holiday period, bringing the lifetime sales up to 17 million for the first six months. Meanwhile the original Switch sold an additional 1.36 million units, with another 750,000 expected to sell through the end of the current fiscal year on March 31, 2026.
The original Switch has now cleared the lifetime total of 154 million set by the DS, officially making it the company’s most popular console ever. At the same time, it now seems unlikely to actually eclipse the PlayStation 2 as the most popular console ever. At 155 current lifetime sales, the OG Switch would need to find another 5 million sales in the couch cushions somewhere to beat the PS2’s 160 million. Here are the other interesting takeaways from Nintendo’s latest earnings:
Digital is king on Switch 2
While digital sales remain increasingly dominant, physical game sales usually tick up during the holiday as people gift each other games. Well, for the Switch 2’s first holiday, digital sales did way better than expected. Nintendo reported a 14.7 percent increase year-over-year. It attributed that “mainly due to an increase in sales of downloadable versions of packaged software and add-on content.” And this excludes people buying the digital version of Mario Kart World via the Switch 2 bundle. The proportion of packaged software that was sold in downloadable versions in holiday 2024 was 56 percent. In 2025 it was 58.7 percent.
Switch 2 is still wildly outperforming the Switch
While Nintendo reports a slower holiday than expected for the console in the U.S., demand in Japan has been exceeding Nintendo’s expectations and the Switch 2 continues to outpace its predecessor by a healthy margin. It’s outsold the original Switch during the six-month launch window by nearly two to one. Of course, the Switch 2 has the benefit of the holiday season being in that launch period, while the original Switch launched in the spring as opposed to the summer. Still, it shows people are hungry for the upgrade.
Annual playing users are actually down though
Weirdly, despite launching a long-awaited, highly anticipated new console in 2025, Nintendo actually ended the year with fewer annual players than it had in 2024. That number, which includes anyone with an account who played a game at some point in the past 12 months, peaked at 130 million in 2024 and ticked back down to 129 million in December. That suggests that while Switch 2 is converting existing players to the new hardware, the push hasn’t necessarily helped expand the platform’s overall footprint.
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond didn’t chart
Despite Metroid Prime 4 launching in December, Nintendo didn’t release any sales data for the game, a very bad sign. That suggests the game hasn’t yet cracked 1 million sales on either Switch 1 or Switch 2, even if it may have cumulative sales across both platforms may have passed that benchmark. On the one hand, that’s not shocking. Metroid has never been a big seller for Nintendo. On the other hand, it suggests that we might not get a new Metroid Prime anytime soon, and that players weren’t rushing to make it their big Switch 2 blockbuster for the holiday. Total software sold is up compared to the Switch 1, but the overall attach rate is lower, likely because Switch 2 owners already have a huge backwards-compatible Switch 1 library to pull from.
The Switch 2 is missing a big new hit
Nintendo has sold 14 million copies of Mario Kart World but that includes the Switch 2 console bundles. Donkey Kong Bananza is doing great for a Switch 2 exclusive at 4.25 million sales but hasn’t yet proven if it can do Super Mario Odyssey numbers. Pokémon Legends: Z-A has sold over 11 million copies, including nearly 4 million on Switch 2. And even Kirby Air Riders broke 1 million sales. That’s about where the Switch 1’s launch lineup was at after its first six months, but that didn’t include Christmas or Mario Odyssey. The Switch 1 finished its first year with multiple first-party games breaking the 5 million sales mark, and so far the Switch 2 doesn’t seem likely to match that without a big surprise announcement or two in the next six months.
