Metroid Dread, the awaited continuation of the mainline saga that was released on Switch, has received such a fantastic fanfare that it has become one of the best-selling games in the entire series. Well, "one of" is slightly off as it really is "the" best-selling game in the series. This was found out during Nintendo's recent earnings call.
We've reported on the success of Metroid Dread before. However, it seems like this game has become quite the popular launch among fans. According to Nintendo Life, Nintendo's end-of-year financial results have confirmed that MercurySteam's 2D entry is now the best-selling Metroid game ever.
According to its life-to-date sales data, the game has sold 2.9 million units. This marks a lead of ~60,000 copies ahead of the previous holder of the best-seller title: Metroid Prime. While before, it was widely known that the game sold many units in the UK, it's now been confirmed that it had made the top of the list worldwide.
To break down the numbers, in North America, Metroid Dread sold over 854,000 units in its first month, and in Japan, it sold 86,798 retail units in just two days before selling roughly 270,000 in the first week alone. Another 2.63 million sales came from other regions across the world. Dread, of course, will continue to grow this number in the near future.
Metroid Dread is a game that was released back in October 2021. When we reviewed the game, we gave it a score of 8.8/10, citing it as proof that the Metroid franchise is still ready to innovate the genre it helped build with exciting new ideas. The game has been constantly updated after launch, with some updates bringing new difficulty modes and 3 different Boss Rush modes.
In other news, Nintendo has recently confirmed that Bayonetta 3 is still scheduled to release in 2022. While no further news regarding the game's development has been heard, it still seems to be on point for release. Additionally, despite its chip shortage woes, the Nintendo Switch has managed to sell a total of 107.65 million consoles to date.