Japan Monthly Report for March 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 February was from March 4^th to March 31^st (4 weeks)

March is the end of the fiscal year in Japan and as such is a strong month for releases as plenty of companies release games right at the end making up for a busy month, this time we saw more of the expensive PS4 releases as well as steady Nintendo Switch sales driving revenue making it so that March 2019’s performance is nearly flat compared to March 2018.

• Hardware: Around 15 billion yen of revenue were generated by hardware, being nearly flat compared to February, once again Nintendo Switch being most of it at nearly 80% of revenue coming from the system, which has now been Japan’s best-selling piece of hardware for over a year.
• Software: Around 10 billion yen was of software, slightly higher than February and considerably below last March, this time PS4 sold the most software, first time since last October, most notable releases were on PS4 so this was expected, the release of expensive titles such as Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Devil May Cry V and Super Robot Wars T.

Software

The best-selling games of March 2019 were:

1. [PS4] Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice – 194.860 (Over 1.5 billion in revenue)
2. [PS4] Devil May Cry V – 169.353 (Over 1.2 billion in revenue)
3. [PS4] Super Robot Wars T – 90.278 (Over 800 million in revenue)
4. [PS4] Tom Clancy's The Division 2 – 89.011 (Over 750 million in revenue)
5. [SWI] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 83.350 (Over 550 million in revenue)
6. [SWI] New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 62.256 (Over 350 million in revenue)
7. [PS4] One Piece: World Seeker – 61.215 (Over 500 million in revenue)
8. [SWI] Yoshi's Crafted World – 50.007 (Over 350 million in revenue)
9. [SWI] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 46.336 (Over 150 million in revenue)
10. [SWI] Super Robot Wars T – 43.238 (Over 400 million in revenue)

From Software’s new title, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice was the month’s bestselling title despite releasing nearly at the end, the game’s launch is weaker than any of the Dark Souls titles but stronger than that of Bloodborne, being one of the strongest new IP launches on PS4 and the biggest new IP launch since Splatoon back in 2015.

The long await return of Devil May Cry V was received with less enthusiasm as the game’s launch was barely better than 2013’S DmC, debuting well below previous numbered games in the series, legs have also not been noteworthy, it actually manages to sell more than DmC it won’t be by much, hopefully international sales are making up for it.

Bandai Namco doesn’t seem able to catch a break with the Super Robot Wars series as launch sales of the new entries are among the worst of the series, as the PS4 version had the lowest launch of any previous entry on PS4 and the Switch version had a worse launch than any previous game did on Vita. As these games are extremely front-loaded this is very bad news for the future of the series.

On smaller games there was Ubisoft’s The Division 2 and One Piece: World Seeker, The Division 2 saw a 20% drop in comparison to the original, this was not unexpected however as reception of the original title was mixed, and with how strongly western titles have been performing it’s possible that digital sales are making up the difference, though even then it may not be able to outsell the original in the end, Tom Clancy remains Ubisoft’s strongest brand in Japan however, as even with somewhat middling performance for The Division 2 has sold more than Assassin’s Creed of Watchdogs.

One Piece’s results were very disappointing, this was the first original One Piece game since 2016’s Burning Blood, and the first big One Piece console game since the original One Piece: Pirate warriors, which is one of the bestselling anime games ever in Japan, yet despite all this World Seeker’s debut was among the weakest for an original One Piece game in Japan, the game had a weak reception and had weak legs too, despite a small launch it may be unable to sell through them at full price. A disappointing month for Bandai Namco,

The only noteworthy first party release of the month was Yoshi’s Crafted World, Nintendo’s first original Switch title for 2019, launch week sales of the game were disappointing are disappointing, being the second lowest launch for a Yoshi title in Japan, only above the Wii U title, this comes as a surprise seeing all the growth Nintendo series have done on Switch, seeing stronger launches than on Wii U or 3DS, this being weather they’re new titles or ports. Launch timing for this game was weird, it’s a 2D platformers releasing between 2 others bigger 2D platformers, chances are Yoshi was pushed to March after Fire Emblem was delayed, as the fill out Switch’s release schedule.

