After 19 long years, a brand new side-scrolling Metroid title has arrived. Metroid Dread is finally here, and after a very anticipated release, the game has been nearly universally praised by reviewers and gamers alike. While we’re still waiting for all of the sales numbers to come in from Nintendo, Japanese publication Famitsu has already revealed some astounding statistics for the game’s native country. According to the publication, Metroid Dread has sold roughly 86,978 physical copies in Japan, which was noted by game aficionado Nibel who states that because of these new numbers Metroid Dread has officially broken the franchise physical sales record in Japan.
Considering that the game has only been out for less than seven days, this is an unbelievable feat. Nibel brings these numbers from the Game Data Library, which keeps an assortment of all types of statistics for numerous titles and franchises. There it’s noted, as well as the tweet above, that the game with the highest amount of physical Metroid games sold in Japan was Metroid Fusion which came out all the way back in 2003 for the Game Boy Advance. That title held the top stop with 49,680 units sold, and this was also long before the advent of digital games.
That means that Metroid Dread not only demolished these numbers in under a week of being out, but they were also able to jump tremendously with the preferability of digital titles in the current video game market. It’s important to remember that this is only for the game’s native Japan, as we still don’t have any physical sales information for the North American region, which will more than likely be closer to the digital number than we expected.
Either way you attempt to extrapolate this, this is an extremely good sign for things to come. Once we take in the overall digital sales, those numbers are going to go up exponentially. This may also lead to Nintendo opening the door for more potential Metroid titles to be developed.