Japan Monthly Report for August 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 August was from July 30th to September 2nd (5 weeks).

An unusual 5 weeks long, the monthwas dominated by Nintendo Switch as with the summer so far, so much that the two top sellers were on the platform, and both released a year ago.

August was the best month of the year since March, it saw a 30% decline in revenue from last August, Nintendo Switch was the main driver of revenue yet again after a strong showing on Obon, with the PS4 also seeing a healthy month despite a continued weak release schedule.

• Hardware: Roughly 12 billion yen was generated by hardware, Nintendo Switch was the best-selling system yet again and is now flat year on year when compared to 2017, Switch still represents the lion share of hardware sales selling more than all other platforms combined, the PS4 is a distant second on sales and is now down year on year.
• Software: Around 9.4 billion yen were from software, most of it comes from legacy software as most August didn’t generate much due to either low sales of low price. Most of revenue and sales are still Nintendo Switch software but this was also a healthy month for PS4 and 3DS software.

Software

The best-selling games of August 2018 were:

1. [SWI] Splatoon 2 – 115.190 (Around 630 million in revenue)
2. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 102.770 (Over 550 million in revenue)
3. [3DS] WarioWare Gold – 96.283 (Over 450 million in revenue)
4. [SWI] Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum 'N' Fun! – 86.926 (Almost 500 million in revenue)
5. [SWI] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 85.421 (Almost 300 million in revenue)
6. [3DS] Etrian Odyssey Nexus – 79.403 (Almost 530 million in revenue)
7. [SWI] Pro Baseball Famista Evolution – 75.101 (Over 450 million in revenue)
8. [PS4] Winning Eleven 2019 – 72.320 (Almost 600 million in revenue)
9. [SWI] Mario Tennis Aces – 57.669 (Over 300 million in revenue)
10. [PS4] Conan Exiles – 54.250 (Over 380 million in revenue)

Yes, Splatoon 2, which released in July 2017, was August 2018’s best selling game in Japan, this is the second time Splatoon 2 is the best selling game of a month, the last time being September 2017, it speaks volumes of the longevity of the game, right now it has sold over 2.8 million units in Japan, surpassing sales of Monster Hunter: World, we should see the game surpassing 3m sold sometime in October as it shows no signs of slowing down. The same applies to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, released in April 2017, which is now at over 1.9m sold, the game should reach 2m also sometime in October, getting there before Super Mario Odyssey and it sold on August 2018 about 70% more than what it did on August 2017.

The month wasn’t strong for new releases, the best selling new game was the new WarioWare title, which despite performing well for a 3DS title at this point, it’s the worst performing game in the series yet, it may sell on par with WarioWare D.I.Y the game that iced the series for 9 years.

The releases that we were looking forward to were the final Etrian Odyssey title on 3DS and Famista’s debut title on Nintendo Switch, both games sold well. Famista is clearly not Pawapro and the new entry sold on par with the last couple of 3DS games, while Etrian Odyssey Nexus shows how loyal the series’ fanbase is, as there are no new dual screen systems the series will need to be somewhat rebooted. Its strong sales also bode well for Persona Q2.

Winning Eleven 2019 did somewhat mixed, it’s the best opening for the series on PS4 yet, but also the worst opening for the series since Winning Eleven ’97, we’ll see if its long time performance is good, but the world cup didn’t help the game much at launch, it’s very likely we’ll see FIFA outselling it this year too. And the final new release was the surprising Conan Exiles which outdid expectations first week and practically sold out resulting on a great second week, Spike Chunsoft is smart about the games they localize.

On the old games we have Taiko on Switch now close to 200k, it has outsold all Taiko games on Wii U and is the best selling since the second 3DS game of 2014, the title should keep selling well onto the holidays. On that note we also see Minecraft with a continued strong performance, the game has almost reached the sales of the Wii U version retail and digital combined, getting total sales of Minecraft in Japan at over 3.5m; Minecraft will very likely become a million seller on Switch by the end of the year, and we should also see Minecraft becoming the best selling game in Japan that was developed in the west. Mario Tennis also doing well at nearly 350k, it should outsell Mario Tennis Open on October and become the second-best selling title in the series, behind the Nintendo 64 game.

On a disappointing note we don’t have Octopath Traveler, as stock issues wouldn’t let July 2018’s best-selling game enter top 10, it was the 15th best selling game of the month, selling less than Captain Toad on Nintendo Switch.

Best selling games of 2018 so far:

1. [PS4] Monster Hunter: World – 1.949.592 (Over 17.5 billion in revenue)
2. [SWI] Splatoon 2 – 869.832 (Over 4.8 billion in revenue)
3. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 634.758 (Over 3.4 billion in revenue)
4. [SWI] Kirby Star Allies – 591.721 (Close to 3.5 billion in revenue)
5. [SWI] Super Mario Odyssey – 463.948 (Over 2.6 billion in revenue)
6. [SWI] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 377.736 (Close to 2.3 billion in revenue)
7. [3DS] Pokémon Ultra Sun / Ultra Moon – 331.891 (Over 1.4 billion in revenue)
8. [SWI] Mario Tennis Aces – 322.006 (Over 1.8 billion in revenue)
9. [SWI] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 254.602 (Over 880 million in revenue)
10. [PS4] Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball 2018 – 234.175 (Over 1.8 billion in revenue)

Best selling games of the past 12 months:

1. [3DS] Pokémon Ultra Sun / Ultra Moon – 2.335.498 (Over 11.5 billion in revenue)
2. [PS4] Monster Hunter: World – 1.949.592 (Over 17.5 billion in revenue)
3. [SWI] Super Mario Odyssey – 1.788.228 (Over 10.7 billion in revenue)
4. [SWI] Splatoon 2 – 1.513.917 (Over 8.3 billion in revenue)
5. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 1.120.571 (Over 6 billion in revenue)
6. [SWI] Kirby Star Allies – 591.721 (Close to 3.5 billion in revenue)
7. [SWI] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 559.690 (Around 3.5 billion in revenue)
8. [3DS] Yo-kai Watch Busters 2: Hihou Legend Banbarayaa - Sword / Magnum – 501.670 (Around 2.5 billion in revenue)
9. [SWI] Call of Duty: WWII – 383.125 (Over 2.6 billion in revenue)
10. [SWI] Mario Tennis Aces - 322.006 (Over 1.8 billion in revenue)

Over 2 million games were sold in August, Nintendo Switch was the lean once again with nearly half of them, PS4 wasn’t too far behind with 600k and 3DS also had a healthy month with 400k, Vita sold less than 100k.

Nintendo keeps being the top publisher with nearly 600k games sold on August, their best month since March with their total sales for the year close to 5m units. For the month after Nintendo goes Bamco at 222k, Microsoft and Konami at 85k and Atlus at 80k.

Hardware

Sales for the month were decent despite an unimpressive Obon performance on all platforms, Nintendo Switch remains on top once again selling more than half of all hardware for the month at 240k, behind it was the PS4 at 100k and at half of that the 3DS at 50k, everything else combined its less than 20k.

Nintendo Switch is now flat year on year, it’d be interesting to see if it’ll be up or down by the end of September, while PS4 is now down year on year and should only keep decreasing.