Star Fox Scores 81 as Nintendo Withholds a Sales Figure

Star Fox launched on Switch 2 on June 25, 2026 as a $49.99 remake of Star Fox 64. Nintendo still has not published a global sales figure for it.

Critics have. Metacritic lists an 81, generally favorable. OpenCritic’s top critic average is 82, with 88% of critics recommending the game. The campaign underneath those scores is the 1997 Lylat Wars route map, rebuilt by Velan Studios and sold as a cinematic take on the Star Fox 64 story.

Nintendo Will Not Put a Number on Star Fox

On August 6, Nintendo filed results for the three months ended June 30, 2026. Star Fox had been on sale for six days of that quarter. The filing named the game once, then moved on.

Looking at Nintendo Switch 2 software, titles such as Yoshi and the Mysterious Book released in May, and Star Fox released in June, performed steadily, and Pokémon Pokopia released in the previous fiscal year also sold well, with the result that Nintendo Switch 2 software sales totaled 9.46 million units.

Nintendo Co., Ltd., consolidated results for the three months ended June 30, 2026

Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, out in April on the original Switch, got a number: 7.94 million. Pokémon Pokopia was called a strong seller. Star Fox performed steadily in the first quarter, and that was the whole unit story from Kyoto.

The same filing put Switch 2 hardware at 3.82 million units for the quarter and 23.68 million lifetime. Digital sales for dedicated platforms rose 90.0% to 132.7 billion yen. IP-related income rose 107.4% to 34.8 billion yen, which Nintendo tied to audience engagement with The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, the film that put Fox McCloud on a cinema screen with Glen Powell’s voice before the remake shipped.

None of those lines includes a Star Fox sell-through total. The commercial bet Nintendo placed in May is still on the company’s books, not in a million-seller table.

Why Star Fox 64 Keeps Coming Back

The series has a habit. When Nintendo needs Star Fox to show up, it reaches for 1997. Star Fox 64 was the reboot that taught a generation the barrel roll. The 3DS version in 2011 was a stereoscopic remake of the same campaign. The Switch 2 game, revealed in the May reveal of the Switch 2 remake, is the third time that campaign has been sold as a full-price cartridge or download.

Original follow-ups kept landing softer. Rare’s Star Fox Adventures on GameCube sold 1.82 million. Namco’s Star Fox: Assault sold about 899,000. Q-Games’ Star Fox Command on DS sold about 457,000. PlatinumGames’ Star Fox Zero, the last original home entry, arrived in April 2016 on Wii U, scored 69 on Metacritic, and sold about 440,000 copies. Nintendo then left the series alone for a decade.

THE GAMES NINTENDO KEEPS MEASURING AGAINST 64

Shigeru Miyamoto and Yoshiaki Koizumi presented the May 6 Direct. Stage layouts stay with the N64 map. Corneria, the ice of Fichina, the heat of Solar, polluted Zoness, the Meteo asteroid field, and Sector Y are the same tour, now with new briefings, a James McCloud prologue, and faces redesigned to look more like animals than the old plastic mascots.

Velan Studios Rebuilt the Campaign at 60fps

The developer is not an internal Nintendo team. Velan Studios in Troy, New York, the studio behind Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit and Knockout City, took the job and ran it on VIPER, the in-house engine behind Knockout City. The studio confirmed the credit on June 9, 2026.

Star Fox on Nintendo Switch 2 is developed in VIPER, our in-house game engine at Velan. It allowed us to bring Fox and his crew back in higher fidelity than ever before, with gameplay running at 60fps and all cinematics rendered in real-time.

Velan Studios, June 9, 2026

Star Fox™ on Nintendo Switch 2 is developed in VIPER, our in-house game engine at Velan. It allowed us to bring Fox and his crew back in higher fidelity than ever before, with gameplay running at 60fps and all cinematics rendered in real-time. pic.twitter.com/pXad1RkeeB

— Velan Studios (@velanstudios) June 9, 2026

That 60 frames-per-second target is new for an official Star Fox 64. The N64 original and the 3DS remake both sat at 30. Cutscenes now run in the same engine as the dogfights, so the drop from briefing to barrel roll is a camera move rather than a video file. Nintendo’s store page still sells the old verbs: boost, lock-on lasers, bombs, first-person cockpit view, and mouse aiming on Joy-Con 2. A second player can ride gunner on the other Joy-Con. The Switch N64 controller is supported if you want the 1997 grip back.

Difficulty is the quiet quality-of-life change. Normal is the default. Easy gives a sturdier hull and a stronger laser. Expert unlocks after you earn the medals. Challenge Mode restages cleared missions with extra tasks and Holoviewer logs. A free demo, live since early June, hands over the tutorial and the Meteo stage and carries saves into the full game.

