Nintendo Year in Review is coming in January – and Nintendo Music’s recap is already live

16 December 2025
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12 min.
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Nintendo Year in Review is coming in January – and Nintendo Music’s recap is already live

Summary:

Nintendo’s Year in Review is doing the classic end-of-year thing we all secretly love: handing us a mirror and saying, “So… how did you actually spend your time?” The difference is that this mirror is made of playtime, genres, and the kind of gaming habits we swear we don’t have until the numbers show up. Nintendo has said the Switch Year in Review recap will arrive in January, rather than the mid-December window many people expect, and that means we’ll be looking back on the full year of 2025 in one clean sweep. For anyone who bounced between big releases and comfort games, that timing matters. December sessions will count, holiday marathons won’t get cut off early, and our final “one more run” moments are less likely to vanish into the void.

At the same time, Nintendo Music has already rolled out its own 2025 Year in Review inside the app. It’s a Spotify Wrapped-style snapshot for soundtracks, with stats like total listening time and most-played tracks, plus quick ways to see your top playlist and soundtrack. It’s a neat reminder that Nintendo now has two parallel worlds of “year-end receipts” – one for what we played on Switch or Switch 2, and one for what we listened to on our phones. Put together, they can tell a surprisingly personal story: the game we lived in, the genre we kept drifting back to, and the soundtrack that basically became our background noise for work, study, or late-night scrolling. January can’t come soon enough, but at least the music recap gives us something to poke at right now.

Year in Review is coming in January – what Nintendo has confirmed

Nintendo has signaled that Year in Review for 2025 is on the way in January, rather than landing in the familiar mid-December slot people often expect. That heads-up matters because it sets expectations in the simplest way possible: we’re not refreshing the page every day this month like it’s a limited-time shop drop. The “Wrapped-like” comparison fits because this recap is designed to be quick, personal, and shareable, with your play habits turned into a tidy snapshot. The key detail is timing, not a hard date. Nintendo hasn’t pinned down the exact day yet, so January is the window we can plan around. If you’re the type who likes having your year summed up in neat little boxes, this is your cue to relax for a moment and let the calendar flip. The recap is coming – it’s just taking the scenic route.

What Year in Review usually tracks on Switch

Year in Review tends to focus on the stuff you actually care about when you’re curious, bored, or both: which games dominated your time, how many hours you put in, and what patterns show up when you zoom out. It’s basically the gaming version of opening your fridge and realizing you’ve been living off the same three snacks for weeks. Nintendo has previously highlighted stats like your most-played genre, combined playtime across the year, and your busiest month, all tied to your Nintendo Account activity. The vibe is more “fun recap” than “grading your life choices,” and that’s the sweet spot. We get enough detail to recognize ourselves in the results, but not so much that it feels like a spreadsheet lecture. If you like sharing your top game with friends, Year in Review usually nudges you toward that, too, because nothing sparks group chat chaos faster than someone saying, “My top game was this, don’t judge me.”

Most-played games and total play time

This is the headline moment for most of us: the list of our most-played games and the total number of hours we stacked up across the year. It’s the part that makes you laugh, wince, or quietly nod like, “Yes, that tracks.” The top games list is simple, but it’s powerful because it doesn’t care about our intentions. We might have planned to finish five story-driven masterpieces, but the stats might reveal we spent half the year in one endlessly replayable comfort pick. Total play time is the bigger number that puts everything in context. It can be a proud badge if gaming is your main hobby, or a funny reality check if you thought you “barely played” this year. Either way, the combination of top games plus hours gives the clearest picture of what actually owned our free time in 2025.

Year in Review usually goes beyond “top games” and tries to capture the shape of our year – the genre we leaned on the most and the month where we were playing like it was our second job. Genre tracking is a sneaky one because it often reveals our default mood. Maybe we say we love action games, but the recap shows we spent most of our time in RPGs, strategy, or cozy life sims. Trends can show up in the way Nintendo frames your activity, like a quick visual breakdown that makes it easy to see where your hours went. Then there’s the busiest month, which is basically a time capsule. Was it the month a huge release hit, the month we were stuck at home, or the month we discovered a new obsession? That single month stat can explain the whole year in one blink.

Sharing your recap and picking a favorite

Nintendo often treats Year in Review as something we can share, not just something we read and close. That’s why there’s usually an option to pick a favorite game of the year and show off a clean recap screen for social media. It’s a little like framing a photo from a holiday – not every detail, just the moment you want people to see. Choosing a favorite can be harder than it sounds, because “most played” and “favorite” aren’t always the same thing. A long multiplayer grind can dominate hours, while a shorter single-player experience might be the one that stuck with you emotionally. The shareable recap is also where friendly rivalries happen: who played the weirdest mix, who has the most hours, and who somehow played one game so much it looks suspicious. It’s silly, it’s fun, and it’s exactly why these recaps exist.

