Japan Monthly Report for March 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 March was from February 26th to April 1st (5 weeks)

Kirby was the best selling game on an otherwise slow March, Monster Hunter: World and PS4 sales slowed down faster and harder than expected, and while the month saw a huge, and understandable, drop from last March, it was still good.

Around 26 billion yen were made in March, a mild drop compared to February with software sales just edging out hardware sales.

• Hardware: About 12 billion yen come from hardware, 7 billion being Nintendo Switch, PS4 sales were sluggish compared to previous months, seems like Monster Hunter: World will have a brief effect on hardware sales, the lackluster upcoming line up means PS4 sales won’t be recovering soon.
• Software: About 14 billion came from software, PS4 keeps being the driver of software sales for the year, with 50% of games sold in 2018 in Japan being PS4 games. Unlike February most software sales for March come from games released in March.

Software

The best selling titles in March 2018 were:

1. [SWI] Kirby Star Allies – 372.882 (Around 2.3 billion in revenue)
2. [PS4] Hokuto Ga Gotoku – 159.611 (Around 1.3 billion in revenue)
3. [SWI] Splatoon 2 – 116.188 (Over 650 million in revenue)
4. [PS4] Monster Hunter: World – 95.869 (Over 670 million in revenue)
5. [PS4] Super Robot Wars X – 84.550 (Around 800 million in revenue)
6. [PS4] Far Cry 5 – 81.405 (Over 730 million in revenue)
7. [PS4] Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom – 68.389 (Over 560 million in revenue)
8. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 67.340 (Over 330 million in revenue)
9. [PSV] Super Robot Wars X – 55.397 (Around 450 million in revenue)
10. [SWI] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 54.964 (Around 330 million in revenue)

Kirby was the best selling game in another month full of games underperforming, the game did very well though, matching first week sales of Triple Deluxe and having very good drops, with digital Star Allies should be close to 400k, and with the April + Golden week should put it above 500k by the next report. The other positive news come from Ubisoft’s Far Cry 5, the game had the best first week sales for the series, a very healthy shipment and digital sales makes it the best selling game in the series in Japan, just on launch week. Ubisoft titles keep performing very well in Japan, last year’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands sold over 200k and their best selling title, Rainbow Six: Siege, is at over 340k and still selling.

The main underperformer this time was Hokuto Ga Gotoku, first week sales were better than anticipated, being equal to Yakuza Kiwami 2, but drops have been much harsher since, at 160k sold, it’ll have a hard time reaching 200k, it might not even reach the 186k needed for it to not be the worst selling Yakuza title, the game is doing poor for other Fist of the North Star games, mainly Koei Tecmo’s musou efforts. Yakuza has been on decline on PS4, with all games being disappointments, but this is the biggest yet, for what its worth the series is now founding audience outside Japan, and there’s a soft reboot of sorts in the works, so we can be optimistic.

On continue decline there’s also Super Robot Wars, both versions of the game did worse than last year’s SRWV, collapse of the Vita is the main reason for the drop but unlike other PSV/PS4 multiplatform titles PS4 isn’t making up for the loss this time, the issues with this series, just like Yakuza, go deeper than the platforms its releasing on, so an hypothetical Switch version wouldn’t help much in increasing sales.

Ni No Kuni 2, while performing above expectations, didn’t do well either but it’s not surprising nor does it impact sales of the game in the long run, it was made for the rest in mind and the Japanese release is for the most part an afterthought, the game got very little promotion in the country and most sales are for hardcore fans of the original/PS3 game, and some curious about its positive reception, at least it did better than the other big PS4 RPG for the month, as Valkyria Chronicles 4 was unable to enter Top 10.

Old games also keep doing well, most being Nintendo Switch titles, special mention goes to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild showing up on Top 10 one year after launch, it was #2 on March 2017 and #10 on March 2018, total sales of the game are at 950k units now, it could be a million seller by the next report. Being bundled and a 5 week month also cause Splatoon 2 to sell more than on February, it’s the 2^nd best selling game of the year and as it keeps outselling new releases it should continue for months to come.

Monster Hunter: World also keeps doing well, even if its dropping faster than anticipated, but the smaller PS4 userbase, as well as the high price of the game, meant it’d be difficult for it to sell high for longer periods like the 3DS games did, it has sold more than most of them anyway, with digital sales the game is over 2.7m, with only Monster Hunter 4 and Monster Hunter Generations above it, sales dropping means its very unlikely it’ll get to 3 million, but still the game sold well above expectations.

Closer to 2.5 million games were sold in Japan on March, with 2m being PS4/Switch games, despite Kirby being the best selling title it PS4 still moved more software, 1.1m compared to 969k, Super Robot Wars also made the month fairly decent for the Vita at 177k, notable for how close it was to the 3DS, at 309k.

Nintendo was the top publisher of the month and became the top publisher of the year at 739k and 2.23m respectively, it’s still second to Capcom in revenue (17.6b to 12.6b) but its only a matter of time, it’s once again Nintendo’s year. The rest of the big publishers for the month were SEGA (238k), Bandai Namco (182k), Koei Tecmo (157k) and Ubisoft (112k).

Hardware

Nintendo Switch recovered after a very slow February and was the best selling system for the month, with over 50% of hardware sold being the system, sales of the PlayStation 4 have slowed down more, and faster than expected with weekly sales dropping below 30k for plenty of times, some of these can be attributed to shortages, but it also seems like Monster Hunter won’t have a lasting effect on the system’s sales, still sold well at 115k but it’s down compared to last March, it’s still up year on year overall but its hard to tell if it’ll be up overall, the system had an explosive start for 2018, but a barren release schedule for the rest of the year have made excitement for the system drop considerably, for the following 3 months there are only 3 notable releases, two of them multiplatform.

Switch sold 230k, PS4 115k and 3DS 52k, everything else combined not even 30k.

Hardware sales will become sluggish for the next few months due to the weak release schedule, the main thing to look forward to is how Nintendo Switch stock fluctuates and what will happen after Nintendo Labo launches.