lunes, 8 de octubre de 2018

Japan Monthly Report for September 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 September was from September 3rd to September 30th (4 weeks).

Q3 is over, the busiest part of the year is about to begin. After a terrible summer a great release schedule as well as some surprises made a great month for PS4 software and the first western game to top our charts.

September had a decent performance, there were some new high price releases keeping revenue up as well as healthy software sales, hardware keeps underwhelming as PS4 sales stay low despite new releases and Switch sales are also the lowest they’ve been since April.
  • Hardware: Over 8 billion yen came from hardware, Nintendo Switch keeps being the best seller, but it’s now down year on year, as with the past few months Switch sales are more than half of total hardware for the month on sales and revenue, PS4 is a second on both accounts.
  • Software: PS4 sees its strongest month since March on revenue and units as plenty of high-priced new releases sold well, on the exact opposite we have Switch which sees its lowest month of software since February, once again all the Switch best seller were months old games, new games come very infrequently and sometimes don’t perform very well.

Software

The best-selling games of September 2018 were:
  1. [PS4] Marvel's Spider-Man – 258.716 (Over 1.7 billion in revenue)
  2. [PS4] Warriors Orochi 4 – 105.785 (Around 900 million in revenue)
  3. [PS4] The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV - The End of Saga – 97.158 (Over 660 million in revenue)
  4. [PS4] FIFA 19 – 62.710 (Over 520 million in revenue)
  5. [SWI] Splatoon 2 – 58.492 (Over 300 million in revenue)
  6. [SWI] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 50.386 (Over 160 million in revenue)
  7. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 49.923 (Over 270 million yen in revenue)
  8. [PS4] Winning Eleven 2019 – 48.783 (Over 320 million yen in revenue)
  9. [PS4] Shadow of the Tomb Raider – 46.970 (Over 370 million yen in revenue)
  10. [SWI] Warriors Orochi 4 – 28.493 (Over 230 million yen in revenue)

Spider-Man greatly surpassed expectations and became the best selling game of the month, 10th best selling game of the year (2nd for PS4) and the best selling Sony published game for the year as well, selling more than God of War and Detroit: Become Human combined, it’s on pace to sell more than any other Sony game on PS4, aside from the Call of Duty games, and it’s the best selling Sony funded, west developed game, since Crash Bandicoot 3 [CORRECTION: It's actually the best since 2002's Ratchet & Clank], even outdoing any Naughty Dog game, and its also the best selling Spider-Man and superhero game in Japan.

It’s the best result for a PS4 game since Pawapro in April after months of disappointing releases, the game has sold over 300k units in Japan with digital and we should be seeing sell over 400k by the end of the year, it’s not unreasonable to think it might outsell Call of Duty and be the 2nd best seller for PS4 in 2018, second only to Monster Hunter. The game keeps showing how well Sony has been at selling their wester titles in Japan, last year Horizon: Zero Dawn also did excellent and earlier this year God of War and Detroit: Become Human did very well compared to expectations. The Last of Us: Part II was previously expected to be the next big Sony title, but it might struggle to outsell Spider-Man, nonetheless expectations for it, as well as Days Gone, have increased.

A strong month for PS4 as the other top sellers were on it as well, Warriors Orochi 4 (also on Switch) had a lot against it after the disappointing sales of Dynasty Warriors 9, not only was Orochi 4 able to have a bigger launch, but it has been well received and should have no problem outselling it, nonetheless it shows how Koei Tecmo’s own IPs keep collapsing as Orochi 4 sees a large drop from 2011’s Orochi 3, its closer to the Ultimate rerelease of Orochi 3, musou collaborations as shown by worldwide sales of Fire Emblem Warriors, and Japan only sales of the Dragon Quest Heroes games show that licensing might be the best approach for musou. This was also the first mayor multiplatform release on Switch and the PS4 version outsold it 4:1, even after Switch outsells the PS4 there will still be games that regularly sell more on the latter, PS4 audience will be larger on certain types of games even as the Switch keeps growing.

Kiseki 4 is also one that keeps dropping, even if its slightly below Kiseki 3, at least shows that the audience for Falcom is very loyal. This title is the end of the current series and seeing how their audience shrank after abandoning Vita it’ll be interesting to see if they remain PS4 exclusive, or how their output changes. Mind you that given their size and resources moving to a multiplatform development with Switch might not be feasible, going Switch exclusive would be even worse, but at least releasing their games sooner on Steam should be feasible.