Nintendo Switch 2 and how our stats may be presented

With Nintendo now talking about Switch 2 alongside Switch in Year in Review coverage, it’s fair to expect the recap to reflect how people actually played in 2025 – which, for a lot of us, means more than one device in the mix. The practical question is how Nintendo will display that information: a combined view, separate views, or a simple roll-up under one Nintendo Account umbrella. What matters most is that the recap stays readable. Nobody wants to click through ten screens just to understand whether their hours came from Switch, Switch 2, or a little of both. If Nintendo keeps it clean, we’ll get the best outcome: a single story of our year, even if the hardware changed partway through. That’s the whole point of a year-end recap anyway. It’s not about the plastic shell in your hands – it’s about the games that lived in your head.

Why the January timing is a big deal

January might sound late at first, but it solves a classic recap problem: December gets to exist. When recaps arrive too early, anything we play in the final weeks of the year can get cut off or treated like an afterthought, which feels a bit like finishing a movie and skipping the last scene. A January release window suggests Nintendo can capture the full year of play, including holiday sessions, gift-season downloads, and that weird week where time stops and everyone’s sleep schedule collapses. It also reduces the pressure to rush the recap out the door just to match everyone else’s timing. If we’re being honest, we’d rather have a recap that includes the whole year than one that drops early but leaves out the fun part. January also gives people something cheerful to click on when the post-holiday slump hits. It’s like finding one last chocolate in the box after you thought it was empty.

How to access Year in Review when it launches

Year in Review typically lives on an official Nintendo web page where we sign in with our Nintendo Account to generate our personalized stats. That’s the core flow: open the page, log in, and let Nintendo pull together your play activity into a recap you can scroll through. The exact steps for 2025 may be presented a little differently, but the basics are usually the same because Nintendo wants this to be fast and friction-free. The main point is that the recap is tied to your account, not to a single console sitting under your TV. If you have multiple systems linked to the same Nintendo Account, that’s usually where the magic happens. Once you’re in, the recap tends to guide you from broad stats to more specific highlights, then ends with share options. It’s designed to feel like a fun reveal, not a chore.

Quick account and privacy checks to do now

If we want the smoothest possible recap when January hits, it’s worth doing a couple of quick checks now. First, make sure you can actually sign into your Nintendo Account without drama, because nothing kills the vibe faster than a password reset spiral. Second, confirm the account you use is the one you actually played on this year, especially if your household has multiple profiles. Third, it’s smart to look at any relevant data-sharing or privacy settings tied to Nintendo Account services, since the recap relies on collecting and displaying play activity. We’re not changing who we are as gamers – we’re just making sure Nintendo can recognize us when it’s time to hand over the stats. Think of it like putting your name on your lunch in the fridge. It won’t make the food better, but it stops confusion later.

Nintendo Music Year in Review is already live – what it shows

While we wait for the Switch Year in Review to appear in January, Nintendo Music has already rolled out its own 2025 Year in Review inside the app. This one is focused on listening habits rather than playtime, and it leans into the same playful energy that makes year-end recaps fun. We can see total listening time, our most-played tracks, and which playlist or soundtrack topped our year. If you’ve been using Nintendo Music as background fuel while working, studying, or just trying to make chores feel less miserable, this recap can be surprisingly revealing. It’s also a reminder that Nintendo now treats music as part of the Switch Online ecosystem, not just something that lives on YouTube uploads and nostalgia playlists. The music recap is available right now, so we don’t have to wait until January to get at least one set of year-end numbers to obsess over.

How to find the Year in Review banner in Nintendo Music

Access is intentionally simple: open Nintendo Music and look for the “2025 Year in Review” banner at the top of the home screen. No scavenger hunt, no hidden settings menu, no “tap the logo seven times” nonsense. Once you tap in, the recap walks you through the highlights, showing the kind of stats people actually want: top tracks, playlists, and overall listening time. This is where Nintendo’s presentation matters. A recap should feel like a little story, not a dry report, and the banner approach makes it feel like an event without making it complicated. If you’re already a Switch Online member and you’ve been listening throughout the year, this is the fastest way to get your results. And if your top track is the kind of theme that instantly sends you back to a certain moment in a game, well… that’s the whole point, isn’t it?

