It occurred to me as I explained the ridiculous concept of Tomodachi Life: Living The Dream to a friend recently, that not everyone knows what it is. It's not the biggest of Nintendo's titles, but it clearly has a lot of fans. And I mean a lot.
Famitsu's weekly sales report of software is here, and Tomodachi Life is at the top, by a big old margin. At the time of reporting, the game had sold a whopping 565,405 physical copies in Japan, in just one week from April 13 to 19. This is the game's debut week, but it's still massively ahead of other titles on the list.
That's not just on Switch, by the way - that's across all platforms. The only non-Switch (or Switch 2) title on the list is Pragmata on PlayStation 5. The Switch 2 version of Pragmata went live only on April 24.
The top ten sellers for the week are:
- Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream - 565,405 (release week)
- Pragmata - 36,470 (release week)
- Pokémon Pokopia - 19,096
- Mario Kart World - 5,130
- Minecraft - 3,550
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons - 3,538
- Doraemon Dorayaki Shop Story - 3,299 (release week)
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons: Nintendo Switch 2 Edition - 3,067
- Nintendo Switch Sports - 2,459
- Pokémon FireRed/LeafGreen - 2,169
These figures include 'packaged software, download cards, and pre-installed versions' according to Famitsu.
Pokopia continues to draw in plenty of new Pokémon-ers, but as it's a Switch 2 exclusive, it doesn't quite have the reach of Tomodachi Life, as that came out for the original Switch, too.
The lifetime physical sales for Pokopia are around 910k, which really puts into perspective how impressive Tomodachi Life's debut week is. It doesn't quite beat Animal Crossing: New Horizons' massive debut in 2020, though.