Japan Monthly Report for January 2019

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 January was from December 31^st, 2018 to February 3^rd.

Despite no Monster Hunter this January was bigger than last January, a great start in the year for Nintendo Switch hardware and software, big releases like New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, Ace Combat 7, Resident Evil 2, Kingdom Hearts III and, perhaps more importantly, it being one week longer than last January were all factors on it.

• Hardware: Around 25 billion yen in revenue was hardware, which is a small increase over last January despite a drop in hardware sold, PS4 saw a 43% drop compared to last December, but while overall PS4 sales drop, sales of the PS4 Pro increased, which offset the drop in revenue a bit, but the main reason of increase in revenue is the 58% jump in sales of Nintendo Switch compared to last January, actual sales are down but revenue is up.
• Software: Around 24 billion yen in revenue were from software, close to the same as last January, while there was no Monster Hunter: World sized release, a bunch of smaller games made up for it with Kingdom Hearts and Resident Evil receiving new entries, Ace Combat and New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe performing above expectations and lasting sales of Nintendo Switch software. Overall software sales are also down, but this time is due to the collapse of the 3DS, as Switch sales also greatly increased and the drop in PS4 software is acceptable when considering what released a year ago.

Software

The best selling games of January 2019 were

1. [PS4] Kingdom Hearts III – 772.201 (Over 6 billion in revenue)
2. [SWI] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 447.262 (Around 3 billion in revenue)
3. [SWI] New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 381.469 (Around 2.3 billion in revenue)
4. [PS4] Resident Evil 2 – 324.079 (Over 2.6 billion in revenue)
5. [PS4] Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown – 194.685 (Over 1.5 billion in revenue)
6. [SWI] Super Mario Party – 158.299 (Around 850 million in revenue)
7. [SWI] Pokémon: Let's Go Pikachu! / Let's Go Eevee! – 130.084 (Over 700 million in revenue)
8. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 122.352 (Around 650 million in revenue)
9. [SWI] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 96.565 (Over 300 million in revenue)
10. [SWI] Splatoon 2 – 86.507 (Around 450 million in revenue)

For the 3^rd January in a row a PlayStation 4 game is the best seller, the long-awaited Kingdom Hearts III topped the January charts by having the second largest launch for the series, after Kingdom Hearts II in 2005. With digital it may be the biggest series’ launch in Japan, most impressive when considering the install base of the PS4 and of the PS2 when the games launched.

21 years ago Resident Evil 2 was not only the best selling game of January but also the best selling game of the year, now things are very different as its unlikely total sales of the Resident Evil 2 remake will match half of what the original sold in its release week, as disappointing as this sounds it was all expected, but regardless, sales of the Resident Evil 2 remake are good, debuting above Resident Evil 7 and being the strongest launch for a Resident Evil title on PS4 yet.

Ace Combat 7 also had a great debut, being the strongest for the series since 2004’s Ace Combat 5 on PS2, and the second strongest launch for Bandai Namco on PS4 after Tales of Berseria, the game already sold most of what its going to, but matching sales of Ace Combat Zero is not unreasonable.

On Switch titles we have the sales of New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe which is selling on par with the Wii U original despite that being released on December as opposed to January. Mario Kart, Donkey Kong, Pokken and Captain Toad all sold more on Switch than on Wii U, so this may be yet another title to do the same, the original sold around 1.3m though, which is not a small amount, even around half of it where on bundles.

The rest of the best sellers are older titles, with 2018’s best selling title, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate at #2, the game has sold over 3m already shattering plenty of sales milestones, so aside from saying, its selling very well, there’s not much else to it.

One other noteworthy performance we have Splatoon 2 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, also present in last January’s top 10.

Over 4 million games were sold in January, with 90% of it being Switch and PS4 software, and out of those 2 having Switch selling the most, the difference isn’t large though, around 150k units in Switch’s favor. Strong new releases are the reason for the strong PS4 performance while lasting sales of older games are that of Switch, great start for the year.

Nintendo begins the year as the top publisher selling some 1.4m games, Kingdom Hearts puts Square Enix at second with around 900k, after them go Bandai Namco at 400k, Capcom at around 350k and The Pokémon Company at around 150k.

Hardware

The year starts strong for Nintendo Switch as it was the best selling system for now 11 months in a row, selling just under 500k also means that sales of Switch for January 2019 are already higher than year to date sales by last February. Nintendo Switch sales should remain strong for the remainder of the year, as on the release week of Kingdom Hearts III it was barely below sales of the PS4 its very unlikely that system will outsell it in a month again.

PS4 sales are half of the Switch at around 250k seeing a 43% drop compared to last January, this was expected as there was no release the size of Monster Hunter: World and with their aggressive holiday deal finished sales would drop harder than usual. This will be a very interesting year for the PS4 as its likely that it’ll get a permanent price drop, the release schedule for the system is strong up until the summer, so maybe it’ll happen then, for the time being the system is still outpacing the PS3 launches aligned, so we’ll see if the trend continues for the rest of the year.

3DS sold 48k units, with Vita sales being around ¼ of that.