Japan Monthly Report for July 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 July was from July 3rd to July 30th (4 weeks)

July was a huge month, as we predicted ever since we knew two of the biggest games of the year would release in it, just one week a part, then we learned that those games would get bundles, that other big games would release on the month too, and finally that there would be new hardware released, it was all set to be big and big it was, July was second biggest month of the year, just a bit behind March, and bigger than all Q2.

The industry generated over 45 billion yen in revenue for the month, breaking the streak of hardware this time software took center stage, with around 27 billion yen coming from software, at 4.2 million games sold, it’s the biggest month for software, both in units sold and revenue, since December and the best non-holiday month since July 2015, Nintendo stays above Sony on revenue in, coincidentally, the same split as hardware and software revenue.

• Hardware: Revenue of hardware amounted to more than 18 billion yen, given the new bundles and limited edition consoles, it’s hard to get a more proper estimate, it’s the biggest month of hardware since, well, obviously March, but outside of the launch of new hardware it’s the biggest month since December, once again Nintendo Switch was the biggest contributor to revenue, with 8 billion coming from it, the system sold around 270k units for the month, with 200k coming from the last two weeks, Nintendo did say that were looking to fix shortages around this time, so there you have it. Behind the Switch was actually the Nintendo 3DS that sold 250k units, this was due to the launch of the New Nintendo 2DS XL and Dragon Quest XI, but still a fantastic result for it being so late in its life, however even then it generated less revenue than the PS4, which sold just 70k units less at 180k units yet generated around 1.8 billion yen in revenue more, PS4 did 5.8 billion yen. July was the best month for the 3DS so far, for PS4 it was the second, it did slightly worse than in January. Everything else sold less than 25k combined, making less than 400 million in revenue.
• Software: As mentioned before this was the biggest month for software in the year, all thanks to the big releases of Splatoon 2 and both versions of Dragon Quest XI, the latter game alone generated more revenue in just 2 days than all hardware and software combined of any Q2 month, as far as milestones go, the very last week of the month is the biggest week for software sales of 2017 and bigger than any week of 2016 and 2015, there are only 2 candidate weeks of 2014 that could’ve been bigger, else it was the biggest week for software since the release week of Pokémon X / Y in 2013 where more than 3 million games were sold, on the very last of July we saw 2.4 million games sold. PS4 was the main drawer of revenue with around 12 billion yen coming from it, though 3DS sold more software at 1.6 million, just around 100k higher, 3DS software generated around 9 billion yen in revenue; finally, the Nintendo Switch sits at 935k games sold at over 5.6 billion in revenue, everything else sold less than 150k combined and generated less than 300 million in revenue.

Software

The bestselling games of July 2017 were:

1. [3DS] Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age – 1.130.468 (Over 7.3 billion yen in revenue)
2. [PS4] Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age – 950.338 (Over 9.2 billion yen in revenue)
3. [SWI] Splatoon 2 – 800.394 (Over 5 billion yen in revenue)
4. [PS4] Gundam Versus – 145.161 (Over 1.2 billion yen in revenue)
5. [PS4] Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age – 124.874 (Nearly 900 million yen in revenue)
6. [3DS] Hey! Pikmin – 118.544 (Nearly 600 million yen in revenue)
7. [3DS] Layton's Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaire's Conspiracy – 89.075 (Over 400 million yen in revenue)
8. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 42.907 (Over 200 million yen in revenue)
9. [SWI] Arms – 25.704 (Over 130 million yen in revenue)
10. [3DS] Sumikko Gurashi: Koko, Dokonan Desu? – 23.597 (Over 100 million yen in revenue)

As expected Dragon Quest XI was the best selling game of the month, and the biggest game launch of the year, even if its split between 2 consoles the 16.5 billion yen in revenue makes it the biggest launch since Pokémon X / Y in 2013, the PS4 version in particular is the largest launch the system has seen, and the biggest launch since Pokémon Sun / Moon last holiday, greatly surpassing Final Fantasy XV’s 6 billion opening week, but falling short of Pokémon’s 10 billion, it became the biggest launch for a home console game since Final Fantasy XIII in 2009. Huge achievement for the game as it also became the second top grossing game of the year, and it’s just a bit behind Monster Hunter XX.

While the 3DS version sold well too, it’s not quite as noteworthy, it’s the biggest 3DS launch since Pokémon, but that’s about it, that version should have the best longtime performance though, I’d expect it to already be selling twice as many units as the PS4 by next week and to be in the charts for much longer, so there’s that as well.

