Japan Monthly Report for October 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 GSD 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 October was from October 1st to October 28th (4 weeks).

The busiest part of the year is on its way as we head into the holidays, October is typically a quiet month right before the holidays and tends to have low profile releases. Rockstar decided to change things up by releasing the biggest game of the year (internationally that is) at the end of the month. As to avoid competition, other big titles pushed forward their releases with Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty and originally Battlefield moving to October, Nintendo completed the month with a high-profile Switch release.

October was a decent month above the summer average and even September, once again strong sales of high priced titles as well as strong Nintendo Switch sales are the reason, sales are once again down year on year sadly as even the strong results don’t make up for the huge launch of Super Mario Odyssey and the strong sales Switch had due to it last year, also despite a strong software and a price cut offering PS4 fails to have a significant increase.

• Hardware: Over 8 billion yen came from hardware being slightly up from September, Switch is now the best selling hardare in Japan for 8 months in a row, though its currently down year on year. PS4 sees a disappoint performance after two large releases (with one bundle) and a price drop for the PS4 Pro, sales were flat compared to September. New PS4 releases aren't brining up a new audience and the price drop of the premium SKU does nothing as the PS4 Pro is still very expensive, it was already more expensive in Japan than elsewhere and the price drop just brought it to the international price.
• Software: PS4 moves the most software with stronger releases, performing above September and being the best month for PS4 software since February, strong sales of Call of Duty and Red Dead Redemption are the reason. Switch sales are also up thanks to Mario Party and bringing and overall positive result for the month, it’s the best software performance since March.

Software

The best selling games of October 2018 were:

1. [PS4] Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 – 376.141 (Around 3 billion in revenue)
2. [SWI] Super Mario Party – 263.101 (Over 1.5 billion in revenue)
3. [PS4] Red Dead Redemption II – 136.161 (Around 1.3 billion in revenue)
4. [PS4] Assassin's Creed: Odyssey – 77.740 (Over 650 million in revenue)
5. [PS4] Warriors Orochi 4 – 40.827 (Over 240 million in revenue)
6. [SWI] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 38.072 (Over 120 million in revenue)
7. [SWI] Splatoon 2 – 35.190 (Over 180 million in revenue)
8. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 33.437 (Over 180 million in revenue)
9. [PS4] Soul Calibur VI – 26.964 (Ove 200 million in revenue)
10. [PS4] Marvel's Spider-Man – 26.490 (Over 160 million in revenue)

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 led another great month for PS4, the game had the biggest launch for a Call of Duty game on PS4, the biggest launch for the series on a single system and the biggest launch for the series since 2012’s Black Ops II, in just four weeks the game will become the best selling Call of Duty on PS4 at retail and will become the 2nd best selling PS4 game for the year selling over 500k. The current best selling title is Black Ops II which sold 575k on PS3 and 633k units on all systems, BO4 may not match it but will likely become the 2^nd best seller, digital sales likely push the game close to 500k already, the remaining holiday could put it over 600k. The game is also the 5th top grossing game of the year.

Call of Duty series sales in Japan (all platforms, all rereleases combined)
Call of Duty: Black Ops II	633.361
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2	592.717
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3	556.769
Call of Duty: Black Ops	549.503
Call of Duty: Black Ops III	460.365
Call of Duty: WWII	455.150
Call of Duty: Ghosts	446.745
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare	430.498
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4*	373.141
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare	290.937
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare	210.406
*digital sales not included

Red Dead Redemption II was the other major PS4 release, it saw a 45% increase launch over the original that did 93k units on Xbox 360 and PS3, doubling launch sales of its predecessor on PS3. The game will probably not become a GTA style hit but it has done well already, shipment for the game at launch was of 225k units, which is on par with total sales of the original on all platforms and rereleases.

The final major release was Super Mairo Party, the series was coming off of its worst period on the 3DS/Wii U, with the last 3 titles, Mario Party 10, Star Rush and The Top 100 being tied for the worst selling game in the series, even the best selling game of the generation, 2013's Island Tour, fell below the series’ average. The 4 games combined sold less than 1.2m units, less than Mario Party 8. Super Mario Party is a return for the series in a sense, having the best launch of any title since Mario Party 9 and having already outsold the three games before it, unlike other games in the series this one is likely to have good digital sales and has already sold well before going into the holidays, the game is going to have a Joycon bundle in December so sales will keep at good pace, at worst the game will double its current LTD, but in the end it may become another million seller.

