While the Nintendo Switch 2 might have seen some early success in several markets, it looks like sales of the console have been starting to drop in Spain. As caught by ResetEra user Smitch, a new episode of the Vandal Radio podcast had the host citing sales data that indicates that the PS5 has once more overtaken the Switch 2 in hardware sales.
While precise sales data hasn’t been revealed, one of the big reason for the Switch 2 already reportedly falling behind the PS5 seems to be the fact that Nintendo’s latest console lacks a strong third-party games library. The title is largely comprised of ports of older titles, like Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition, while only two new first-party games have been released so far: Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza.
“It been a month and a half where the PS5 is selling more than the Switch 2 in terms of consoles,” said a host of the podcast. “I also don’t think Nintendo is super happy with games that aren’t theirs. Third-party games, aside from Cyberpunk, not much else is really performing well.”
When it comes to third-party game sales figures, the podcast host noted that the recently-released Switch 2 port of Star Wars Outlaws only ended up selling 600 units in its first week. Another recent release – Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion – saw only 700 units sold. Comparing major multiplatform releases, Cronos: The New Dawn reportedly sold 2,800 units on the PS5, whereas the Switch 2 version only sold 300 units.
The lack of a strong third-party library for the Nintendo Switch 2 might have to do with reports that Nintendo hasn’t quite been giving out as many development kits as studios would like. According to a report from back in August courtesy of Digital Foundry, many developers that haven’t yet gotten Switch 2 development kits have been told by Nintendo to target the original Switch as the main platform for their games and to rely on the Switch 2’s backwards compatibility.
“Nintendo seems to be almost discouraging Switch 2 development to some degree, where I’ve spoken with plenty of developers where they were either told that their game.. they should just ship it on Switch 1 and rely on backwards compatibility,” said Digital Foundry’s John Linneman. “There’s a lot of developers that are unable to get Switch 2 dev kits. We talked to a lot of devs at Gamescom this year and so many of them said the same things. They want to ship on Switch 2. They would love to do Switch 2 versions. They can’t get the hardware. It’s really difficult right now.”
Co-host Oliver Mackenzie noted that this was a strange strategy by the company, since Nintendo was also ignoring some of the bigger game development studios when it comes to sending over development kits.
“I don’t really understand the strategy because like you said, even now developers are struggling to get systems,” said Mackenzie. “And I know that some months ago when we’re, you know, hearing things through the grapevine and talking to people, there were some weird exclusions with some big developers struggling to get kits for games, from what we’ve heard.”
“And there were some weird inclusions as well, like some indies were included which is nice to see but like there’s that campfire game you know the kind of camera campfire game and they’re getting kits and some big developers on the other hand who developed like AAA stuff aren’t necessarily in the pipeline there for kits.”
