Japan Monthy Report for April 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 April was from April 3rd to April 30th (4 weeks)

Q1 2017 was an extremely busy period in Japan, from a slew of big games to the launch of new hardware, there were some very busy and very interesting months, so much that we’re taking a large break from all the excitement as Q2 2017 is going to be extremely slow, from April to June there are essentially only 3 major releases. Should be the calm before the storm that Dragon Quest XI and Splatoon 2 will be in June, but that is a very long calm and we’re in for some very boring months.

Either way April is typically a slow period with one major exception, the first half of Golden Week at the end of the month. For the past few years Golden Week has been rather weak, with disappointing sales of hardware and software, we were hoping that the Nintendo Switch would change the situation this year but it wasn’t the case, its not as if sales were bad they were just disappointing. Apart from that we two games to look forward to, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Switch and Fire Emblem Echoes on 3DS. Just how would the enhanced port of Mario Kart do and how would the Fire Emblem remake do with the series newfound popularity?

The dedicated industry generated over 18 billion yen in revenue in April, an expected steep drop from March, but in line with January and February. Lasting sales of Nintendo Switch hardware and software are the bulk of it as Nintendo’s new machine generated over 8 billion yen, sales of the Nintendo 3DS also remained stable, generating some 5 billion yen in revenue. The PS4 however saw a large drop in revenue as there were barely any releases for the month (let alone the high priced ones) to drive up revenue, lack of releases also made hardware sales drop, as during April 2017 the PS4 sold less than in April 2016, nonetheless the system generated 4 billion yen in revenue, that alone should tell you just how much Vita, Wii U and PS3 are making nowadays.

• Hardware: Hardware was the main driver of revenue once again as over 11 billion yen came from hardware, the Nintendo Switch stays ahead with over 6 billion yen coming from it with 202k units sold, nearly as much as all the other platforms combined. Revenue of hardware was also higher than both January and February but obviously lower than March with sales being around 50% higher compared to last April. After the Switch goes the 3DS with 95k and then the PS4 with 87k, 3DS is slightly up compared to last April while PS4 is slightly down, the first negative result for the system in a very long time. Once again price matters as even though the 3DS sold more than the PS4, PS4 generates over a billion yen more in revenue, 2.8 billion to 2.7 billion. Finally, Vita is seeing some of its worst weeks since 2012 and only sold 22k, a nearly 50% drop from last month and a 60% drop from last April. PS3, Wii U and Xbox One sold less than 5k combined (with PS3 above the Wii U).
• Software: This wasn’t a very good month for software as revenue from it was around 7 billion yen, the worst month so far, a huge drop from March and even considerably lower than January and February. One of the main drivers of software revenue the past few months were the premium priced PS4 games, 8000+ yen games like Resident Evil 7, Nier: Automata or Horizon: Zero Dawn, we didn’t see such titles this month, with the closest to it being the Dark Souls III rereleases, which didn’t sell nearly as well as those other titles and wasn’t as highly priced. As such PS4 software sales were the lowest they’ve been in months with only 350k units sold and just over a billion yen in revenue a huge drop from the average of January through March, 1 million games sold and 6 billion in revenue. Switch actually did better than the PS4 for the month, with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe alone nearly outselling all PS4 games for April, Switch moved 450k games and 2.5 billion in revenue, still though, 3DS remains on top with 780k games and over 3 billion in revenue. Vita, Wii U, PS3 and XB1 sold less than 250k games and generated less than 650m in revenue.

Software

The best selling games of April 2017 were:

1. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 280.229 (Over 1.8 billion yen in revenue)
2. [3DS] Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadow of Valentia – 158.509 (Over 850 million yen in revenue)
3. [3DS] Monster Hunter XX – 152.545 (Over 780 million yen in revenue)
4. [3DS] Dragon Ball Heroes: Ultimate Mission X – 92.809 (Over 570 million yen in revenue)
5. [SWI] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 65.139 (Over 420 million yen in revenue)
6. [3DS] Pro Baseball Famista Climax – 55.581 (Over 320 million yen in revenue)
7. [3DS] Mario Sports Superstars – 42.162 (Over 170 million in revenue)
8. [PS4] Dark Souls III: The Fire Fades Edition – 42.115 (Over 250 million yen in revenue)
9. [PSV] Dungeon Travelers 2-2: The Maiden Who Fell into Darkness and the Book of Beginnings – 35.963 (Over 210 million yen in revenue)
10. [SWI] 1 2 Switch – 31.067 (Over 130 million yen in revenue)

