Madison Foote January 8th, 2020 - 9:55 PM
Nintendo saw huge success in Japan last year with the Switch—even more success than 2018 or the console’s launch year, 2017. According to Famitsu data uploaded to Twitter by French user Oscar Lemaire and translated by DualShockers, Switch sales made up 76% of console sales last year in Japan. Adding in the 3% of sales attributed to the Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo dominated nearly 80% of the console market in Japan, making it the best year for Nintendo in terms of console sales since 1999.
Depuis qu’on a les chiffres de Famitsu, donc au moins depuis 20 ans, c’est la plus forte domination de Nintendo sur le marché console au Japon. pic.twitter.com/lgiMqlgwuK
— Oscar Lemaire (@oscarlemaire) January 8, 2020
With the Switch nearing the 42 million worldwide sales mark—boosted by the 1.95 million Switch Lite sales in its first 10 days of release—Nintendo is at a high point. 2019 Switch sales—which total in 4,493,903 units sold—in Japan are up 29% from 2018, while other companies fell far behind their previous numbers.
Sony’s PlayStation 4 came in second to the Switch with 1.2 million units sold last year, but this number is down 29% from the PS4’s previous year. This allowed the PS4 to take up a fifth of Japan’s console market, while the other systems fell far below it. The PlayStation Vita only sold 37,668 units, dropping a sharp 79% from its previous year and making up only 0.6% of the market. Microsoft’s Xbox One saw the lowest sales number last year, dropping 46% from its previous year to only sell 8,315 units in Japan, which only made up 0.1% of the market.
The 3DS performed worse than the PS4, with only 191,173 units sold, which was 66% less than its previous year. Occupying 3% of the market with this figure only added to Nintendo’s already high percentage of the market, allowing the company to see an overall 16% increase in sales.
The Nintendo Switch may continue to dominate the Japanese market this year as the other systems on this list come to the ends of their lifecycles, but only time will tell if Nintendo can maintain this success.
