Japan Monthly Report for August 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 August was from July 31^st to September 3^rd (5 weeks)

This was a big August, not because of large releases, but because of its length, this was an unusual 5-week month, so this along with lasting sales of July’s big releases made up for the third largest month of the year.

The industry generated over 31 billion yen in revenue for the month, with hardware outdoing software, a 18 billion to 13 billion difference, reason being Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo 3DS keeping good performance, the new Nintendo console seeing its strongest month since launch. Software, on the other hand, depended of older titles to carry the month.

• Hardware: Over 18 billion yen in revenue came from hardware, making it a flat month compared to June, though again, this was due the it being a long month more than anything. Nintendo Switch was the best-selling system of the month yet again selling over 287k, the 3DS family came behind it at 193k, then the PS4 at 187k, PS4 generated around twice as much revenue as the 3DS though, but it’s still over 2.5 billion yen behind the Switch. Everything else combined sold less than 30k and generated less than 500 million in revenue.
• Software: It did less than half of last month at 13 billion yen, and even then it was due to the big releases of July as August releases were weak as expected, so much that the three best-selling games of July were also the three best-selling games of August, something we haven’t seen on the year I’ve been making this. 3DS moved the most software and generated the most revenue at 1.3m and 5.4b respectively, PS4 still stays ahead of the Switch on software, moving some 950k games and 4.7b respectively, about 50% more than the Switch on both accounts, everything else moves less than 200k and does less than 250 million in revenue.

Software

The best-selling games of August 2017 were:

1. [3DS] Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age – 531.634 (Over 3.3 billion in revenue)
2. [PS4] Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age – 336.895 (Over 2.6 billion in revenue)
3. [SWI] Splatoon 2 – 307.617 (Over 16 billion in revenue)
4. [3DS] The Snack World: TreJarers – 149.694 (Over 700 million in revenue)
5. [SWI] Monster Hunter XX: Nintendo Switch Ver. – 122.262 (Over 715 million in revenue)
6. [PS4] Everybody's Golf – 100.902 (Over 640 million in revenue)
7. [3DS] Great Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney 2 - Naruhodou Yokosuka no Kakugo – 97.909 (Over 560 million in revenue)
8. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 61.777 (Over 340 million in revenue)
9. [PS4] Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy – 43.556 (Over 200 million in revenue)
10. [3DS] Etrian Mystery Dungeon 2 – 34.435 (Over 240 million in revenue)

Dragon Quest XI kept a good performance selling an additional 860k units between the two versions, as expected the 3DS continues to sell more, but neither version is pulling the numbers it should, it’s not doing bad though as the game has sold over 3.1 million with digital, but given what it released on its undoubtful Square Enix expected better, still though, the 3DS version became the best-selling digital game of the year, just barely surpassing Monster Hunter XX, while the PS4 version is the top grossing game of the year, a title that it might not lose given that it’s over a billion yen above the 3DS version.

Splatoon 2 is also doing great as it became Switch’s first million seller, as it was also expected the game is now outselling both versions of Dragon Quest XI and could very well be the best-selling game of September, with both versions of DQ and with Pokémon expected to underperform this could very well be Splatoon’s year, if Nintendo can supply enough consoles to Japan that is. Also, noteworthy on Switch is Monster Hunter XX, which despite becoming the best-selling third-party game on the console, it’s not doing well, in fact so far, it’s the worst performing traditional hunting title in the series, even considering it’s a late port. Mario Kart keeps doing well however, it’s been on the top 10 for 5 months straight and it should keep going, it’s not tracking too far behind the original, and if it keeps going it’ll soon enough start doing better. Finally, outside the top 10, at #15 its Zelda, selling some 22k for the month, the Switch version just surpassed Twilight Princess on Wii, on less than half the time, we could see it sell some 700k this year, great bounce back for the series.

On new releases, The Snack World is off to a decent start, stronger than Yo-kai Watch, though the circumstances are different, it’s hard to tell if the game will be a hit like Level 5 intends it to be, we won’t find out for some months still, if the game keeps selling that is, there’s also a smartphone version coming out some day, so like Lady Layton, it’s not the end of the world if the 3DS version doesn’t do well.

We got two long returning IPs in the form of Everybody’s Golf and the Crash Bandicoot remakes, both on PS4. Everybody’s Golf comes from a 5-year hiatus after underperforming installments on the PS3 and the PSV, this PS4 iteration is off to a decent start, though far from the franchises’ highlights, once again there’s a mobile game to soften the blow, and its rather difficult to say where this installment will end, after all we don’t see many family friendly/casual oriented games on PS4 so it’s hard to know how abundant such demographic is.

Regarding Crash, Japan wasn’t as receptive of his return as the rest of the world, the original line of platformers on the PS1 were very successful, it’s the biggest a western IP has ever been in the country, but seeing how the crowd that made those games successful on the PS1 aren’t the ones playing on PS4 today, unlike the west, so it wasn’t expected to be a big hit, it sold alright for what it was.

On the sequels, Etrian Mystery Dungeon 2 and the Great Ace Attorney 2, both did poorly, performing well below their predecessors.

On totals, the Nintendo 3DS moved the most software at 1.3 million, a mild drop from July and a huge increase from last August, more than 8 million 3DS games have been sold for the year so far, and it’s up year on year, by a somewhat small margin though, still impressive for such late in life. Then we see the PS4 at 950k a large drop from July yet a large increase from last August, despite no big releases, Dragon Quest XI pulled through, outselling last August’s big game, Tales of Berseria. Switch sold some 622k units, most being Splatoon 2. Finally, PSV sold 136k, Wii U 28k, PS3 14k and Xbox One 711.

 

Square Enix was once again the top publisher of the month, selling some 940k games, Square is the top grossing publisher at 30 billion yen, having a large gap to Nintendo’s 24 billion, who still is on top on units sold at 4.5m to Square Enix’s 4.25m, not a large gap, but Nintendo should be selling more software throughout the rest of the year. As the rest of the top publishers for August we see Nintendo again at 467k, Capcom at 265k, Level 5 at 184k and finally SIE at 150k, first notable month from Sony since March.

Hardware

Nintendo Switch stays on top with its biggest month since launch, selling 287k and over 8.6 billion yen in revenue, total revenue from the system is now close to 50 billion. The Nintendo 3DS comes then in another strong month from Nintendo at 193k with 3.1 billion in revenue, despite the new SKU the new 3DS XL still sold the most at 79k, followed by the new 2DS XL at 75k, the regular 2DS at 25k and finally the new 3DS at 3.3k, it’d be interested to see how the new 2DS XL performs in the upcoming months. The PS4 was just behind the 3DS at 187k with 6 billion in revenue, PS4 Pro being 31k units with its share constantly increasing. Finally, PSV sells 23k, Wii U, PS3 and XB1 sell less than 1500 units combined.

 

Revenue is down, but not too badly, however September is expected to be a slow month so it’ll drop further, hopefully we never see it drop as low as Q2 though, nothing notable is releasing until Gran Turismo Sport on mid-October after all.