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 business in those areas their numbers are, for the most part, not revealed to the public, that of course isn't an issue in Japan where 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: bestselling 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 purposes the period we're calling November was from October 31st to November 27th (4 weeks).
This blog is split up into two parts: units sold and revenue. On the units sold part we’ll talk about all the data officially released by Famitsu/Dengeki/Media Create, on the revenue part we’ll make rough estimates of the money generated from the numbers in the first part.
All software information here is just retail data.
Units Sold
Japan’s bestselling games during November 2016 (single SKUs) were:
| Rank | System | Title | Sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01. | 3DS | Pokémon Sun / Moon | 2.327.453 |
| 02. | PS4 | Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare | 145.643 |
| 03. | PSV | Fate/EXTELLA: The Umbral Star | 91.485 |
| 04. | PS4 | Dragon Ball: Xenoverse 2 | 87.870 |
| 05. | PS4 | Fate/EXTELLA: The Umbral Star | 83.375 |
| 06. | PSV | SD Gundam G Generation Genesis | 82.789 |
| 07. | PS4 | SD Gundam G Generation Genesis | 76.492 |
| 08. | PSV | Battlefield 1 | 48.920 |
| 09. | PS4 | The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Special Edition | 44.828 |
| 10. | 3DS | PriPara Mezameyo! Megami no Dress Design | 30.197 |
Japan’s bestselling games during November 2016 (combined SKUs) were:
| Rank | Title | Sales |
|---|---|---|
| 01. | Pokémon Sun / Moon (3DS) | 2.327.453 |
| 02. | Fate/EXTELLA: The Umbral Star (PSV, PS4) | 176.860 |
| 03. | SD Gundam G Generation Genesis (PSV, PS4) | 159.281 |
| 04. | Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (PS4, XB1)* | 145.643 |
| 05. | Dragon Ball: Xenoverse 2 (PS4) | 87.870 |
| 06. | Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization (PSV, PS4)* | 83.375 |
| 07. | Samurai Warriors: Sanada Maru (PS4, PSV, PS3) | 52.360 |
| 08. | Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey (PSV, PS4)* | 50.018 |
| 09. | Battlefield 1 (PS4, XB1)* | 48.920 |
| 10. | The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Special Edition (PS4, XB1)* | 44.828 |
*some kind of data missing
To no surprise Pokémon Sun / Moon were the bestselling games of November, not only that but they had the biggest week of the year (10th all-time highest in record) and became the bestselling game of the year the very same week of release, its doing very well, however, and not to downplay its sales, its somewhat disappointing when looking at sales overseas, Sun / Moon had the highest launch for any Nintendo game ever in the Americas, selling 3.7 million units there, and the biggest launch in Europe, selling 1.5 million, in comparison to that, in Japan Sun / Moon debuted below its predecessor X / Y and had a not all that impressive second week.
It is worth nothing however that in Japan Pokémon Go wasn’t this thing that brought Pokémon back into relevance like it did in the west, rather than that it was a mobile game based on the most popular property on the region, the fact that Sun / Moon didn’t see an increase from X / Y was already evident when looking at preorders, Nintendo said that it was their most preordered game ever, in where their graphs show a significand increase of preorders in the Americas and Europe, however the game had lower preorders than X / Y in Japan and at the same time when discussing about the increase of sales for Pokémon software, merchandise and Nintendo 3DS hardware sales Nintendo noted a huge increase of sales in the west however the increase in Japan was nothing in comparison, to end this, Pokémon is not the first dedicated series to jump into mobile, so we could see this when comparing it to other series.
Dragon Quest is perhaps the biggest property in Japan behind Pokémon and the mobile game Dragon Quest of the Stars has been downloaded millions of times, yet Dragon Quest games didn’t see an increase of sales due to that, though brand awareness did increase, same can be said by Konami’s Pawapuro and Yu-Gi-Oh! Series, or even Square Enix’s own Final Fantasy, which despite having some great performers on mobile its doings somewhat subpar on dedicated hardware.
To summarize, Pokémon Sun / Moon are selling well in Japan, just not shockingly so.