Splatoon 2’s launch was overshadowed by Dragon Quest, comparative to install base it’s the biggest launch for a game since Super Smash Bros. Melee in 2001, it even became the bestselling and top grossing game on Switch at launch doing more than 3 times as much as the original did back in 2015, the game should keep a great longtime performance, and should already be selling more than Dragon Quest XI on PS4 by the end of the month.

Now let’s talk about the rest, first Gundam Versus, and how to screw up a series. Ever since the PS2 years the versus game have been incredibly popular being some of the bestselling games on the PS2 and PS3, but then the first entry on PS4 saw the worst first week of the series, and was panned by fans, just like the Vita release some time ago, even with a disappointing first week it grossed over 1 billion yen selling 120k units, yet for the rest of the month it sold less than 25k and grossed less than 200k, take out the first week and sales are lower than Arms, it’s really odd what Bandai Namco has done with the series. Layton’s Mystery Journey didn’t do too well either, however the popularity of that series died alongside the Nintendo DS and wasn’t expected to do well anyway, that game is also on mobile though, which is the perfect platform to revive the series, the performance there matters most.

In positive results, we have Final Fantasy XII and Hey Pikmin, both surpassing expectations, FF had to content with remastering one of the least loved games in the series in Japan while Nintendo made a weird platform spin off for Pikmin, rather surprisingly both did well in the end. FFXII will at least do better than Type-0 HD but apart from that its sales aren’t very impressive, still, it’s pretty good, meanwhile Hey Pikmin’s first sales were comparable to that of Pikmin 3 and so far, the game has been having some pretty good drops, the game is doing fine.

It’s interesting to think about the Pikmin series because a hypothetical Pikmin 4 on Nintendo Switch would be the first time one of those games launched on a successful platform, so far Pikmin isn’t a huge seller, but there’s at least a dedicated fanbase.

About old games now, in top 10 we have two, Mario Kart and Arms, the first one is keeping a very good performance week on week, it just surpassed 600k units sold, Arms on the other hand, is a different story, despite a great first month, it’s not showing a good long time performance, even after the huge increase on Switch sales towards the end of the month the game just kept dropping, content is taking too long to release to keep attention for the game, and even worse Splatoon 2 now has it all. It’s already sold over 200, which is pretty good, but I wouldn’t expect for it to go much higher.

On totals the Nintendo 3DS moved the most software as previously mentioned with more than 1.6 million games sold, 3DS did much better than last July where the underperformer Yo-kai Watch 3 was released, then we have the PS4 just below 1.5 million making it the second biggest month the system has seen, behind the 1.8 million it sold last December, just like the 3DS the PS4 does much better than last July where its biggest release was an Idolm@ster game, finally, on the noteworthy the Nintendo Switch moved over 935k games seeing its best month yet. PSV sells 115k, Wii U 24k, PS3 11k and XB1 656.

 

Square Enix was the biggest publisher of the month with over 2.2 million games sold, the most a publisher has seen in a single month this year, also the biggest on gross as they did over 17 billion yen, this in turned makes them the top grossing publisher of the year, with over 24.5 billion to Nintendo’s 21.4 billion, on units sold Nintendo is still ahead though at 4 million compared to SE’s 3.3 million. On July Nintendo sold another million games, making them the second biggest publisher, with 6.3 billion yen, Bandai Namco then with 162k and 1.3 billion yen and then Level 5 just below 100k with less than half a billion yen.

Hardware

Nintendo Switch was the top platform yet again, and it was here then it should be for the remainder of the year, with 270k units sold, behind was now the Nintendo 3DS that sold 250k, the newly released New Nintendo 2DS XL was the biggest seller of the 3DS SKUs with 172k units, the New 3DS XL sold 63k, the regular 2DS sold 10k and the New 3DS just 4k, ongoing performance of the New 2DS XL will be very interesting as this is the first time a revision arrives so late into a system’s life in Japan. PlayStation 4 fell behind the 3DS this time at 179k units sold, somewhat disappointing given the releases the system got, but pretty good anyway, from that PS4 Pro is 30k. PSV sells 19k, Wii U sells 813, PS3 sells 476 and Xbox One sells 288.

3DS and PS4 see huge increases YoY, everything else is obviously down.

We’re back up in revenue again as July was almost as big as all Q2 combined and was just a bit below March, a very good result.

August should see a drop, but shouldn’t be too large, if restocks of Nintendo Switch stays that system alone could do some 10 billion yen in revenue, the holiday period in the middle of the week should also keep sales high and of course we have lasting sales of Dragon Quest XI and Splatoon 2 to make up for the lack of notable releases, the biggest things we’re getting are the Great Ace Attorney 2 and Monster Hunter XX on Switch, both expected to underperform.