Nintendohas shared a list of the top 30 best-selling games from the Japanese Nintendo Switch eShop. 2022 has been an especially strong year for Nintendo, with theNintendo Switchnow over five years old and still selling as if it were new. The Nintendo eShop best-seller list is topped by many of the Nintendo Switch exclusives fans would expect, likePokemonandKirby. But outside the top ten, there are a significant number of unexpected games that weren’t even released in 2022.
Sharing official rankings for Nintendo eShop releases each year isn’t a new tradition, of course. Nintendo’s top 30 games from the Japanese eShop for 2021, for example, was topped bythe popularMonster Hunter Rise. It was followed byAmong UsandPokemon Brilliant Diamond. 2020, the start of the pandemic, hadAnimal Crossing: New Horizons. It’s been an eventful five years, but since the Nintendo Switch released it’s been a very successful generation.
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This year’s best-seller list for the Nintendo eShop shows that 2022 was yet another banner year. In somewhat of a surprise, the top-selling eShop game in Japan wasSplatoon 3. The multiplayer shooter managed to overtake theindividualPokemonreleasesof the year. No other game managed that feat, however, with second, third, and fourth place going toPokemon Legends: Arceus,Pokemon Violet, andPokemon Scarlet. Rounding out the top five was last year’s top eShop game,Monster Hunter Rise.
30 Best-Selling Switch eShop Games for Japan in 2022
The rest of the top ten is where the list really starts to get interesting.The popularKirby and the Forgotten Landis the sixth best-selling game of 2022, followed byNintendo Switch Sports. After that is the list’s first game not released in 2022,Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. At ninth isOvercooked 2, another older release. Then in tenth is the massive Switch-exclusive JRPGXenoblade Chronicles 3.
As for the rest of the list, most of the remaining games are yet more older Nintendo Switch releases.Kirby’s Dream Buffet,Among Us,Super Smash Bros. Ultimate,Animal Crossing: New Horizons,The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild,Minecraft,Human: Fall Flat,Clubhouse Games,Mario Party Superstars, andMon-Yuround out the top 20.eBaseball Powerful Pro Baseball 2022,Together! The Battle Cats,Inside,Momotaro Dentetsu,Dragon Quest 10 Offline,Dragon Quest 3,Resident Evil 6,Splatoon 2,Unravel Two, andUndertaleare 21 through 30 on the list.
It just goes to show that Nintendo had a very strong showing in 2022, even if it didn’t have much depth to the platform’s overall releases. Where third parties may not be supporting the Nintendo Switch as much as in previous years, Nintendo’s own releases seem to be making up for it. And where new Nintendo releases fall short, older Nintendo releases fill in. Seeing this list, it’s easy to understand whyNintendohas yet to leap to release aSwitch 2 follow-up console.
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