Certain videos on Japanese indie game brand ANMC’s official YouTube channel have been seeing their view counts skyrocket compared to others. Bizarrely, the most viewed videos are those with the Nintendo Switch logo in the thumbnail. AUTOMATON spoke to ANMC to find out how and why this is happening.
ANMC (pronounced Anomachi) is an indie game brand created by Kamitsubaki Studio. ANMC’s game creator Kazuhide Oka, who was behind the cult hit Natsuno-Kanata – Beyond the Summer, fuses indie games with music to create unique titles with unusual worlds. His first release, the world-hopping adventure game Moonless Moon is available in English on Steam and Nintendo Switch. A new game, Girls Made Pudding is due out later this year on the same platforms.
Out of all the game trailers on ANMC’s YouTube channel, those that feature the Nintendo Switch logo and mention Nintendo Switch in the title have far more views- namely the Girls Made Pudding trailer (published only 2 weeks ago, yet it already has 144K views) and Moonless Moon’s trailer (published 6 months ago and has 143K views). In contrast, trailers for Moonless Moon without the logo only have between 2.4K and 8.4K views. AUTOMATON spoke to ANMC’s Oka to find out just what is going on.
First of all, ANMC are not paying for these videos to be advertised, rather all the traffic to them is organic. We asked Oka if he thought this increase in views was due to the Nintendo Switch logo or the words ‘Nintendo Switch’ in the video titles. He responded that it was highly likely that the logo was helping increase the views. This is because the majority of the growing number of trailer views are coming from YouTube Recommendations.
In other words, viewers are not coming across ANMC’s trailers because they searched for ‘Nintendo Switch,’ rather they are being recommended them on YouTube’s home page- suggesting that the YouTube algorithm is likely recommending these videos that feature the Switch logo to viewers who have watched other Switch-related content.
While the studio has confirmed the effectiveness of the Switch logo, they have also released trailers featuring the Steam logo in the past. However, the Steam logo didn’t have the same view count boosting power as the Nintendo console’s red and white symbol.
However, it doesn’t seem like these view counts translated into increased sales for the Switch versions of these games. Moonless Moon’s Steam sales continue to surpass the sales figures for the Switch version, which was released later. Moonless Moon initially received a demo on Steam, and has maintained a Very Positive review rating- aspects which have no doubt helped it continue to outsell the Switch version. Despite this, Oka seems to think that the Switch logo is still an effective draw for raising awareness of the indie label’s games on YouTube. This could be especially true when it comes to the Japanese side of YouTube, given how prominant the Nintendo Switch is in Japan. There is clearly interest in the Nintendo Switch versions of ANMC and Kamitsubaki Studios’ games, but the key will be how to translate all these YouTube views into Switch game sales.
Moonless Moon is available now on Steam and Switch. A demo for Girls Made Pudding is currently available on Steam, with the full game due out on Steam and Nintendo Switch in the second quarter of 2025.
Written by Verity Townsend based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2025-03-25 10:02 JST)