The other Switch 2 extras sit at the edge of the campaign. GameShare and GameChat can put a USB camera on your face and map Fox-like filters over it. Amiibo figures for Fox, Falco, and Wolf unlock Battle Banner cosmetics. Online Battle Mode launched as four-on-four on Corneria, Sector Y, and Fichina, which is a smaller map list than the single-player tour, and reviewers kept saying so.

81 on Metacritic, With One Recurring Complaint

By September 11, 2026, Metacritic’s Switch 2 page showed an 81 Metascore from 132 critic reviews, with 105 tagged positive (82%), 22 mixed (17%), and 1 negative (1%). That 81 matches Star Fox 64 3D and sits seven points under Star Fox 64’s 88. It is a long way above Zero’s 69.

THE REVIEW SPLIT IN PLAIN FIGURES

• Metascore: 81, generally favorable, 132 critic reviews on Switch 2.
• OpenCritic: 82 top critic average, 88% of critics recommend the game.
• Named scores: IGN 8/10, Kyle Hilliard 8.25, Jim Norman 9/10, GameSpot 7/10, one 45.
• The complaint: the route, bosses, and structure are still Star Fox 64.

Jim Norman, who scored it 9/10, wrote the line other reviews kept circling. “Star Fox on Switch 2 is a sublime remaster of Star Fox 64, and that’s both its best and worst feature.” Kyle Hilliard, executive editor, called it “a joyful, updated reminder of why the 1997 game is, in fact, very good and fun,” then said the series is “long overdue for something, frankly, anything, new.” The lone 45 argued the remake was too faithful, with a short runtime and old AI, and used that to worry about The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time later in 2026.

The new script is the piece players actually fight over. A widely shared comparison of the N64 “We’re Star Fox!” bark against the remake’s smoother reading turned into an argument about tone: the old lines were camp mercenaries, the new ones sound like a Saturday-morning movie. The 64 path through Andross does not provoke that argument, because everyone who has been here before already knows the turns. The cinematic take is doing the work Nintendo hired it to do, and that is also the part some long-time pilots want a toggle for.

John Rairdin, reviewing at launch, called it the most visually impressive first-party Switch 2 exclusive he had played to that point and praised the real-time character work. He also said multiplayer did not have enough meat for a long stay. That last point is the one Nintendo is now patching.

Japan Opened at 41,680 Physical Copies

Famitsu’s physical chart for June 22 to June 28, 2026 put Star Fox at number one in Japan with 41,680 retail copies in its opening week. That tally is boxes and download cards, not the eShop. Digital is the channel Nintendo has been pushing, and the company has not broken it out.

Physical copies were listed at $59.99 / 6,480 yen at announcement, against $49.99 / 5,480 yen on the eShop. The digital price is the one the store still shows. For a first-party Switch 2 exclusive that followed Fox’s movie cameo, a Japan physical open under 42,000 is a quiet register ring, not a smash. It is also only one market, and only the boxed slice of six days that later sat inside a quarter Nintendo would describe as steady.

The bet was never that Star Fox would outsell Mario Kart World. The bet was that a $49.99 rebuild of the one Star Fox game people still quote would outrun Zero, clear the 3DS remake’s 1.07 million, and give Nintendo cover to fund a new campaign. The first earnings window was too short to settle that. The silence since August 6 is longer than six days, and it is still silence.

A Battle Mode Patch Arrives September 29

Nintendo used the September 9, 2026 Direct to add software around the remake rather than date a sequel. Star Fox Adventures, the 2002 GameCube game, landed the same day on GameCube Nintendo Classics for Expansion Pack subscribers. The 2026 game itself gets a free Battle Mode update on September 29, 2026.

WHAT SEPTEMBER 29 ADDS TO BATTLE MODE

• Local four-player: Split-screen Battle Mode on one Switch 2, fighting each other in the room.
• One-console online: A local group of up to four can form a team and jump into online matches together.
• Katina: Fight for control of a powerful laser.
• Sector X: Destroy asteroids while dodging energy waves.
• Venom: Scan data modules, then get out before a surge hits.

Those three maps join Corneria, Sector Y, and Fichina. The patch is the most concrete answer Nintendo has given to the “not enough multiplayer” notes in June reviews. It is also more Star Fox 64 furniture: Katina, Sector X, and Venom are places the 1997 campaign already used. The studio is extending the 64 toybox, not opening a new war.

The same August 6 filing already dated the next big Nintendo remake. Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave was set for September, Nintendo Switch Sports Resort for October, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for later in 2026. Star Fox is the test that shipped first. Ocarina of Time is the test with a much larger installed memory behind it. If the 64 loop is now Nintendo’s method for dormant giants, the fox was the cheap rehearsal.

The next dated Star Fox software is the Battle Mode patch on September 29. Nintendo has not put a new original Star Fox game on the calendar.