Japan Monthy Report for March 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 monthly: 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 February 27th to April 2nd (5 weeks)

March was expected to be a busy month as a new piece of hardware was to release, alongside it there were a bunch of big games coming out too, for the most part everything did on par or better than anticipated which ended up resulting in a huge month for Japan.

This period is already usually busy as it’s the end of the fiscal year for Japanese companies so there’s usually a bunch of games released due to financial reasons, last year Dragon Quest Monster: Joker 3 and Dark Souls III came out the same day, on 2015 Yakuza 0, Bloodborne, Final Fantasy Type 0 HD and One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 came out during a 3-week period. Point is march is typically busy month, and while it was busy this time, it wasn’t due to the number of releases, as they were fewer than the past few years, but because of the new console.

The industry was worth over 47 billion yen in March, which is more than January and February revenue combined, this is obviously due to the Nintendo Switch, as the high priced new system generated over 17 billion yen on hardware sales, apart from that there’s also strong software sales, namely of Monster Hunter XX which generated over 8 billion yen on its own, the top grossing game by a huge margin, and like the past few months strong sales of premium PlayStation 4 software continued as both Horizon: Zero Dawn and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands both sold great as well, surpassing expectations, add to that new premium price games as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which became the best selling console game of the year thus far and lasting sales of Nier: Automata, February’s best selling game to that. Of course, lasting strong sales of the PlayStation 4 are to thank as well, the system is now generating over 2 billion yen of revenue every week, between hardware and software sales.

• Hardware: Hardware was the top drawer of revenue this month, due to Nintendo Switch sales, hardware revenue amounted to over 26 billion yen, nearly four times as February. As far of sales is concerned over 900 units were sold for the whole month a more than 50% increase compared to last March, Nintendo Switch obviously sold more as some 556k units were sold, behind it was the Nintendo 3DS family which sold 163k, first time the 3DS outsells the PS4 since December, not by a lot though as the PS4 is right behind it with 162k, PS4 generates much more revenue of course, even when it sells 1k less it does over 2 billion yen more in revenue. Vita sells 41k and does 800 million yen in revenue, while the discontinuation of the PS3 caused sales to dramatically increase, it sold more than the Wii U for the whole month and more than doubled its sales for the whole year, with 6k units sold. Wii U and Xbox One sold less than 4k combined.
• Software: Revenue from software was of over 21 billion yen this month, more than twice that of February, total sales were of 4 million units a 13% increase over last March, more importantly we’re finally up YoY in software sales in what has been a long time. 3DS sold the most software and generated the most revenue with 1.8 million games sold and over 9 billion yen in revenue, Monster Hunter XX is the bulk of both. After 3DS goes the PS4 with over 1 million games sold and nearly 6 billion yen in revenue. Both PS4 and 3DS are up year on year by a lot, combined that with the Switch, which sold 681k games and we get a positive result for the year so far, as the three systems are finally making up for the loss of PS3, PSV and Wii U software. On milestones, total sales of retail Minecraft software surpassed 22 million units.

Software

The bestselling games of March 2017 were:

1. [3DS] Monster Hunter XX – 1.392.179 (Over 8 billion yen in revenue)
2. [SWI] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 328.587 (Over 2 billion yen in revenue)
3. [PS4] Horizon: Zero Dawn – 174.276 (Over 1 billion yen in revenue)
4. [PS4] Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands – 151.359 (Over 1 billion yen in revenue)
5. [SWI] 1 2 Switch – 150.574 (Over 750 million yen in revenue)
6. [PS4] Kingdom Hearts HD I.5 II+.5 ReMIX – 95.556 (Over 650 million yen in revenue)
7. [WIU] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 86.405 (Over 620 million yen in revenue)
8. [PS4] Nier: Automata – 78.110 (Over 530 million yen in revenue)
9. [SWI] Super Bomberman R – 67.008 (Over 310 million yen in revenue)
10. [3DS] Pokémon Sun / Moon – 59.026 (Over 250 million yen in revenue)

Monster Hunter was the best-selling game of the month as expected, its disappointment however as the game barely sells 1.4 million when Capcom expected 2 million and it’s not as if digital will make a difference, sales aren’t bad, but they were disappointing, it seems like XX will become the worst selling traditional Monster Hunter game on the platform.

Moving to Switch, Zelda was the best selling game as expected, it didn’t have the 1:1 attach rate you’ll see in the west but its sales are great nonetheless, the Switch version alone has sold nearly as much as the last home console game, Skyward Sword, depending on how it keeps selling it might outsell Twilight Princess as well, even on Wii U its doing fine, it had no trouble outselling the HD ports, and it might just be able to outsell Hyrule Warriors to become the best selling Zelda on the system, not a big accomplishment sadly. Other Switch software did fine too as 1 2 Switch and Bomberman sold well too, the first one won’t become a Wii Sports like phenomenon while the second one will probably become the series’ best selling game in over a decade.

On the western games front we have Horizon and Ghost Recon doing very well too, Horizon had the highest first week for an open world game that isn’t GTA and the highest first week for SIE since the rebranding, it’ll very likely become their best-selling game, and will outsell every Sony published game on a home console since Crash Bandicoot 3, yes, Horizon will very likely outsell Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us. Ghost Recon also broke some milestones as it has the biggest ever week for a Ubisoft game, on a single platform or not and its already among their best-selling games ever.

Nier also had a great second month with 78k units, combined with digital the game has now sold over 300k units and it’s one of Square Enix’s bestselling games on PS4, the positive reception carried the game to a huge first week and great lasting sales, it should keep selling for some time still.

Moving to underperforming titles now, while not on the chart Koei Tecmo wasn’t happy with the performance of Musou Stars and Blue Reflection, while we don’t know how much they shipped KT said they were below expectations, the games sold 57k and 44k respectively, they kept the downward trajection that musou and Gust games have been following, at least KT have Nioh, which just broke the 200k mark, to make up for them. We also have Accel World vs. SAO on underperforming games, as it hasn’t even sold 100k.

Capcom was the top publisher of the month, in both units sold and revenue, they also became the biggest publisher of the year, a title that Nintendo will get back next month, after Capcom there were Nintendo, Square Enix, SIE and Ubisoft.

Hardware

The Nintendo Switch leads the hardware race with 566k units, this is both for the month and year as it outdid 3 months of sales of PS4 in just one, behind the Switch was the 3DS which sold some 163k units between all models, the New Nintendo 3DS XL keeps being the favorite as it did 125k of that, the system even saw 15% increase compared to last March and its up YoY for the whole year, obviously Monster Hunter XX give the hardware a boost, but even outside of that sales of the 3DS are very stable, even without notable releases. It was a positive month for Nintendo.

PS4 also does well selling 162k units, 28k of that is the Pro which is becoming more and more available, just like the 3DS sales of the PS4 are showing stability despite no major releases which is a great sign, Vita on the other hand is seeing sales drop more and more as it sold 41k this month, its down 50% YoY on both hardware and software so it seems like this will indeed by the final year for the system, finally the PS3 saw a last boost due to discontinuation news, it sold 6k this month, more than 2/3 of the total sales for the year, and twice as much as the Wii U sold for the whole month.

March was a huge month, but things will come crashing down come April, at least we should be looking at a big Golden Week this year.

The Switch had a great start, now let’s see where it keeps going.