Japan Monthly Report for August 2016

In the US and Europe there are market research firms that release a monthly report about how the industry is doing, hardware and software sales, these are the NPD Group and the Gfk. As they are the only companies to do that bussiness in those areas their numbers are, for the most part, not revealed to the public, that of course isn't an issue in Japan were we have 3 trackers that release data on a weekly basis.

Due to that all the information on this blog post is freely available on the website (as well as other corners of the internet) for anyone to use so if you want to check the data yourself go to Game Data Library, where all the data is listed.

That's that for the introduction, this post will have similar information that the Gfk and NPD Group makes public on a monthly basis: best selling games, best selling hardware, software and hardware moved as well as any more relevant information, so with that out of the way let's get going.

For all intents and porposes the period we're calling August was from August 1st to August 28th.

Notable events in August

• August 4th: Release of Etryan Oddysey V & Dragon Ball Fusions
• August 9th: Release of Ratchet & Clank
• August 13th-15th: Holiday Period, Obon
• August 18th: Relase of Tales of Berseria
• August 25th: Release of The King of Fighters XIV

Best selling games of August (only retail data)

1. [3DS] Yo-kai Watch 3: Sushi / Tempura: 269.537 - (Level 5) - {16/07/2016}
2. [PS4] Tales of Berseria: 186.869 - (Bandai Namco) - {18/08/2016}
3. [3DS] Dragon Ball Fusions: 130.590 - (Bandai Namco) - {04/08/2016}
4. [3DS] Etryan Odyssey V: The End of the Long Myth: 104.775 - (Atlus) - {04/08/2016}
5. [PS3] Tales of Berseria: 90.704 - (Bandai Namco) - {18/08/2016}
6. [3DS] Puzzle & Dragons X: God Chapter / Dragon Chapter: 81.813 - (Gung Ho Online Entertainment) - {28/07/2016}
7. [3DS] Kirby: Planet Robobot: 39.656 - (Nintendo) - {28/04/2016}
8. [WIU] Minecraft: Wii U Edition: 36.464 - (Microsoft) - {23/06/2016}
9. [3DS] Pokémon OmegaRuby / AlphaSapphire: 35.342 - (Pokémon Co.) - {21/11/2014}
10. [PSV] Toukiden 2: 34.914 - (Koei Tecmo) - {28/07/2016}

Biggest publishers of August (only retail data)

1. Bandai Namco: 428.091
2. Level 5: 269.537
3. Nintendo: 141.697
4. Atlus: 104.775
5. Gung Ho Online Entertainment: 81.813

This data is taken directly from the Top 30 and is therefore incomplete.

Retail software sales per hardware

1. Nintendo 3DS: 899.528
2. PlayStation 4: 474.292
3. PlayStation Vita: 243.286
4. PlayStation 3: 153.417
5. Wii U: 130.141
6. Xbox One: 2.732

As a whole, there were 1.903.396 games sold withing the 6 current mayor platforms which is a 28.09% drop from August 2015, the large drop is mainly due to the Nintendo 3DS which is down by almost 52%, August 2015 saw the release of Dragon Quest VIII on the system and also saw lasting sales by Yo-kai Watch Busters and Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer. Yo-kai Watch 3 is the only "big" game like those but it's underperforming, as in August 2015 both Dragon Quest an Animal Crossing sold more than Yo-kai Watch in August 2016. 

By the end of August, more than 17.560.380 games have been sold for the year this far, with 3DS is the top platform with almost 7 million sold, sales are down 18.30% compared to the same period last year

In the end what matters is money, looking at how much money was spent on each platform would be an interesting discussion, however we don't have that kind of information as we don't know how retailers could've slashed the price of certain games during holidays, how many console bundles were sold or how many limited editions were sold, too many variables to make a clear picture. So, for now we can't talk about that.

Hardware sales

1. New Nintendo 3DS XL: 90.242
2. PlayStation 4: 59.678
3. PlayStation Vita: 40.195
4. New Nintendo 3DS: 21.617
5. Wii U: 20.720
6. PlayStation 3: 3.325
7. Nintendo 3DS: 3.090
8. Nintendo 3DS XL: 758
9. Xbox One: 152

There were 239.777 units of hardware sold during August, which is a 30.58% drop from last August, for the year so far 2.540.888 units have been sold so far, a 20.57% drop from last year, the drop is due to the collapse of PS3 and Wii U sales (76% and 41% down respectively) and slow 3DS sales (24% down). The PlayStation 4 is the only system not down YoY in hardware as its up by 22.10% and will continue to rise through the rest of the year, more than 800k units have been sold for the year so far.

That's about everything there is to say for this month, however as some of you may know I sometimes like to share old sales data on twitter, so just for fun let's look at how August was in 1996 and 2006.

Best selling games of August 2006

1. [NDS] Final Fantasy III: 501.701 - (Square Enix) - {24/08/2006}
2. [NDS] New Super Mario Bros.: 390.824 - (Nintendo) - {25/05/2006}
3. [NDS] Brain Age 2: More Training in Minutes a Day: 245.134 - (Nintendo) - {29/12/2005}
4. [NDS] Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon: 224.349 - (Marvelous) - {24/08/2006}
5. [NDS] Cooking Navi: 205.874 - (Nintendo) - {20/07/2006}

Biggest publishers

1. Nintendo: 1.330.837
2. Namco Bandai: 516.964
3. Square Enix: 501.701

Over 3.1m games were sold on August 2006, with Nintendo DS having the lionshare of it, over 2.45m was just NDS, PS2 a distant second with over 400k.

Over 600k NDS were sold that month, PSP a distant second with 160k sold.

Best selling games of August 1996

1. [PS1] Tobal No. 1: 602.611 - (Square) - {02/08/1996}
2. [PS1] Street Figther Alpha 2: 422.366 - (Capcom) - {09/08/1996}
3. [SAT] Fighting Vipers: 254.442 - (SEGA) - {30/08/1996}
4. [SAT] Dokyusei if: 176.204 - (NEC) - {09/08/1996}
5. [PS1] World Stadium EX: 162.593 - (Namco) - {26/07/1996}

Biggest publishers

1. Square: 602.611
2. Capcom: 513.126
3. SEGA: 519.542

The PlayStation was stablishing its dominance over the market with over 2.14m games sold, Saturn was second with just over 1m sold, everything else didn't event ammount to 700k combined, the brand new Nintendo 64 could barely sell 100k games, being outsold by the Super Famicom over 2:1.

During this month Pokémon Red / Green sold 120k units, the games still hadn't hit 1m sold but were 60% of all Game Boy games sold, at the same time Super Mario 64 was just barely outselling the original Resident Evil.

Sadly we don't have precise hardware sales data for this time, but we know that the Nintendo 64 sold between 115k and 127k, meanwhile PlayStation sold between 340k and 364k.

That's all for now, thanks for visiting.