Japan Monthy Report for February 2017

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, note that for sales data we'll use the one that's officially released while for revenue it'll be estimations.

For all intents and purposes the period we're calling February was from January 30th to February 26th (4 weeks)

February was originally expected to be a rather slow month without much interesting stuff happening, going into it, it was expected that Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 3 – Professional would easily be the best selling game and not much else would happen, as the month before the launch of the Nintendo Switch it was to be a rather filler, slow month.

That was not what happened, however, as it turned out to be an interesting month with plenty of games performing above expectations as well as stronger hardware sales than expected, but onto that a little later.

The industry was worth over 16 billion yen for the whole month, with software outdoing hardware, this is due to the strong sales of high priced games such as Nioh, Nier: Automata and Super Robot Wars V, the first two in particular are very expensive games that sold much more than originally expected, both are also PlayStation 4 exclusives which had the lionshare of both software and hardware shares, as from the 16 billion yen generated over 10 billion comes from PlayStation 4 hardware and software with the 3DS, which saw a slow month, as a distant second.

Breaking up revenue we have:

• Hardware: Over 7 billion yen came from the sale of hardware during February, out of this sales of PlayStation 4 ammount to more than half of it as 4.6 billion are just from it, the system sold 140k with PS4 Pro being a little less than 30k or that, 140k is a 23% increase over last February with a 59% increase for the whole year, the system keeps a strong performance though its first true competitor is launching in March which also happens to be a weak month for PS4 software, at least compared to last March. As far as the other systems go, 3DS sold some 96k, a small 5% drop from last year, a good result nonetheless, Vita sold 37k which is less than what it saw last February but its understandable as the system’s last major game came out this month and there hasn’t been much to drive sales of the system. Wii U, PS3 and Xbox One sold less than 5k combined, nothing to say about them.
• Software: Software outdid hardware for the month with over 8.5 billion yen coming from there, once again PS4 software saw bulk of it as over 900k PS4 games were sold, generating over 5.6 billion yen in revenue, this is nearly 3 times as much revenue as 3DS software did despite actual sales not being even twice as large, the high price of PS4 software is to thank for this as games like For Honor, Nier Automata and Nioh all were sold at over 8.000 yen and all sold well, compared to it the most expensive 3DS game was not even 6.000 yen. Most importantly is that for once PS4 games performed above expectations as both Nioh and Nier did much better than anticipated, this is in contrast with last month’s Resident Evil 7 which is nowhere close to outselling its first shipment while Nioh already did and Nier will have no problem doing so. As a whole the PS4 is doing well, which is very much a good thing. Onto the other systems, 3DS software amounted to some 567k units a small 5% increase over last year, Vita did some 242k, once again, less than half of last February where it actually moved more software than the 3DS, though the system is on its last legs and was to be expected. Wii U, PS3 and Xbox One don’t amount to 65k units sold with Wii U moving the most of it, nothing to say about them anymore.

Despite some being games coming out Februay was a drop in sales in both hardware and software compared to last year, just like in February this is mainly due to the loss of Wii U, PSV and PS3 sales, despite some positive results for 3DS and PS4 they’re not making up for the loss of sales on the other systems, hopefully this trend will start to change on March but as it is we’re in negative results for 2017 now.

Software

The best selling games of February 2017 were:

1. [PS4] Nier Automata – 182.762 (Over 1.5 billion yen in revenue)
2. [3DS] Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 3 – Professional – 142.761 (Around 800 million yen in revenue )
3. [PS4] Nioh – 135.713 (Over a billion yen in revenue)
4. [PS4] Super Robot Wars V – 95.222 (Around 900 million yen in revenue)
5. [PSV] Super Robot Wars V – 84.933 (Over 700 million yen in revenue)
6. [PS4] Resident Evil 7: biohazard – 69.633 (Over 400 million yen in revenue)
7. [3DS] Pokémon Sun / Moon – 68.341 (Nearly 300 million yen in revenue)
8. [PS4] For Honor – 53.741 (Over 450 million yen in revenue)
9. [PS4] Four Goddesses Online: Cyber Dimension Neptune – 45.549 (Over 350 million yen in revenue) |Missing one week of data|
10. [3DS] Yo-kai Watch 3: Sukiyaki – 36.584 (Over 150 million yen in revenue)

Nier Automata came out as the best selling game of the month after a surprising result, the game did much better than expected, which is very much a good, very positive result for the series as Automata sold more than Gestalt and Replicant combined, in just one week, also for Platinum as its sold nearly as much as all of their games on Wii U combined, in just on week, the extremely positive response should show some good legs going forward, don’t be surprised if Nier sells more than Resident Evil 7 in the end.

Word of mouth also made Nioh perform above expectations, from 100k LTD it changed to over 100k in just two weeks, the game saw some good week on week drops and will have no problem selling over 150k units, this is particularly positive for Koei Tecmo as nearly all games based on their properties have been underperforming for some years already, Nioh is already their best selling game on PS4.

Not everything is great however, as Super Robot Wars V is keeping the downward trend of the franchise, those games typically have poor legs so expect a huge drop coming in March, talking about bad legs, Resident Evil 7 is showing them as well, the game has barely sold 300k units after a 377k first week shipment and is already selling less than 10k a week, it won’t be getting a second shipment and will likely leave the charts by the time Monster Hunter XX is out, Capcom can’t catch a break, especially after last year where Monster Hunter Stories and Ace Attorney 6 both underperformed too, at least Resident Evil 7 is doing fine worldwide.

Not much to say on the Nintendo front, while Dragon Quest perform according to expectations it actually suffered some shortages so sales could’ve been higher, maybe not as high as Nier but good nonetheless, specially surprising after last years Joker 3, Professional did alright, nothing else to note however, legs of Pokémon and Super Mario Maker are decent and still amount to a big chunk of the system, probably the most noteworthy thing about the 3DS is how little games is getting, less than a handful of releases for the year so far, if it wasn’t for the strong performance of 2016 titles it’d be down year on year as 2017’s software has been lacking.

Square Enix was the top publisher for the month and are the top grossing publishers of the year so far with some 350k units sold, behind them are Bandai Namco, Koei Tecmo, Nintendo and Capcom.

Hardware

PS4 keeps a strong performance with some 140k units sold in February and over 350k units for the year so far, high sales of the PS4 combined with the price makes it the bulk of revenue for the month as PS4 sales made over 4.6 billion yen, after the PS4 goes the 3DS that sold 96k on all models generating over 1.7 billion yen in revenue, despite the difference in sales not being that large the difference in prices makes the revenue gap so large, out of 3DS’ sales the New 3DS XL was the bulk of it as usual with 70k coming from it, after it the cheap 2DS sells 20k.

PS4 and 3DS are the only systems that keep doing decently, as Vita sales are below the 40k mark with just more than 700 million yen in revenue, after Vita everything is done as Wii U, PS3 and Xbox One don’t amount to 5k in sales and below the 200 million yen mark in revenue combined.

March will be a huge month compared to January and February as sales for the Nintendo Switch and Monster Hunter XX will massively increase both sales in revenue compared to the rest of the year.