Since the release of Donkey Kong Bananza last week, the game has proven to be incredibly successful for Nintendo. According to Christopher Dring of The Game Business, the title’s release in the UK has been one of the biggest for the Donkey Kong franchise so far. In a social media post, Dring wrote that the game debuted at the number 1 spot in physical sales charts, clocking in at selling three times more than Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze.
Dring does, however, also note that, despite the incredibly successful start, Donkey Kong Bananza still doesn’t compare as well to Super Mario Odyssey, which had sold more than twice as many copies in its launch week.
“Donkey Kong Bonanza [sic] launches at No.1 in the UK chart (physical sales),” wrote Dring on social media platform X. “Its launch is 3x bigger than the launch of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze on Switch. But it is less than half of Super Mario Odyssey’s.”
It is worth noting that quite a few things have changed in the modern market when compared to 2017 when Super Mario Odyssey came out. For instance, more and more people have opted to go with digital copies for their games rather than getting physical releases. The timing of the launch has also likely had a hand in the lower launch-week sales of Donkey Kong Bananza when compared to Super Mario Odyssey, since the latter was released in time for a holiday season.
Despite this, however, it would be difficult for Nintendo to see these physical sales figures as anything but a success, especially for a franchise that has traditionally struggled to compete with bigger Nintendo franchises like Mario and Zelda.
Donkey Kong Bananza is a new 3D platformer that places quite a bit of emphasis on environmental destruction. Players take on the role of the eponymous Donkey Kong and explore the depths of Ingot Isle. He is joined by Pauline, who is able to use her singing capabilities to give Donkey Kong new Bananza Powers, which in turn can make him stronger by giving him the ability to transform.
Interestingly, a report that came out around the time of the game’s release indicated that Donkey Kong Bananza uses older AMD FSR technology for its upscaling and anti-aliasing rather than newer technology available through the Nintendo Switch 2 hardware, like Nvidia’s DLSS.
“They’re leveraging technology that has been with us for years at this point rather than taking advantage of what the hardware can do,” notes John Linneman of Digital Foundry in his video analysis. “I’m mainly talking about image quality here. The Switch 2 supports technologies such as DLSS, and we’ve seen them in numerous games. But Nintendo does not take advantage of it at all. Instead we simply have this combination of AMD’s FSR 1 with SMAA—a post-process anti-aliasing.”
Donkey Kong Bananza is available exclusively on the Nintendo Switch 2. For more details, check out what critics have been saying about the title here. You can also check out our review.
