Here is the best selling software and hardware in Japan, for the week of January 2nd – January 8th, 2023 courtesy Famitsu.

Software:

1) Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet (NS) – 135,627
2) Splatoon 3 (NS) – 56,579
3) Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (NS) – 37,302
4) Nintendo Switch Sports (NS) – 35,673
5) Minecraft (NS) – 21,556
6) Dragon Quest Treasures (NS) – 20,735
7) Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (NS) – 16,604
8) Momotaro Dentetsu: Showa, Heisei, Reiwa mo Teiban! (NS) – 14,614
9) Mario Party Superstars (NS) – 14,591
10) Gran Turismo 7 (PS5) – 13,929

Hardware:

1) Nintendo Switch – 125,359
2) PlayStation 5 – 42,578
3) PlayStation 4 – 2,064
4) Xbox Series – 870
5) Nintendo 3DS – 209

Kicking things off in 2023, we pretty much get a reflection of how most of 2022 went, and that’s with Nintendo dominating the software and hardware charts. Nothing should move Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet until Fire Emblem Engage releases on January 20th and hardware-wise, this year will be an interesting one to see if Nintendo Switch can clear 4 million in Japan. If it manages to do so, we’ll be looking at 32 million + consoles in the country, by January 1st, 2024. Keeping in mind that the Nintendo DS managed to sell 32.9 million in Japan and you can call it a safe bet that sometime in the summer of 2025, Nintendo Switch will be the best selling platform of all time in Japan and possibly, world wide.

Now then…a few weeks ago I mentioned that I would provide an attemptedly more accurate total for how Nintendo Switch consoles sold in Japan in the actual calendar year of 2022, right? So here you go!

4,804,546 sold in Famitsu’s 2022 + 107,451 (which is 6/7 of the 125,359 sold between Monday, December 26th, 2022 and Sunday, January 1st, 2023) = 4,911,997. That amount minus 139,947 (which is 5/7 of the 195,926 sold between Monday, December 27th, 2021 and Sunday, January 2nd, 2022) equals 4,772,050. There is only 32,496 difference between what Famitsu reported and my extraction, plus even though it’s mathematically sound, it’s not necessarily more accurate, as it’s hard to narrow precisely when in the week more systems were sold…though since it’s typically the weekend, the above calculations are actually too conservative as weekend numbers get unfairly averaged in.

In a nutshell…Nintendo Switch sold 4.8 million in 2022 and I expect 4 million in 2023. Happy New Year! See you next week.

Source: Famitsu