Elden Ring Tarnished Edition's Switch 2 Launch Shakes Up Japan Charts
Japan’s physical retail chart is a snapshot of a market that is not ready to leave its old Switch behind. Nintendo platforms own 25 of the top 30 spots in Famitsu’s latest weekly data, and the top slot still belongs to original Switch software: Rhythm Heaven Groove adds another 34,688 copies to reach 945,929, while Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream passes 1.58 million in Japanese retail totals. Underneath those evergreen sales, the first-week releases tell a different story. Elden Ring Tarnished Edition, Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2, Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster, and Brigandine Abyss all launched on Switch 2 in the same retail window, and Elden Ring’s 27,604 physical copies lifted it to No.2.
Elden Ring’s 27,604 Debut Is a Demand Signal, Not a Performance Review
Famitsu counts boxed retail copies, so the 27,604 for Elden Ring Tarnished Edition on Switch 2 is a floor, not the full picture. It is still enough to make FromSoftware’s action-RPG the No.2 seller of the week and the biggest first-week launch in the chart, above Metal Gear Solid’s largest single format and above Captain Tsubasa’s Nintendo debut. Given that Switch 2’s first-party lineup has been the headline draw in Japan, this is early evidence that the audience for demanding third-party RPGs is there on the new hardware — the same demand that has already shown up in Elden Ring beating Metal Gear Solid on the Switch 2 eShop. What the chart does not do is verify how Elden Ring runs in portable mode. No frame-rate data or battery-life estimate appears in this sales snapshot, and this article will not invent one. The retail result only proves appetite. For a game as physically and intellectually heavy as Elden Ring, that appetite matters for the larger portability story: players are ready to carry bigger games around.
Metal Gear Solid’s Three-SKU Split Exposes Japan’s Portable Bias
Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2 appears three separate times in the same Top 30: No.3 on PS5 with 12,691, No.6 on Switch 2 with 8,624, and No.8 on the original Switch with 5,590. Add the two Nintendo versions and the family total is 14,214, more than PS5 managed on its own. Brigandine Abyss repeats the pattern with 3,271 on Switch 2 against 2,341 on PS5, and Captain Tsubasa 2 shifts even further toward Nintendo: 4,384 on Switch and 2,502 on PS5. That pattern matters for a Japanese market where console gaming and portable gaming have blurred into one habit. When a new Metal Gear collection is available on every major machine, Japanese players are voting with their carts for a system they can slide into a bag. Publishers that used to treat a Nintendo version as the afterthought are now seeing it lead the physical release week.
The Old Switch’s Evergreen Tail Keeps the New Console Honest
Right below these debuts, the legacy Switch catalog continues to behave like the market’s foundation. Splatoon 3 adds 2,072 and crosses 4.57 million; Super Smash Bros. Ultimate reaches 5,945,847; Animal Crossing: New Horizons sits at 8,469,366; Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has sold 6,601,568. Those are enormous Japanese retail numbers for software that is not new. They explain why Metal Gear Solid, Captain Tsubasa, and Super Bomberman are still getting original Switch SKUs in the same week they hit Switch 2. Backward compatibility does not automatically move those owners forward. The original Switch library is cheap, familiar, and mostly quite comfortable to play in short bursts. Japanese chart action shows that new hardware and old hardware will coexist for a while. For handheld-first players, the result is a rare period of choice: Elden Ring on Switch 2 for the big modern experience, or ten years of Nintendo’s catalog on the machine that still owns the weekly Top 30.