Pokémon of course wasn’t the only game released on November so let’s talk about how other games did and just quickly, how some games released last month performed this time.
Starting with Call of Duty, that’s a terrible performance for Infinite Warfare, in three weeks, Infinite Warfare was unable to sell what Black Ops III sold on its first week last year, Black Ops III went on to sell close to 400.000 units and it’s currently the fourth bestselling game on the PlayStation 4, meanwhile, Infinite Warfare seems like it’ll struggle to sell even half of that and on the shooter wars it’s going to lose against EA’s Battlefield 1 which had a great second month performance.
Worldwide it seems like this will be the closest Battlefield and Call of Duty will perform, while on the grand scale Battlefield won’t be on top of Call of Duty for some time, it seems like it already is in Japan, at least this year Call of Duty will have an extremely difficult time outselling Battlefield, a game that launched before it, had a bigger launch and is so far showing better legs and more positive word of mouth.
In Japan the shooter fan base isn’t big enough to support two games, sadly, unlike in the US where the numbers are in the millions in Japan FPS fans might be around half a million tops so most will gravitate towards just one game and this time it was Battlefield 1 not only that but it seems like Titanfall 2 might’ve eaten some of Call of Duty’s launch, that game had a poor launch but it showed somewhat good sales overtime, at the very least its doing well digitally, if fan base is strong enough and word of mouth keeps going it could become a sleeper hit, similar to last year’s Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege.
Call of Duty has been in decline in Japan ever since Black Ops II, Black Ops III manage to slow it down, but it just shows the strength of the Black Ops name over the other titles, Infinite Warfare not only kept the decline going but seemingly accelerated it, it had the worst opening week of any Call of Duty game since the first Modern Warfare, the game that made the series popular, and will actually sell worse than it becoming the series’ worst selling game in 10 years.
Moving onto anime games, Fate/Extella performed very well, it’s already shipped 200.000 units, making it the bestselling game in the series and one of the few positive results for 2016, Dragon Ball: Xenoverse 2 on the other hand, tells a different story, the game is a PlayStation 4 exclusive in Japan, it already outsold the PS4 version of the first game but it felt short of the PS3 version, this tells the story of the PS4 for the year so far in a nutshell, it’s performing well compared to last year, but it’s still not making up for the loses of its predecessor.
Before moving onto another topic let’s talk about how October games performed in November, now, there are some games that I want to get into on a piece of their own, so won’t say much here.
Monster Hunter Stories and World of Final Fantasy, while neither are doing poorly, I wouldn’t be surprised if neither are reaching expectations, Monster Hunter Stories shows Capcom’s inability to expand their audience, the game had big marketing promotions such as amiibo and an anime airing at very good time slots yet it seems like it’ll struggle to sell 300.000 units as it sold less than 20.000 units this month and will leave the charts very soon, the game won’t outsell the Poka Poka Village spin offs on the PSP.
World of Final Fantasy on the other hand show just how damaged the brand is, between PS4 and PSV it sold barely more than 40.000 units this month, and unlike Monster Hunter Stories that released early in the month so it’s harsh sales are somewhat justified, this game came out at the very end of the month which makes it all worse, the game will struggle to sell 200.000 units, which was incredibly low for a FF spin off just 6 years ago, though, at the same time, the bestselling Final Fantasy spin offs in 6 years was Final Fantasy Explorers on 3DS which sold around 300.000 units. The downfall of Final Fantasy spin offs is evident when comparing how spin offs were selling around the years of Final Fantasy XIII’s launch, had World of Final Fantasy been a PSP/PS3 game released in 2010-2011 it would’ve almost undoubtedly sold more than 500.000, likely more than that when comparing to how other Final Fantasy spin offs did around the time, Final Fantasy: Type 0, Dissidia: Final Fantasy, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, all sold more than 700.000 units, with Dissidia being a million seller, so what happened with World of Final Fantasy? Maybe the brand is more damaged than expected, maybe timing of release was poor, Final Fantasy XV’s performance will be more telling.