Another noteworthy performance was that of the new Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon, which is actually a remaster of a Wii title, at launch the remaster did better than the original, even though the performance for that version of the game was poor, this is the first day one multiplatform Final Fantasy title released on Nintendo and PlayStation too.

The rest of the bestselling titles are older games, mostly the well-known Switch titles, Smash Bros, Mario U Deluxe, Splatoon, Minecraft, Mario Kart and Mario Party, all of which keep a very strong performance.

The best-selling games of 2019 so far are:

1. [PS4] Kingdom Hearts III – 809.824 (Over 6.6 billion in revenue)
2. [SWI] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 631.721 (Over 4 billion in revenue)
3. [SWI] New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 547.987 (Over 3.2 billion in revenue)
4. [PS4] Resident Evil 2 – 382.381 (Over 3 billion in revenue)
5. [SWI] Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu! / Let’s Go Eevee! – 225.481 (Over 1.2 billion in revenue)
6. [SWI] Super Mario Party – 220.392 (Over 1.2 billion in revenue)
7. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 206.568 (Over 1.1 billion in revenue)
8. [PS4] Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown – 206.474 (Over 1.6 billion in revenue)
9. [PS4] Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice – 194.860 (Over 1.5 billion in revenue)
10. [SWI] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 182.522 (Over 600 million in revenue)

Best selling games of the past 12 months.

1. [SWI] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 2.992.376 (Over 21 billion in revenue)
2. [SWI] Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu! / Let’s Go Eevee! – 1.479.158 (Over 8.7 billion in revenue)
3. [SWI] Super Mario Party – 985.245 (Over 5.3 billion in revenue)
4. [SWI] Splatoon 2 – 850.817 (Over 4.6 billion in revenue)
5. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 827.917 (Over 4.4 billion in revenue)
6. [PS4] Kingdom Hearts III – 809.824 (Over 6.6 billion in revenue)
7. [SWI] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 707.567 (Over 2.4 billion in revenue)
8. [SWI] New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 547.987 (Over 3.2 billion in revenue)
9. [PS4] Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 – 474.157 (Over 3.6 billion in revenue)
10. [SWI] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 394.786 (Over 2.4 billion in revenue)

Close to 1.9m games were sold in March, a near 25% drop compared to last March. PS4 was the leader in terms of sales, selling over 1 million games, it had the widest gap from Switch in months as that system sold 725k units, these are the only systems that matter now, software sales on all other systems is just around 100k.

PS4 was the leader in terms of units sold and revenue, the system had a great line up for the month and strong sales of expensive games such as Sekiro and Devil May Cry V drove revenue from the system, as well as other expensive titles like Super Robot Wars, The Division and One Piece: World Seeker, even if not all of them had good performances.

Software sales of Nintendo Switch are driven from catalog sales which is why there’s such a gap of revenue between the 2 lead consoles, though the relatively small units difference makes it more impressive for the Switch, as there’s plenty of games selling, even if not all of them are new releases.

Nintendo 3DS also had its last first party title, with Kirby’s Extra Epic Yarn, 3DS goes with a whimper as the game had one of the weakest releases for a Kirby title in Japan. Supporting the 3DS for as long as they did is commendable of Nintendo, but it was also clearly the wrong move as so many of 2018 titles underperformed.

Nintendo is once again the biggest publisher for the month selling some 380k units, that despite putting them above all other publishers is less than half of what they sold last March. Behind them go Bandai Namco at 220k, From Software at 200k, Capcom at 190k and Square Enix at 110k units.

Hardware

There was another price promotion for PS4 this month, once again 5k yen off, but this time only while stock lasted and on certain retailers, this promotion as well as the new titles made it so the system saw growth from February, and being flat compared to last March, the system is also expected to surpass the 8 million units sold milestone in April.

Switch sales are now slowing down despite a weak release schedule, sales of the system see a mild drop compared to February and is flat compared to last March, the system is also expected to surpass the 8 million mark in April, in addition to outselling the PS4.

PSV is now discontinued, and sales are expected to keep dropping in the upcoming months, it’s the beginning of the end for the little system.