Japan Monthly Report for July 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 July was from July 2nd to July 29th (4 weeks).

July was a Nintendo dominated month on hardware and software, yet it was also the weakest month of the year, doing slightly below April, and it was a huge drop from July 2017 putting the overall revenue of the market below 2017’s estimates when aligned.

Nintendo Switch was the main driver on units sold and revenue for both hardware and software on the month, generating 2/3 of the total revenue, lack of releases on PS4 also caused this, with not a single PS4 title on the best sellers.

• Hardware: Some 9 billion yen in revenue was hardware, with Nintendo Switch being nearly 6 billion of them. PS4 sales keep faltering despite renewed stock and even a new Monster Hunter: World bundle, sales of the system aren’t bad per se, but given its library it should be doing better than it is; meanwhile 3DS shows that it is indeed at the end of its life, as the newly release new 2DS XL bundles also barely moved any hardware. Switch represented over 50% of the hardware sold in Japan for the month.
• Software: About 6 billion yen was software, once again Nintendo Switch being most of it at 4.5 billion, this was the most one-sided month for Switch yet as it outsold and out grossed all other platforms combined, no notable PS4 releases and the low price and sales of 3DS software are the reason for this. YTD PS4 is still the lead on both gross and software by a good margin, but Switch will undoubtedly outsell it.

Software

The best-selling games of July 2018 were

1. [SWI] Octopath Traveler – 142.033 (Over 1 billion in revenue)
2. [SWI] Splatoon 2 – 101.567 (Over 560 million in revenue)
3. [SWI] Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum ‘N’ Fun! – 96.637 (Over 600 million in revenue)
4. [SWI] Mario Tennis Aces – 87.103 (Over 480 million in revenue)
5. [SWI] Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker – 73.864 (Around 300 million in revenue)
6. [SWI] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 72.241 (Over 240 million in revenue)
7. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 67.799 (Over 370 million in revenue)
8. [3DS] Pokémon Ultra Sun / Ultra Moon – 36.563 (Over 160 million in revenue)
9. [SWI] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 34.474 (Over 220 million in revenue)
10. [3DS] Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker – 28.724 (Around 110 million in revenue)

As you can see from that top 10 it was a strong month for Nintendo Switch yet again. This time Octopath Traveler was the best-selling game, a first time for Square Enix since Dragon Quest XI on 3DS did it last August, its also worth noting that it outsold the Final Fantasy XII remaster released this month last year. However, the game is suffering from stock issues, every week since launch in fact, its hard to say just how many sales have been lost, but at least digital makes up for it, so we’ll be finding out in a few weeks anyway.

The other noteworthy releases we had were Captain Toad and Taiko no Tatsujin’s debut game on the platform; Captain Toad opened twice as high as the original Wii U release (Switch and 3DS versions combined) and it has been outselling it launches aligned, its unclear if it’ll outsell the original game, as despite a humble opening it went on to sell around 170k, but it’s a great start for the game nonetheless. As for Taiko the game also sees the best launch for the series since the last Wii game in 2012, even outdoing all the 3DS titles at launch. Taiko is a title that shows the demographic differences between Switch and PS4, as in just 2 weeks the Switch title outsold the PS4 one, something that won’t happen with every game. With Obon coming and Switch doing as well as it is the game should have no problem selling over 300k.

As for the older games we have Mario Tennis still at good pace, the game will soon surpass 300k, it should at least be matching sales of the 3DS game, while Minecraft on Switch is the fastest selling retail version of the game to date, the game has sold about half as much as the PS4 and Wii U versions did at retail, missing digital sales leave us on the dark on the bigger picture sadly, but with digital it should be over 400k.

As for the even older games, sales of Pokémon Ultra Sun / Ultra Moon have been good these past couple of months, the games were already showing stronger legs than Sun / Moon but it seems like the announcement of the Switch titles have increased interest on the current 3DS ones, for June and July of 2018 Ultra Sun / Ultra Moon sold more than Sun / Moon did for the same period on 2017.

You can check out last July’s charts and you’ll see that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe also sold more this month than what it did this month last year, total sales for the game will be over 2m by the end of the year, chances are it gets there faster than Super Mario Odyssey, its even remarkably keeping pace with Mario Kart 7 launches aligned, very much behaving as if it was a brand new Mario Kart.

Then we got Zelda, not present on last year’s Top 10 but present here, Zelda sold twice as much as July’s 2018 than it did on July 2017, as I said its selling more on summer 2018 than summer 2017, also the game finally surpassed 1m sold at retail, and combined with the Wii U version it’s the 4^th best selling Zelda title in Japan.

Finally, we have Splatoon 2, which launched this month last year, then it was #3 behind both versions of Dragon Quest XI, now it was #2.

The best-selling games of 2018 so far:

1. [PS4] Monster Hunter: World – 1.949.592 (Around 17.5 billion in revenue)
2. [SWI] Splatoon 2 – 754.642 (Over 4.2 billion in revenue)
3. [SWI] Kirby Star Allies – 563.625 (Over 3.3 billion in revenue)
4. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 531.988 (Around 2.9 billion in revenue)
5. [SWI] Super Mario Odyssey – 424.442 (Around 2.4 billion in revenue)
6. [SWI] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 334.653 (Over 2 billion in revenue)
7. [3DS] Pokémon Ultra Sun / Ultra Moon – 280.919 (Over 1.1 billion in revenue)
8. [SWI] Mario Tennis Aces – 264.337 (Over 1.5 billion in revenue)
9. [PS4] Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball 2018 – 224.810 (Over 1.7 billion in revenue)
10. [SWI] Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle – 200.131 (Over 1.1 billion in revenue)

Best selling games of the past 12 months

1. [3DS] Pokémon Ultra Sun / Ultra Moon – 2.284.526 (Over 11.2 billion in revenue)
2. [PS4] Monster Hunter: World – 1.949.592 (Around 17.5 billion in revenue)
3. [SWI] Super Mario Odyssey – 1.748.722 (Around 10.5 billion in revenue)
4. [SWI] Splatoon 2 – 1.706.344 (Over 9.2 billion in revenue)
5. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 1.079.579 (Around 5.8 billion in revenue)
6. [3DS] Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age – 642.443 (Over 3.7 billion in revenue)
7. [SWI] Kirby Star Allies – 563.625 (Over 3.3 billion in revenue)
8. [SWI] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 538.797 (Over 3.3 billion in revenue)
9. [3DS] Yo-Kai Watch Blasters 2: Hihou Legend Banbarayaa - Sword / Magnum – 501.670 (Over 2.4 billion in revenue)
10. [PS4] Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age – 407.463 (Over 2.8 billion in revenue)

About 1.4 million games were sold on July, as mentioned multiple times Switch was most of it at 840k units, distant second was PS4 at 340k then the 3DS at 154k and finally Vita at 66k, overall software drop compared to last July, 3DS seeing a 90% drop.

Nintendo once again biggest publisher of the month, with a big margin. Nintendo sells 482k games, Square Enix sells 164k, Bandai Namco sells 105k, Microsoft sells 72k and Capcom sells 55k.

Nintendo is the biggest publisher of the year also by a big margin selling twice as many games as the second largest publisher.

Hardware

Hardware also down across the board, there was no Dragon Quest/Splatoon/new 2DS this time and all systems suffered, from then Switch dropping the least and selling the most at 192k, it’s the biggest difference between Switch and PS4 since last December. PS4 sold 72k with the 3DS at half of that at 34k and Vita at 15k.

3DS now greatly down year on year, base PS4 also down. PS4 is likely to be down by the end of August, if Switch sales stay as they are its likely it’ll be down as well.