Japan Monthly Report for April 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 April was from April 2nd to April 29nd (4 weeks)

April was a terrible month as it was the lowest in terms of revenue since we started tracking, falling below than even the terrible May 2017, PS4 shortages and yet another weak holiday period were the main reason.

Over 15.5 billion yen in revenue were made in April, with software being slightly higher than hardware.

• Hardware: Over 7 billion came from hardware most of it being Nintendo Switch, PS4 saw the lowest sales its seen since the summer of 2014, due to stock shortages, all other systems were on decline and the Nintendo Switch could only sell so much as enthusiasm for the system has drop due to the recent lackluster release schedule.
• Software: An additional 8.5 billion came from software, PS4 and Switch almost tied for revenue with one being dependent on legacy sales while other on new releases, most software sales come from games released before April.

Software

The best selling games for April 2018 in Japan were:

1. [PS4] Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball 2018 – 133.555 (Around 1.15 billion in revenue)
2. [SWI] Nintendo Labo Toy-Con 01: Variety Kit – 114.434 (Around 850 million in revenue)
3. [SWI] Kirby Star Allies – 87.812 (Around 500 million in revenue)
4. [PS4] God of War – 72.693 (Over 500 million in revenue)
5. [SWI] Splatoon 2 – 71.091 (Around 400 million in revenue)
6. [SWI] The Snack World: TreJarers Gold – 62.802 (Over 380 million in revenue)
7. [PS4] Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball 2018 – 58.211 (Around 440 million in revenue)
8. [PS4] Far Cry 5 – 52.832 (Around 400 million in revenue)
9. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 43.246 (Over 210 million in revenue)
10. [SWI] Super Mario Odyssey – 33.501 (Over 170 million in revenue)

Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball 2018 on PS4 was the best selling game for the month making the first time a sports game of any kind is the best selling game of the month in years and the first time for Konami since Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain back in September 2015. Despite released on one platform less and with the Vita being nearly done the new title saw the best debut for the series in over a decade, the Vita drop was mild (though it won’t have the legs the 2016 game did) and the PS4 version greatly increased, it’d be interesting to see how it does for the rest of the year, Power Pro will be the second biggest title for PS4 for the first half of the year, only behind Monster Hunter: World.

The other noteworthy release for the month were both Nintendo Labo kits which were also the most interesting to look forward to. Looking at it as a typical game the Variety Kit is doing fine will the Robot one is underperforming, however this isn’t a regular release and shouldn’t be looked like that, for the time being I’ll refrain on commenting on Labo, we’ll see how its doing with a dedicated blogpost a month after release, one thing that its certain however is that the sell through its terrible, and they should be looking to fix that sooner rather than later.

The other 2 releases for the month, God of War and The Snack World, did better than expected, so at least we didn’t have disappointments this time around. God of War never clicked with audiences in Japan, and at the series’ start Sony themselves weren’t willing to release it in Japan as the early games were localized by Capcom, however with the series being reinvented and western games only being more popular in Japan it was right to be hopeful, and the overwhelming positive reception the game had made it had the second biggest launch for the series (behind God of War III) and an excellent second week drop, it should have no problem becoming the best selling game in the series in the region, that makes it another western Sony title overperforming in Japan after Uncharted 4 and Horizon: Zero Dawn, and the biggest of all should be The Last of Us: Part II.

We also have the port of Snack World on Switch, this was Level 5’s new multimedia project which didn’t take off like they’d expect but did fine for what it was on 3DS last year, now on Switch with lowered expectations the game once again did fine, it obviously won’t sell more than the 3DS version and with the anime concluded it won’t become another Yo-Kai Watch but the new Switch version will have no problem selling over 100k and should keep merchandising sales steady. On a tangent, Level 5 announced The Snack World for 3DS and mobile, since then the 3DS version released and they managed to announce and release a remaster of said game while they’re yet to show the mobile game.

Finally, on legacy titles, it’s mostly the same games we’ve talked about for months, not much new to say, Kirby Star Allies has now sold over 500k, a million is not out of the question for it, and on a milestone Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has now been on these monthly Top 10 for a full year now, Splatoon 2 will do the same come July.

Roughly 1.5m games were sold in Japan for April, 1 million less than on March, Nintendo Switch and PS4 were tied for more software with around 620k each while Power Pro put Vita software sales the closest they’ve ever been to 3DS at 167k to 149k.

Nintendo keeps being on top as far as publishers go with 442k games sold this month and close to 2.7m for the year so far, Power Pro put Konami on second place with 192k, Sony then with 86k, most being God of War, Level 5 with 76k and Ubisoft with 64k.

Hardware

Nintendo Switch was the best selling platform for the month and became the best selling system for the year, meanwhile the PlayStation 4 suffered from shortages which caused sales to drop the lowest they’ve been in nearly 4 years, seems like spike Monster Hunter: World disrupted their shipping and for April they were probably prioritizing shipping systems to the west in preparation to God of War.  Whatever the reason might be it caused sales for the system to drop a lot and it wasn’t solved until the last week of the month. 3DS keeps collapsing and even the biggest game the system is getting this year didn’t cause sales for the Vita to increase.

Switch sells 137k, PS4 61k, 3DS 33k and Vita 13k.