Indie games are selling phenomenally on the Switch’s eShop—better even than Nintendo’s games.




That Stardew Valley is the current best seller on the Switch eShop shouldn’t surprise anyone. Switch owners have been clamoring for the game since it was announced that it would launch on the platform last year. What is more interesting is that the top ten eShop games are mostly indie titles. Only one of those, Golf Story, is a Switch exclusive. Seven of those games were released on other platforms long before they launched on the Switch. By contrast, the top twenty recent sellers on the Nintendo 3DS is dominated by Pokémon and Mario games.

When I spoke briefly to Brjann Sigurgeirsson, CEO of the SteamWorld Dig 2 development company Image & Form, over email, he said, “The Switch version of SWD2 is doing many, many times better than any of the other platforms.” It’s a sentiment that’s been echoed by other developers. According to publishing director for publisher Curve Digital in an interview with MVC, The Flame in the Flood had, “its best ever day on any console since we’ve been publishing it, beating any other format we have launched on. It’s done just under half of our first full month forecast in a day.” FDG Entertainment, the publisher for Oceanhorn has also said that the game sold more on the Switch than “all other consoles combined.”


I had not anticipated the Switch becoming the cool indie games machine, but in retrospect it’s a no-brainer. Most of these top sellers are sharp games that already had audiences on other platforms, and now you can take them on the bus. I’m looking forward to seeing even more games get a second life on a console I love playing.