To end, Paper Mario bombed, Color Splash barely sold more than 50.000 while all the other games sold more than 400.000, terrible second month with only 8.000 units sold, less than Splatoon.
The biggest publishers during November 2016 were
| Rank | Publisher | Sales |
|---|---|---|
| 01. | The Pokémon Company* | 2.327.453 |
| 02. | Bandai Namco* | 324.613 |
| 03. | Marvelous* | 176.860 |
| 04. | Sony Interactive Entertainment* | 145.643 |
| 05. | Koei Tecmo* | 113.488 |
*data is incomplete
Of course the publisher with the biggest game was the biggest of the whole month, Pokémon Sun / Moon alone make TPC the fourth biggest publisher of the year as they’ve sold around the same amount of software as both Square Enix and Bandai Namco, about 2.75 million for the year so far, that doesn’t include the Virtual Console rerelease of the original Pokémon games, worth noting.
Now when looking at it per system
| Rank | Publisher | Sales in November | Sales in 2016 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01. | Nintendo 3DS | 2.686.170 | 10.811.434 |
| 02. | PlayStation 4 | 775.546 | 6.621.801 |
| 03. | PlayStation Vita | 379.782 | 4.414.465 |
| 04. | Wii U | 74.960 | 1.804.067 |
| 05. | PlayStation 3 | 46.580 | 1.570.083 |
| 06. | Xbox One | 1.819 | 36.516 |
There were 3.964.857 units of retail software sold for all of November which makes it the biggest month of the year by far, all thanks to Pokémon as its sales were almost 59% of all software sales for the month, Pokémon not only performed better than Monster Hunter Generations (which was November 2015’s biggest game) but also made up for all the other underperforming titles, compared to November 2015 sales are up by around 500.000 units, or 13%
More than 25 million games have been sold for the year so far, a drop of close to 5 million units compared to last year, the drop is mainly due to the 3DS, which is nonetheless, most of the market anyway, the PlayStation 3 is also heavily down, which was expected, however the PlayStation 4 is still not making up for the loss of PS3 sales, Wii U also heavily down and Vita nearly flat YoY contribute to this.
3DS software reached a milestone this month as now more than 100 million physical games have been sold in Japan, the seventh system to do it.
That’s it for software, so moving onto hardware.
Japan’s hardware sales during November 2016 were
| System | Sales in November | Sales in 2016 | Total Sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nintendo 3DS hf | 242.426 | 1.506.277 | 21.695.404 |
| PlayStation 4 hf | 204.015 | 1.319.321 | 3.519.710 |
| New Nintendo 3DS XL | 166.809 | 995.071 | 3.465.187 |
| PlayStation 4 | 120.215 | 1.235.521 | 3.435.910 |
| PlayStation 4 Pro | 83.800 | 83.800 | 83.800 |
| Nintendo 2DS | 51.021 | 226.993 | 226.993 |
| PlayStation Vita | 41.657 | 688.343 | 5.096.735 |
| New Nintendo 3DS | 22.558 | 206.056 | 1.038.505 |
| Wii U | 11.147 | 259.302 | 3.258.584 |
| PlayStation 3 | 2.086 | 44.434 | 10.239.563 |
| Nintendo 3DS | 1.743 | 65.408 | 10.007.541 |
| Xbox One | 1.322 | 6.806 | 71.236 |
| Nintendo 3DS XL | 295 | 12.749 | 6.957.178 |
Hardware sales for the year so far are at 3.8 million units, with more than 500.000 units sold in November a 40.000 unit increase from last November and the biggest month in terms of hardware sales for the year so far, the increase is due to both the Nintendo 3DS and the PlayStation 4 being up YoY, with the PS4 being up by over 80.000 units, so the PS4 Pro was the one who made the difference. The increase isn’t higher due to the collapse of Wii U sales, down by over 70%, during each week of November 2015 there were more units of Wii U hardware sold than during the entirety of November 2016, Vita down by over 30% too.
