Japan Monthly Report for January 2018

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 January was from January 1^st to January 28^th (4 weeks)

2018 is off to a great start, as we see the biggest January in well over a decade, the release of Monster Hunter: World combined with strong PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch sales made January 2018 to perform on par with the best months of 2017.

Over 47 billion yen in revenue came from January, more than twice than last January, split between hardware and software are close, but software did a bit more than hardware, Monster Hunter: World was the main driver doing around 30% of the revenue of the total month on its own.

• Hardware: Around 23 billion in revenue were from hardware, Nintendo Switch was once again the lead platform on revenue, despite this being the first month since launch where it wasn’t the lead platform on units sold. Shortages stopped Switch dead on its tracks, while the PS4 saw its best January yet. January also further showed the collapse of the 3DS, selling less than 90k units.
• Software: Over 24 billion in revenue was software, as mentioned before Monster Hunter: World being most of it, it more than made up for an otherwise lackluster line up, January starts with 5 games grossing over a billion yen and over 50% more software sold compared to last January.

Software

The best-selling games of January 2018 were:

1. [PS4] Monster Hunter: World – 1.350.412 (Over 13 billion yen in revenue)
2. [SWI] Splatoon 2 – 219.595 (Close to 1.3 billion in revenue)
3. [SWI] Super Mario Odyssey – 190.252 (Over 1.2 billion in revenue)
4. [SWI] Mario Kart 8: Deluxe – 169.586 (Over 1 billion in revenue)
5. [PS4] Dissidia Final Fantasy NT – 137.304 (Over 1.1 billion in revenue)
6. [3DS] Pokémon Ultra Sun / Ultra Moon – 129.382 (Over 500 million in revenue)
7. [SWI] Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle – 116.420 (Over 700 million in revenue)
8. [3DS] Mario Party: The Top 100 – 105.056 (Over 500 million in revenue)
9. [SWI] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 79.346 (Near 500 billion in revenue)
10. [3DS] Yo-kai Watch Busters 2: Hihou Legend Banbarayaa - Sword / Magnum – 71.811 (Over 350 milloin in revenue)

I’ve already mentioned Monster Hunter: World a couple of times, but here’s again, at 1.35m Monster Hunter: World is the biggest launch on PS4, its second best selling title, and the biggest retail launch for a home console game since Final Fantasy XIII in 2009, in gross it’s all those things too and more. Its already the top grossing game on PS4, of all time, just on its launch week, for comparison Dragon Quest XI grossed around 7.3 billion on opening week and 12 billion in all of 2017, which was enough to become the top grossing game of the year (FFXV did 6 billion opening week, and 8.5 billion total, for those interested)

For gross its even a bigger launch than of Pokémon Sun / Moon, which did 10 billion first week, World is bigger than any 3DS launch and the biggest videogame launch since Monster Hunter Freedom 3’s 13.4 billon launch, though World is bigger when factoring digital sales (MH4’s launch was of 12 billion for those interested)

World might not be the best-selling game of the year, but its launch week alone almost assured it’d be the top grossing, the game had a very high sell through and a positive reception, so it should keep selling well, at a high price, for some time still.

So, finally moving on, first the other January releases.

Dissidia did poorly, but it was very much expected, the new title won’t even match first week sales of 012, and despite a fairly decent first week it completely collapsed afterwards, for what its worth it was the best launch for a Final Fantasy spin off on PS4, though that just says how damaged the brand has been and how PS4 hasn’t helped much.

Mario + Rabbids did fine, not well, but fine, its hard to predict the performance of Switch titles seeing how hardware sales are so inconsistent, but the game saw a decent first week and a decent second week drop, it should sell at least 200k, which is good for a non-sport Mario spin off today, specially considering the Rabbids are not popular in Japan by any means.

Finally on old titles we have a trio of Switch selling well, those are the best selling games on the system and all have had terrific performances, Splatoon 2 sold over 2 million units, becoming the first home console game to do so since Wii Play in 2010, Mario Odyssey is well on track on outselling Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is just a few thousand units away from outselling the original release, even Zelda is doing excellent, post-holiday the game has performed very well, with minimal drops, and even some increases, the Switch version has sold over 800k units and shipments of it, combined with the Wii U version surpassed that of 1 million units, becoming the first title in the series to do since Ocarina of Time did it in spring 1999.

About 3.8 million games were sold in January, with the PS4 taking the lead at 1.9m, over a million more than last January and the biggest month for the system in term of boxed games old, in 2017 there were 10 million PS4 games sold in Japan, for 1/5 for the first month of 2018 is great, after it is the Nintendo Switch with a bit over 1 million games sold and the 3DS at 630k, everything else combined is below 150k.

 

Capcom starts the year on top with 1.37m games sold at 13.2b in revenue, Nintendo is right behind them at 1m games sold at 6b in revenue, Capcom should stay ahead on both for a few months (revenue should last longer) but, as they always do, Nintendo will overtake them. Afterwards we have The Pokémon Company at 155k, Square Enix at 137k and Bandai Namco at 100k.

Hardware

For the first time since February the PS4 is the top selling system in Japan at 325k units and 9.5b in revenue, while it is ahead of the Nintendo Switch on units by 55k, its behind it on revenue by 1.7billion. PS4 should be the top selling system for some weeks still, as Monster Hunter hype dies down and Switch stock improves, there’s no telling of course.

3DS sees a pretty poor month with 86k units sold, but despite what Nintendo might say the system is on its way out, there’s very little announcements for titles and price cuts won’t do much for a system so saturated, all the revisions extended the 3DS life, which would cause a faster collapse than typical. Everything else combined is less than 30k.