The January 5 deadline and what to do before it disappears

Nintendo Music’s Year in Review isn’t an “always available” feature forever. It has a time limit, and the window matters because it changes how we should treat the recap right now. If we want to keep a record, the best move is to check it soon, take screenshots of the key pages, and share or save whatever bits make us smile. That way, even if the recap disappears after the availability window ends, we still have our personal highlights. It’s a little like a limited-time museum exhibit: you don’t assume it’ll be there whenever you feel like visiting. You go while it’s open. The good news is that the steps are quick, and the payoff is instant. The moment you see your top soundtrack, you’ll probably hear it in your head for the next hour anyway.

Using both recaps together without overthinking the numbers

It’s easy to treat these recaps like scoreboards, but they’re better as memory triggers. The Switch Year in Review tells us what we played, how long we stayed, and what genres we kept circling back to. The Nintendo Music recap tells us what we listened to while we lived our everyday life. Put them together, and we get a fuller snapshot of 2025: the game we obsessed over, and the soundtrack that quietly followed us around like a loyal pet. We don’t need to “optimize” our playtime or feel weird about the totals. People’s years look different. Some of us had long cozy stretches with one game. Some of us bounced around like pinballs. The fun is in recognizing ourselves in the results. And if the numbers surprise you, that’s not a problem – that’s entertainment. The recap is basically your year saying, “Here’s what you did when nobody was watching.”

Common hiccups and simple troubleshooting

Even the best recaps can hit small snags, and it helps to know what to check before assuming something is broken. If Year in Review doesn’t show what we expect, the first thing to confirm is whether we’re signed into the right Nintendo Account. Household setups can get messy, and it’s surprisingly easy to mix up which account did the actual playing. Next, remember that recaps can have cut-off rules or data snapshots, depending on how the service is structured for that year. If something looks missing, it may simply be that Nintendo is compiling the data in a specific way for the recap window. For Nintendo Music, if the Year in Review banner isn’t visible, the basics still apply: confirm the app is updated, confirm membership access is active, and restart the app. Most problems are boring, fixable, and solved in under five minutes – which is good, because we’d rather spend our time arguing about our top game than troubleshooting like it’s a router.

What we want from Year in Review next time

Year in Review is already fun, but it can always get better in the ways that matter. We want clearer breakdowns that show how our year shifted over time, not just a final top list. Monthly highlights are especially good because they capture the story arc of a year: the month we discovered something new, the month we replayed an old favorite, the month we vanished into one massive release. We also want better context, like showing how our habits changed when we moved from handheld to docked play, or when we switched hardware. And yes, we want smoother sharing tools that don’t feel awkward or limited. The ideal recap doesn’t just tell us what happened – it helps us remember why it mattered. Because at the end of the day, the best part of gaming isn’t the hour count. It’s the moments hidden inside those hours, like little fireworks we forgot we set off.

Conclusion

Nintendo’s Year in Review landing in January changes the vibe in a good way: it gives the full year room to breathe, including December, which is often where the best gaming chaos happens. We’ll be able to look back at 2025 with a clearer picture of our most-played games, favorite genres, and the month we went hardest, all in one recap that’s designed to be quick and shareable. While we wait, Nintendo Music’s 2025 Year in Review is already live inside the app, giving us a soundtrack-focused snapshot with top tracks, playlists, and listening time. Taken together, these two recaps feel like Nintendo quietly saying, “We see you,” whether you spent your year chasing trophies, relaxing in cozy games, or looping the same theme song while doing laundry. January will bring the main gaming recap, but we don’t have to wait to start reminiscing.

FAQs
  • When will Nintendo’s Year in Review for Switch be available?
    • Nintendo has indicated the 2025 Year in Review will arrive in January, and reporting points to January 2026 as the release window, with no exact day confirmed yet.
  • What kind of stats does Nintendo’s Year in Review usually show?
    • It typically highlights your most-played games, total play time, your most-played genre, and other trend-style snapshots like your busiest month, plus sharing options.
  • Will Year in Review include Nintendo Switch 2 play activity?
    • Nintendo’s messaging and reporting around the 2025 recap references Switch and Switch 2 activity for the year, suggesting the recap will reflect 2025 play under your Nintendo Account.
  • How do we access Nintendo Music’s 2025 Year in Review?
    • Open Nintendo Music and tap the “2025 Year in Review” banner near the top of the home screen to view your listening stats.
  • How long is Nintendo Music’s Year in Review available?
    • Nintendo Music’s 2025 Year in Review has a limited availability window, so it’s worth checking it soon and saving screenshots of your highlights before it expires.
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