87% of 2020 Japan console sales were Nintendo Switch

Animal Crossing: New Horizons was the best-selling game in the region, too.

Nintendo Switch was by far the most popular console in Japan last year.

That's according to data from local games mag Famitsu - via GamesIndustry.biz - which reports that 87% of consoles sold in the country during 2020 were Switches. The regular version of Nintendo's hardware shifted 3.9 million units, while just over two million copies of the more recently-released Lite edition were sold. Overall, Switch sales increased by 30% year-on-year.

In total, 6.85 million consoles were bought in Japan during 2020. Second place went to PlayStation 4, which shifted 543,000 units. The PlayStation 5, meanwhile, sold 225k copies.

Overall, Japan spent $3.5bn on video games last year, an increase of 12.5% on 2019. Console sales drove this growth with a 16.4% rise in sales, bringing in $1.8bn. Boxed games, meanwhile, brought in $1.75bn during 2020, a 9% increase.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the best-selling physical game of the year in Japan was Nintendo's own Animal Crossing: New Horizons which sold 6,378,103 copies in 2020. That's more than four times the number of units shifted by the second best-selling game, Ring Fit Adventure, which sold 1,591,366 copies.

Konami's Momotaro Dentetsu: Showa Heisei Reiwa mo Teiban! took third place with 1,233,023 copies sold, ahead of Final Fantasy 7: Remake and Pokemon Sword/Shield, which sold 949,379 and 892,456 units respectively.

Between its launch in March 2017 and September 2020, Nintendo Switch sold 68.3 million units, while Animal Crossing: New Horizons has sold more than 14.27 million copies since its launch in March of last year.