Japan Monthly Report for November 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 September was from October 30th to December 3rd (5 weeks)

An unusual 5 week long November comes out as one of the strongest months of the year, with the second best month for Nintendo Switch hardware and a better than expected launch for Pokémon Ultra Sun / Ultra Moon.

Over 43 billion yen in revenue came from November, falling short of March and June, but not by a long shot, becoming the third biggest month of the year, it sees a near 50% increase over October and is a noticeable increase over last November as well. Strong sales of Nintendo Switch, which saw its biggest month since launch, better than expected performance of Pokémon Ultra Sun / Ultra Moon and strong performance from high priced titles such as Call of Duty: WWII are to thank.

• Hardware: Close to 24 billion of revenue comes from hardware, with Nintendo Switch revenue being some 60% of it at 15 billion in revenue selling some 523k units, after it PS4 and 3DS have a near tie in units sold but have a large difference at revenue, 5b to 2.5b. 3DS is now down year on year after a strong performance, but it’s not making up for the launch of Pokémon Sun / Moon last year, PS4 also down from last year.
• Software: A bit less than 20 billion comes from software, the lion share of it being the new Pokémon games at 8.2 billion, we also once again saw a strong high priced performer on PS4 with Call of Duty: WWII outdoing expectations at 2.3b, more than twice as much as Infinite Warfare did last year, strong lasting sales of Super Mario Odyssey, Splatoon 2 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe are also included.

Software

The bestselling games of November 2017 were:

1. [3DS] Pokemon Ultra Sun / Ultra Moon – 1.578.101 (Over 8 billion in revenue)
2. [SWI] Super Mario Odyssey – 356.751 (Near 2 billion in revenue)
3. [PS4] Call of Duty: WWII – 306.540 (Over 2.3 billion in revenue)
4. [SWI] Splatoon 2 – 120.414 (Over 650 million in revenue)
5. [SWI] Xenoblade Chronicles 2 – 97.274 (Near 900 million in revenue)
6. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 90.527 (Over 500 million in revenue)
7. [3DS] Style Savvy: Styling Star – 63.063 (Over 300 million in revenue)
8. [PS4] .hack//G.U. Last Recode – 56.164 (Close to 440 million in revenue) |ONE WEEK OF DATA MISSING|
9. [PS4] Star Wars: Battlefront II – 53.430 (Over 400 million in revenue)
10. [PS4] Ark: Survival Evolved – 46.639 (Over 250 million in revenue)

Pokémon Ultra Sun / Ultra Moon was the biggest launch of the year on a single platform on units sold, and despite expected to underperform it’s on track on becoming the best-selling game of the year, not precisely a huge accomplishment as the other big 3DS titles for the year underperform, but good performance nonetheless, it’s obviously a huge drop from Sun / Moon last year, doing less than half of revenue and units, but it’s an ok start.

On other overperformers we have Call of Duty: WWII which vastly outsold last year’s entry, Infinite Warfare, as is WWII is on track of outselling Black Ops III to potentially become the best-selling entry of the series on PS4. It also seems like it’ll be the second best performing PS4 game of the year on both units sold and revenue, it has the biggest month of the year ahead of it with little competition and the difference between in and Nier: Automata on both cases is small.

On old games we have a lot of strong performers, Mario Odyssey sees a fantastic second month already outselling Mario Kart 8 Deluxe becoming the second best-selling Switch game and even outselling Mario Sunshine comparing it to other Mario games, it’ll also outsell the Galaxy games this year, handily. We also see Splatoon 2 keeping a strong performance, not much to say about that really, the squids are strong, and finally on Switch Mario Kart 8 Deluxe had another excellent month, soon enough it’ll start outpacing the original Wii U release. As is the only thing limiting the sales of Switch games is how many units can Nintendo ship to store shelves.

And finally, the other new releases, Style Savvy had an alright start, not much to expect this late in the 3DS life, but it should be a fine performer on the holidays, while Star Wars: Battlefront II had an all-around terrible launch, all the negative press, as well as how well Call of Duty was received hurt the game, for what it’s worth, with the movie coming out it could have a good holiday, but as is the launch was terrible.

A bit over 4 million games were sold in November, half of them being 3DS games, 4m puts it on par with March, July, and last November, being up by around 50% from last October. As is software sales outside Switch, PS4 and 3DS are near irrelevant, PSV + Wii U + PS3 + XB1 don’t amount to even 5% of the total software sales for the month.

The Pokémon Company was the biggest publisher of the month with some 1.6m games sold, behind them goes Nintendo with over 850k, Nintendo is the biggest publisher of the year in units and revenue at 6.3m and near 35 billion in revenue, took them some time to overtake Square Enix. Sony also see their best month of the year at 330k with Square Enix and Electronic Arts after wards at around 100k each.

Hardware

Nintendo Switch doubles its performance from October as stock is becoming more plentiful, still not meeting demand, but damn strong, selling some 523k, the best month the system has seen post launch. After it goes the 3DS at 155k about 90k less than last November and finally down year on year, 3DS stayed strong, but couldn’t keep going. Most 3DS sales come from the new 2DS XL at 88k, the new 3DS XL at 53k, 2DS at 12k and new 3DS at 1.4k.

PS4 had another good month, despite being down year on year again selling some 152k, just below the 3DS but doing twice as much revenue, PS4 couldn’t compete with the launch of the Pro, but even then, its only down by 50k. 33k units were PS4 Pro.

PSV, Wii U, PS3 and XB1 don’t amount to 25k, even with the launch of the Xbox One X.