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe had fantastic start, it saw the biggest first week on Switch yet, surpassing Zelda by nearly 80k units, it also performed very well compared to the original release as Mario Kart 8 debuted at 350k on Wii U back in 2014, it also saw bigger first week sales of all PS4 games but Final Fantasy XV and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, the game is showing some great long time performance and will be the main driver of Switch sales until Splatoon 2 arrives. It and Zelda are expected to surpass 500k units sold by the end of May.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe also becomes the 12^th game to generate over a billion in revenue, becoming the 5^th top grossing game of the year on its launch week.

On the other hand we have Fire Emblem Echoes, ever since 2012’s Fire Emblem: Awakening the series has seen a massive surge in popularity, Awakening and its sequel Fates both sold 500k units in Japan which ties them for the second best selling game in the series, as such it was expected for future Fire Emblem games to continue selling well, and while Echoes didn’t sell bad its had a disappointing performance, having a first week on par with the series’ remakes on DS but showing disappointing longtime performance, its inlikely it’ll match the sales of the other remakes (250k). The Switch game, slated for next year, will be a big test for the franchise on weather or not its resurgence was temporary or if it’ll have long staying power.

Dragon Ball Heroes saw a bigger first week than the other games, all thar promotion alongside the anime must be helping, Famista also had a bigger first week than the last entry on 3DS, its wait and see on weather or not they’ll be able to match sales of their predecesors but they’re off to a good start

Slow month so not much else to say, however its worth noting the performance of Nier: Automata, selling some 20k units last month; combined with digital the game has sold over 340k units, which is higher than the last reported figure for Resident Evil 7, positive word of mouth should keep Automata selling for some time still, it’ll likely be the best selling PS4 game of 2017 by the time Dragon Quest XI releases and could potentially outsell other major PS4 titles such as Yakuza 6 and Dragon Quest Heroes.

Nintendo was the top publisher of the month, selling more units and generating more revenue than everyone else combined with over 628k games sold and over 3.6 billion yen in revenue. After Nintendo we see Capcom, Bandai Namco, Square Enix and Koei Tecmo. Nintendo also becomes the top publisher for the year in terms of units sold a position they’ll likely maintain for the whole year, Nintendo has sold over 2 million games, surpassing Capcom’s 1.8 million, them being the only publishers to move over a million units of software. Capcom is still on top on revenue with 11.3 billion, just 800 million more however, Nintendo will take the top stop on both categories by the end of May.

Hardware

The Nintendo Switch stays ahead of the competition with 202k units sold and over 6 billion yen in revenue, behind it is the 3DS with 95k and 1.7 billion in revenue. 3DS breaks to 5k on the New 3DS model, 17k on the 2DS and 73k on the New 3DS XL. 3DS saw a slightly better April compared to last year and its still up year on year.

PS4 on the other hand saw a mild drop compared to last April, the system sold 87k units, 16k of them being PS4 Pro and around 3 billion in revenue, the system is still up year on year but it’s the first negative result its seen in months, it should keep going sadly as its expected to stay on negative for May and June, though it should bounce back in July. Vita keeps dropping too as it only sold 22k a 60% drop from last April, the system is down 50% year on year and will keep on dropping as it has no major releases for months, weather or not Vita gets a final +100k depends on if God Eater 3 releases on the platform or not.

Finally Wii U, PS3 and Xbox One don’t amount to 5k sold, PS3 sold more than Wii U again and will probably keep doing so as Wii U will likely drop below the 100 units mark soon, this will probably be the last year of tracking for PS3 and will very likely outsell the Wii U on its final year.

May should be a big drop from April and be the worst month of the year, the largest retail release is Ultra Street Fighter II on Switch, that should tell you what kind of numbers we should be expecting.

Over 100 billion yen in revenue in 2017.