Japan's Games Market Grows 8% as Switch 2 Tops 6.5 Million at Home
Switch 2 lifted Japan's console market by almost 40% in 2025, Mario Kart World sold 2.7 million boxed copies, and the whole market hit ¥2.59 trillion. Here is what the Famitsu numbers say about the world's third-biggest games market.
In most countries, the arrival of a new console is good news for the games market. In Japan, the arrival of a new Nintendo console is the games market.
The Famitsu Game White Paper 2026, published on August 6, 2026, puts Japan's domestic game content market at ¥2.59 trillion (¥2,588.5 billion) in 2025, up 8.0%. Famitsu credits price rises, steady mobile spending, a growing PC market and, above all, the Nintendo Switch 2, which launched in June 2025 and revived the home console business almost overnight.
The Switch 2 effect, in boxes
Famitsu's separate count of boxed console sales in shops shows just how big that revival was. In the year to December 28, 2025, Japan's physical console market, hardware plus boxed software, reached ¥418.13 billion. That was 138.8% of the previous year's total, growth of almost 39%. Hardware sales rose to 149.3% of 2024's level, and boxed software to 121.0%.
The hardware chart was a Nintendo show. Switch 2 sold 3.784 million units in Japan in its first seven months. The original Switch added another 1.52 million, and PlayStation 5 sold 879,000. These figures leave out digital downloads, DLC and in-game purchases, so the real console market was bigger still.
By the start of November 2026, Famitsu's running total for Switch 2 in Japan had reached 6.52 million. The PS5 family stood at about 7.8 million after six years on sale, and the original Switch family at about 37 million.
The year's top sellers
Famitsu's 2025 top ten is almost entirely Nintendo hardware:
1. Mario Kart World (Switch 2): 2,668,381 2. Pokémon Legends: Z-A (Switch): 1,529,823 3. Pokémon Legends: Z-A - Nintendo Switch 2 Edition: 1,004,154 4. Monster Hunter Wilds (PS5): 838,319 5. Super Mario Party Jamboree (Switch): 498,397 6. Donkey Kong Bananza (Switch 2): 435,206 7. Kirby Air Riders (Switch 2): 424,837
Add the two versions of Pokémon Legends: Z-A together and it sold about 2.53 million boxed copies, almost level with Mario Kart. Monster Hunter Wilds was the only non-Nintendo platform game in the top four, a reminder that Capcom's hunting series is still a national pastime on PlayStation.
2026: Tomodachi Life and pricier consoles
The 2026 charts have kept the same shape. Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, released in April 2026 on Switch, passed 1 million boxed copies in Japan within weeks, overtaking Pokémon Pokopia on Switch 2, which was close behind at about 979,000, as the best-selling new release of the year by mid-May.
Consoles have also got more expensive. Famitsu's white paper estimated the average street price of home console hardware in Japan at ¥51,376 in June 2026, before tax, up 9.5% in a year. Japanese players are paying more for the same boxes, which helps the market's yen totals even when unit sales are flat.
Where PC fits in
Japan is still a console-and-mobile country, but PC is creeping up. Famitsu's white paper lists PC as one of the growth drivers of 2025. The player numbers tell a more complicated story: the white paper series counted 17.49 million PC gamers in Japan in 2015 and 14.52 million in 2024, about 3 million fewer. Fewer people play on PC than a decade ago, but those who do spend more, on more expensive games and hardware.
Why it matters
Japan is the world's third-biggest games market, and it behaves unlike any other. A single console maker sets the pace, boxed games still matter, and PC is only now growing. For publishers everywhere, Switch 2's success in Japan is a signal that the console is not dead; it just needs the right games.
WGC's take: the real story of Japan's 2025 is not that Nintendo won, but that console software sold so well at a time when the rest of the world worries about rising prices. For a wider view of the region, see our global market guide and our coverage of Japan's big publishers' half-year results.
What to watch
- Switch 2's first full holiday season in Japan, and whether it can pass PS5's lifetime total there in 2027.
- Famitsu's 2026 year-end chart, due in January.
- How rising hardware prices affect sales through the year-end shopping season.