Japan Monthly Report for May 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 May was from April 30th to June 3rd (5 weeks).

An unusual 5 week long May ended up being a decent month, it was a bit above April in revenue and saw a big increase compared to last May, having actual games released this time certainly helped. 

Nintendo Switch seems to be stabilizing around a 30k-40k weekly sales, while the system is still the hottest thing in the market the lack of notable releases as well as announcements have made overall interest on the system to drop, it is now falling well behind the Nintendo 3DS and the Wii launches aligned and it’s not being sold out anymore. Sales of PS4 are also middling considering the monster of a game released earlier this year but seems like Monster Hunter had no lasting effects on the system’s sales, all while 3DS and Via just keep dropping.

• Hardware: Around 10 billion in revenue came from hardware with Nintendo Switch being most if once again, PS4 saw a good first week at the start of the month due to increased stock on golden week, but sales for the rest of the month were not impressive.
• Software: An additional 8 billion came from software, unlike May 2017 there were notable releases to drive software revenue this time, namely Dark Souls Remastered and the Persona dancing games, the first one performed as expected while the latter didn’t, though their high price still meant they generated a lot of revenue, in the end it was Nintendo’s Wii U was the main revenue driver.

Software

The best selling games of May 2018 were:

1. [SWI] Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze – 159.828 (Around 975 million in revenue)
2. [PS4] Dark Souls Remastered – 95.788 (Around 475 million in revenue)
3. [SWI] Splatoon 2 – 89.023 (Over 460 million in revenue)
4. [PS4] Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball 2018 – 74.667 (Over 500 million in revenue)
5. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 66.120 (Over 300 million in revenue)
6. [SWI] Kirby Star Allies – 58.060 (Over 320 million in revenue)
7. [SWI] Nintendo Labo Toy-Con 01: Variety Kit – 50.540 (Around 340 million in revenue)
8. [PS4] Detroit: Become Human – 44.654 (Over 300 million in revenue)
9. [SWI] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 43.542 (Over 230 million in revenue)
10. [SWI] Super Mario Odyssey – 39.347 (Over 200 million in revenue)

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze on Nintendo Switch ended up as the best selling game of the month, first week sales for the game were twice as high as the Wii U original (first time a Switch port debuts higher than the original) and managed to outsell it in just a few weeks, at worst it’ll only sell twice as much as it did on Wii U. Great start for the game but it rather goes to show just how poorly Donkey Kong did on Wii U, perhaps the biggest bomb on the system. Regardless the positive reception for the game caused it to have such a large first week despite mediocre preorders, and has helped on the games healthy weekly drops, its hard to say if it’ll become an evergreen title just yet.

The other mayor releases for the month were Dark Souls Remastered, which did about as well as expected, the low price should keep it going longer than a regular Dark Souls game, but remasters don’t typically do well in Japan. The other one, which was a surprise, was Detroit: Become Human, Quantic Dream’s previous interactive movies didn’t do anything special in Japan, but Detroit has clicked with audiences as previous games couldn’t, its already their best selling title in Japan and has seen healthy drops so far, the game is popularity among the streaming and fan art community.

On the disappointing side we have the Persona dancing games, all which failed to enter Top 10, revenue of the games is quite good, at near 800 million yen all SKUs combined, however sales for all SKUs were very poor. Alongside the DLC strategy its clear Atlus will make their money back, but sales for the games are terrible, they went from the best selling games in the series to the worst and also as the 3DS keeps collapsing its unlikely Persona Q2 will make much on its own either.

For legacy titles, the typical Nintendo ones keep doing well, not much to say, on the only interesting bet we have Breath of the Wild at 43k which is more than what it sold on May of last year, at 40k, this is mainly due to this May being one week longer, but its an impressive result nevertheless. As for the other old titles we have Powerful Pro Baseball on PS4 at #4, that was the best selling game of April and its selling very well, while the Vita version couldn’t enter Top 10 both versions have sold over 300k by now, with the PS4 one having outsold the 2016 title, the game will undoubtedly sell less than the 2016 game however as Vita has sold just half of what the 2016 title did, and while the PS4 version is doing well it won’t make up for the 100k sales of the PS3 version of the 2016 title.

Finally, we have Nintendo Labo, sell through its still bad, so far legs are alright, but not impressive, and the Robot Kid disappeared from the weekly charts, its still a bit too early to call it a bomb, but it’s not really doing well either.

Around 1.7 million games were sold in Japan for May, Nintendo Switch sold the most at 700k, PS4 was not too far behind with 620k while 3DS and Vita sold 300k combined, 3DS selling more.

 

Nintendo will likely be the top publisher of the month for every month of the year, for May they moved over 550k games at 3 billion yen in revenue, they’re also now the top publisher in units sold and in gross selling over 3 million games at over 18.3 billion yen in revenue. As for the month after Nintendo goes Konami at 100k, From Software at 98k, Sony at 66k and Atlus at 59k. Despite selling nearly half of what Konami did Atlus made more revenue due to the expensive Persona Dancing packs.

Hardware

Nintendo Switch will also continue to be the best selling hardware for every month for the rest of the year selling 181k for the month, and its just below 1m for the year so far, the system is doing better when compared to the extreme shortages it had last year, but it might not be so good once Splatoon 2 comes out and it gets better.

After Switch goes PS4 at 100k, 3DS at 37k and PSV at 14k.