On lesser releases there’s Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey and Soul Calibur VI, Assassin’s Creed is a western series that isn’t growing in Japan with Odyssey opening on par with Origins and will likely sell around the same in the end, though they are decent results regardless, the Tom Clancy series is Ubisoft’s strongest brand in the region. Soul Calibur on the other hand had the worst result for the series yet with VI opening at less than half the sales of V, total sales of VI will have a hard time reaching launch sales of V which had a very disappointing performance on itself, however as with most fithing games this is one that depends on international markets, recently Bamco announced that Tekken 7 had surpassed 3m sold, Japan represents less than 5% of that, so hopefully the same will be for Soul Calibur.

Warriors Orochi 4 also had a good second month, combined with the Switch version it already outsold Dynasty Warriors 9, sales on PS4 alone will are likely to do so, nonetheless its still a huge drop from the previous games in the series, total sales of Orochi 4 on all platforms are below sales of Orochi 2 on the PSP. Spider-Man also did well, though it had a huge drop from September, the game already sold most of what is going to sell in Japan but at near 400k units with digital its well above what was expected, it’d be interesting to see if on the rest of the year it manages to sell another 100k.

On the older games we have the typical slowness of October taking toll with Minecraft, Splatoon and Mario Kart dropping, its unlikely those games are affected by the new paid Nintendo Online service, most likely the dull before the holidays.

Best selling games of 2018 so far:

1. [PS4] Monster Hunter: World – 1.959.188 (Over 17.5 billion in revenue)
2. [SWI] Splatoon 2 – 963.514 (Around 5.4 billion in revenue)
3. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 718.118 (Around 4 billion in revenue)
4. [SWI] Kirby Star Allies – 613.732 (Over 3.6 billion in revenue)
5. [SWI] Super Mario Odyssey – 500.598 (Over 2.8 billion in revenue)
6. [SWI] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 418.981 (Over 2.5 billion in revenue)
7. [3DS] Pokemon Ultra Sun / Ultra Moon – 379.807 (Over 1.6 billion in revenue)
8. [PS4] Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 – 376.141 (Around 3 billion in revenue)
9. [SWI] Mario Tennis Aces – 347.507 (Around 2 billion in revenue)
10. [SWI] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 343.060 (Over 1.1 billion in revenue)

Best selling games of the past 12 months

1. [3DS] Pokemon Ultra Sun / Ultra Moon – 2.383.414 (Over 11.7 billion in revenue)
2. [PS4] Monster Hunter: World - 1.959.188 (Over 17.5 billion in revenue)
3. [SWI] Splatoon 2 – 1.405.721 (Over 7.7 billion in revenue)
4. [SWI] Super Mario Odyssey – 1.313.253 (Over 7.5 billoin in revenue)
5. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 1.104.555 (Over 6 billion in revenue)
6. [SWI] Kirby Star Allies – 613.732 (Over 3.6 billion in revenue)
7. [SWI] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 555.105 (Over 3.4 billion in revenue)
8. [3DS] Yo-kai Watch Busters 2: Hihou Legend Banbarayaa - Sword / Magnum – 501.670 (Around 2.5 bilion in revenue)
9. [PS4] Call of Duty: WWII - 386.408 (Over 2.6 billion in revenue)
10. [PS4] Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 – 376.141 (Around 3 billion in revenue)

Over 1.7 million games were sold in Japan for October a mild increase from September and a 20% drop from last October. PS4 again sold more than half of it at 960k units, this time Switch wasn’t too far behind selling at 667k, despite PS4 selling around 30% more software it generated twice as much revenue due to the new expensive titles. Switch software sales already surpassed total software sales of 2017 before its holiday titles launched, had Yo-Kai Watch 4 not been delayed, among other things, it could’ve double last year sales. 3DS moved around 100k games, with the rest not even half of that.

Sony was the top publisher for the second month with a near 60% increase from October, last month's sales nearly represent half of all Sony games for the year so far, in 2 months Sony became the 4th biggest publisher of the year after not being among the 10 biggest, Nintendo wasn’t far behind them with revenue from their games now making over 30 billion yen for 2018, Red Dead Redemption II made Take Two one of the biggest publishers for the month with Ubisoft and Capcom going after them. Sony sells over 400k games, Nintendo slightly less than them, Take Two move over 140k, Ubisoft over 80k and Capcom over 60k.

Hardware

Hardware sales are slightly up from last month but heavily down from last year with all systems being down year on year. Nintendo Switch sales remain stable and was the best selling hardware again at 173k, PS4 goes after it at 78k a slight increase from last month yet PS4 are somewhat disappointing when looking at the high profile software releases and the price cut of the PS4 Pro,  new games are selling to the existing active base and isn't attracting a new audience, cutting the price to the already expensive Pro also didn't do much.

3DS sells 26k, everything else combined is less than 15k.