FIFA also keeps growing in Japan with FIFA19’s launch sales surpassing that of FIFA18 and outdoing this year’s Winning Eleven, also a multiplatform release where the PS4 SKU is the lead in sales, despite install base doubling since last year’s FIFA the new game on Switch barely sees any growth, even then its unlikely this year’s FIFA will outsell last year’s as FIFA 18 sold over 300k, Switch holiday boost and lasting sales months afterwards due to the World Cup kept that game going much longer than usual, it’s very unlikely this year’s title will follow that path. On the final new release there’s Shadow of the Tomb Raider, that while still not doing that great it managed to outsell any other Tomb Raider title on PS4.

On Switch games it’s the same games that have top the charts for months, Splatoon 2 was August and last September’s best selling title, Mario Kart and Minecraft keep doing well (Gross of Minecraft on Switch is now over 1 billion yen) and Breath of the Wild on Switch managed to outsell A Link to the Past on Super Famicom. The highest new release was Orochi 4 which is barely on top 10 and the new Nintendo Labo Kit which went nowhere. Switch software sales for 2018 won’t surpass PS4’s until Pokémon comes out, by mid-July the software sales difference between the two was of 1m, by the end of August it was of 500k, now its 1m again and PS4 will sell more software than Switch on October as well.

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 – 928.324 (Around 5.2 billion in revenue)
  3. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 684.681 (Over 3.7 billion in revenue)
  4. [SWI] Kirby Star Allies – 604.792 (Over 3.5 billion in revenue)
  5. [SWI] Super Mario Odyssey – 484.972 (Over 2.7 billion in revenue)
  6. [SWI] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 400.985 (Over 2.4 billion in revenue)
  7. [3DS] Pokémon Ultra Sun / Ultra Moon – 359.487 (Over 1.5 billion in revenue)
  8. [SWI] Mario Tennis Aces – 339.485 (Over 1.9 billion in revenue)
  9. [SWI] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 304.988 (Over 1 billion in revenue)
  10. [PS4] Marvel’s Spider-Man – 258.716 (Over 1.7 billion in revenue)

Best selling games of the past 12 months
  1. [3DS] Pokémon Ultra Sun / Ultra Moon – 2.363.094 (Over 11.6 billion in revenue)
  2. [PS4] Monster Hunter: World – 1.949.592 (Over 17.5 billion in revenue)
  3. [SWI] Super Mario Odyssey – 1.809.252 (Over 10.8 billion in revenue)
  4. [SWI] Splatoon 2 – 1.442.674 (Over 8 billion in revenue)
  5. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 1.122.270 (Over 6 billion in revenue)
  6. [SWI] Kirby Star Allies – 604.792 (Over 3.5 billion in revenue)
  7. [SWI] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 562.350 (Around 3.5 billion in revenue)
  8. [3DS] Yo-kai Watch Blasters 2: Hihou Legend Banbarayaa - Sword / Magnum – 501.670 (Around 2.5 billion in revenue)
  9. [PS4] Call of Duty: WWII – 383.125 (Over 2.6 billion in revenue)
  10. [SWI] Mario Tennis Aces – 339.485 (Over 1.9 billion in revenue)

Around 1.6 million games were sold in Japan in September, with more than half of that being PS4 games, as mentioned before this was the strongest month for PS4 software since March and the weakest for Switch since February. PS4 sells 950k games, Switch 522k, 3DS 126k and Vita less than half of that.


For the first time since March Nintendo wasn’t the top selling publisher of the month, Spider-Man alone was enough to make Sony the top publisher (Spider-Man represents nearly half of all Sony games sold in Japan for 2018) while Nintendo wasn’t far behind it’s the worst month they’ve since with Nintendo Switch as it was their worst month since February 2017. Sony sells over 260k games, Nintendo over 240k games, Koei Tecmo over 150k, Nihon Falcom over 100k and Electronic Arts over 80k.

Hardware

Total hardware is down compared to August and last September with all active systems now down year on year on total sales. Even then despite an underwhelming performance on software Switch still sells the most hardware at 162k, around 50% of the total hardware sold in Japan for the year so far is Nintendo Switch.

PS4 goes then at 78k, base PS4 is down by over 130k units but as the Pro unit is still up year on year (it should continue to be so until at least December) it prevents the system from dropping further. 3DS sells 30k, everything else combined is less than 10k.
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