If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy.

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.

Sign in and unlock a world of features

Get access to commenting, homepage personalisation, newsletters, and more!

In this article

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Nintendo Switch

Related topics
About the Author
Alex Calvin avatar

Alex Calvin

Contributor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist and writer covering the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he launched PC games b2b site PCGamesInsider.biz for Steel Media and has written for the likes of GI.biz, Eurogamer, Kotaku UK, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK. He can be found on Twitter @gamesbizuk.

Comments