The biggest news of the month was the release of the PlayStation 4 Pro which had an alright start, of course it’s hard to judge the performance of the enhanced model as it’s the first of its kind, though it is noteworthy that sales were high during its first week but quickly collapsed, tracking its performance from here on out will be very interesting.
Revenue
Japan’s top grossing games during November 2016 (Single SKUs) were:
| Rank | System | Title | Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01. | 3DS | Pokémon Sun / Moon | ¥12.090.895.120 |
| 02. | PS4 | Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare | ¥1.152.324.348 |
| 03. | PS4 | Fate/EXTELLA: The Umbral Star | ¥701.514.700 |
| 04. | PSV | SD Gundam G Generation Genesis | ¥679.532.112 |
| 05. | PS4 | SD Gundam G Generation Genesis | ¥677.413.152 |
| 06. | PS4 | Dragon Ball: Xenoverse 2 | ¥675.223.979 |
| 07. | PS4 | Fate/EXTELLA: The Umbral Star | ¥674.186.364 |
| 08. | PSV | Battlefield 1 | ¥324.039.211 |
| 09. | PS4 | The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Special Edition | ¥269.700.992 |
| 10. | PS4 | Samurai Warriors: Sanada Maru | ¥248.112.072 |
Japan’s top grossing games during November 2016 (combined SKUs) were:
| Rank | Title | Revenue |
|---|---|---|
| 01. | Pokémon Sun / Moon (3DS) | ¥12.090.895.120 |
| 02. | Fate/EXTELLA: The Umbral Star (PS4, PSV) | ¥1.375.701.064 |
| 03. | SD Gundam G Generation Genesis (PSV, PS4) | ¥1.356.945.264 |
| 04. | Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (PS4, XB1) | ¥1.152.324.348 |
| 05. | Dragon Ball: Xenoverse 2 (PS4) | ¥675.223.979 |
| 06. | Samurai Warriors: Sanada Maru (PS4, PSV, PS3) | ¥426.955.320 |
| 07. | Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey (PS4, PSV) | ¥335.340.214 |
| 08. | Battlefield 1 (PS4, XB1) | ¥324.039.211 |
| 09. | Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization (PS4, PSV) | ¥309.025.730 |
| 10. | The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Special Edition (PS4, XB1) | ¥269.700.992 |
The top grossing publishers were
| Rank | Publisher | Revenue |
|---|---|---|
| 01. | The Pokémon Company* | ¥12.098.311.480 |
| 02. | Bandai Namco* | ¥2.460.288.311 |
| 03. | Marvelous* | ¥1.375.701.064 |
| 04. | Sony Interactive Entertainment* | ¥1.152.324.348 |
| 05. | Koei Tecmo* | ¥819.282.911 |
We’re missing a huge amount of data for this to be correct so it’s more like an educated guess, once again, like with everything else in this section, take it with a grain of salt.
When doing gross per platform things get even worse as the data we have is extremely incomplete, just the top 30 doesn’t tell us the whole story, and sadly, that’s everything we have.
Bare minimum gross generated by software sales is ¥20.182.070.034 making it by far the biggest month of the year, Pokémon alone generated more money than plenty of other games throughout the year combined.
It’s very interesting too look at these charts and then at the ones with units sold to look at the difference and just how much of a factor the price of the game is.
When looking at hardware revenue we have this
| System | Revenue |
|---|---|
| PlayStation 4 | ¥7.373.369.700 |
| Nintendo 3DS | ¥4.309.325.523 |
| PlayStation Vita | ¥790.649.860 |
| Wii U | ¥361.162.800 |
| PlayStation 3 | ¥54.194.280 |
| Xbox One | ¥30.087.398 |
If we were to group hardware and software revenue into ecosystems, then we have this:
| Ecosystem | Revenue |
|---|---|
| Nintendo | ¥17.814.131.417 |
| PlayStation | ¥11.487.316.780 |
| Xbox One | ¥30.087.398 |
Which means that at the very least the Japanese industry was worth at least 29 billion yen during November 2016, or, roughly $258 million.
That was a lot to write, hopefully the new format looks good, these post will only keep improving over time.
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