I'm sorry if I misspoke there but I at least accordign to the last World Wide chart (for Feburary) it had PS5 slightly ahead and I do expect PS5 to be ahead in March do to whatever the hell they pulled at the end of the month.    If the chart was edited sincle last I saw it I could have misstated where we actually are.  

I think thouse two game you mentioned are gonna keep charting especially in Japan, but I do not expect them to 'shift the needle' as they say. 

I find it quite odd that the PS5 is ranked that high on Amazon.  Can't believe its in the top 100 at all.   Thats just crazy to me.   That being said, we expect the PS5 to get a price cut for the holiday season again and for most of its sales to come in the last 3 months of the calandar year.  We also expect the Switch to pass PS5 up until November only to be blow out in the last two months.  We expect Switch 2 to put up a good fight in December as always, but the pressure vaccumn Sony is going to create by jacking the price up now and they the GTA 6 marketing campaign that gonna kick off within a month is going to do two things.  The first thing is its gonna keep the PS5 from falling off the cliff is should be falling off of.... and the second thing is its there next holiday promotion, coming the week of GTA 6, is gonna be something serious and the Switch 2 is not likely to survive it. 

I am referring to this two charts:

https://www.vgchartz.com/tools/hw_date.php?reg=Global&ending=Yearly

https://www.vgchartz.com/tools/hw_date.php?reg=Global&ending=Monthly

But I realize that March data may still be incomplete and made mostly of Japan, which puts Switch at an advantage. OK, so let me analyze the data in more detail. The Monthly global chart I posted in the second link puts Switch ahead of PS5 in January by about 5K units (765,795 vs. 760,325), while PS5 won February by about 30K (840,179 for PS5 vs. 811,435 for Switch 2). If we look at only Japan, which seems to have complete data for March:

https://www.vgchartz.com/tools/hw_date.php?reg=Japan&ending=Monthly

Switch 2 nearly doubled it's sales over February, with 448,494 (vs. 283,640 in February). PS5 also increased sales from 48,202 to 76,989. But that still means that in absolute numbers Switch 2 grew by 165K units and PS5 by 29K. That means that even with Japan alone Switch 2 wins 130K units even if we assume the other regions behave the same as in February. That is more than enough to overtake the lead of PS5 of about 25K units so far for the year.

But you assume the other regions will not be impacted by the games. This makes no sense at all. The original Tomodachi Life sold more in Europe than in Japan and even though the US was weaker, it still sold considerably there:

https://www.vgchartz.com/game/81026/tomodachi-life/sales

The March data obviously doesn't even include the Tomodachi effect, this will only come via April, so we will see a boost in April as well.

Pokopia is a bit more complicated, as it is a new series. But, it is made of gameplay elements taken from Dragon Quest Builders/Minecraft and Animal Crossing. This all is combined with the Pokemon IP. We know that the Pokemon IP has worldwide appeal, this alone draws in people. We also know that the gameplay loops borrowed from the aforementioned games are incredibly popular. There is a reason why so many game tubers used the tagline "I was wrong about Pokopia" in their video titles:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=i+was+wrong+about+pokopia

They all wanted to discard Pokopia, but couldn't after playing. Pokopia sold 2.2 million in it's first four days ( https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2026/03/pokemon-pokopia-sales-surpass-2-2-million-units-globally-in-first-four-days ), Japan accounted for a fourth (550K) of these numbers: https://www.vgchartz.com/article/467268/pokemon-pokopia-tops-the-japanese-charts-switch-2-sells-128k/

So no, Pokopia and Tomodachi both are not just japanese phenomenons. More importantly: they both aren't primarily targeted at enthusiastic gamers (which is the reason why you and these game youtubers disregarded it at first), but a more general audience. Which means these games will be far less front loaded than the games for gamers, as we generally tend to buy games on release (I did with Pokopia, which I was excited for as I loved Dragon Quest Builders, even though I haven't touched Pokemon in a while). I assume both games will stick to the TOP 10 throughout the year, only temporarily shifted out on multiple popular new releases and keep selling themself and new Switch 2.

I think it’s extremely unlikely PS5 leads in March.

You can see from the hardware charts that Vgchartz has Japan+ Rest of World (not including NA or Europe at S2- 548,370 and PS5 at 290,043. Or a gap of 258k. In February, NA and Europe only had a lead of 143k for PS5.

Retailer data heavily suggests that Switch 2 is outright going to sell more in NA. Which would mean PS5 needs to sell 260k+ more in Europe. Which seems heavily unlike when you are seeing near 150% increases in countries like the UK.

I think the reality is that PS5 is going to be pretty handily outsold by Switch 2 in March and especially in April

Installbase tracks console sales from most big US retailer every month, Switch 2 won both at Walmart and Amazon during March, while PS5 won Walmart easily in January and February. That is clear evidence that Pokopia led to more sales for Switch 2 not just in Japan but in the US as well.

And Chris Dring also confirmed that Switch 2 sales increased in the UK in March due to Pokopia.

So at this point, its pure cope to think only sales in Japan saw a boost from Pokopia.

And as a bonus; Switch 2 sales are leading in April as of yet on Walmart/Amazon as well in the US. And all this is happening when Switch 2 has a pretty much blank slate with nothing dated beyond Yoshi next month, Switch 2 is already leading with pretty much no games announced for it at the moment.

All good and interesting points.   I still think the relationship between sales of these games and NS2 sales may be reversed.  This is to say, that while there is clearly evidence for a modest boost following Pokopia in particular, I believe that sales of these games will be more closely tied to sales of hardware and not the other way around.  They can become evergreens in other words.  

Interesting.  Walmart and Amazon are huge retailers in the states.  How close was Nintendo and Sony at Walmart in March and do they also track GameStop? If they have Switch winning GameStop then its a lock.  

The Circana numbers are out, Switch 2 is now the best selling console YTD in the US, Installbase estimates put Switch 2 sales in the US during March close to 600k. So just from Japan and the US, Switch 2 sold over 1M during March.

According to VGC it had 224K in the US and 228K in Japan during February. So that means double the sales in these two countries. Also these numbers mean the Pokopia boost was even stronger in the US than in Japan. Not a Japan only phenomenon at all. Switch 2 will probably pull ahead of PS5 about 1M in March alone, if we account for the whole world. And in April Tomodachi Life adds to that and all indications show Pokopia is an evergreen title. So we might keep seeing strong sales throughout the year.

March seems to be even more Switch 2 dominant than I anticipated. Vgchartz looks to me to have it up about 710k over PS5 for March. Which gives Switch 2 about a 685k lead for the year. A lead which I don’t see any real indication won’t continue to rise essentially every month through October given how the PS5’s baseline sales seems to really be slipping since the price increase (Maybe September could be interesting with Wolverine)

So to me, the only real questions left for this thread are whether Switch 2 receives a price increase this year, what is Nintendo’s second half lineup, and can Switch 2 build a large enough firewall before November to win the year despite GTA6.

The path for PS5 to carry the year looks pretty narrow if Switch 2 holds at $450 and has anything resembling compelling software during the holiday season.