Nintendo Switch 2's 3.5 million opening weekend sales smashes brand's console record — beats Switch 1's opening month by almost a million in four days

Nintendo has announced that the company's new Nintendo Switch 2 has soundly beaten its console sales record, selling 3.5 million units worldwide in just four days since its release on June 5, the company announced on Wednesday. By way of comparison, that's 760,000 more units than the original Switch sold in its first month, March 2017.

"This is the highest global sales level for any Nintendo hardware within the first four days," the company announced. It means the company is more than one-fifth of the way towards its stated goal of selling 15 million units by the end of its next financial year, March 2026.

Despite a few horror stories, the launch generally seems to have gone smoothly. GameStop customers at a store in New York were horrified to find the staples used to attach receipts to the front of the console's box had actually punctured the screen, with all of the affected customers given replacements.

Across the pond, UK customers at a multitude of retailers noted their units arrived unsealed, with the tape used to secure the box closed appearing to have been broken, possibly due to a flaw in the tape which was too weak for purpose.

At the cost of some battery life, the Switch 2 boasts several improvements over its predecessor, with new Joy-Con 2 controllers featuring optical sensors that mean you can use the controllers like a mouse for aiming and scrolling. The screen is a larger 7.9-inch offering with 1080p and a 120Hz refresh rate.

Under the hood, official Nintendo Switch 2 specs reveal eight ARM Cortex A78C cores featuring the ARMv8 64-bit instruction set, and a custom Nvidia Ampere GPU. The console also features 12GB of LPDDR5X memory and 256GB of internal storage, upgradeable to up to 2TB thanks to its microSD Express card slot.

Turns out that slot also paves the way for a novel DIY hack, support for M2 NVMe SSDs, at least theoretically speaking.

Despite the early success, if you were wondering where to buy the Nintendo Switch 2, it remains in stock at a couple of retailers, notably GameStop and Best Buy, as well as plenty of retailers in the UK.

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