Japan Monthly Report for April 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 April was from April 1st to April 28th (4 weeks)

After the end of the fiscal year things tend to slow down, and usually Q2 of the year (April, May and June) tend to be the slowest and driest period of the week in terms of releases.

• Hardware: Around 10 billion yen of revenue was from hardware, down from March but a noticeable increase over last April, increased sales of Nintendo Switch are making up for hardware and software to the point that revenue continues to be flat year on year.
• Software: Some 6.6 billion yen was from software, a big decrease over last month and April 2018, the lack of expensive strong performers is the issue, EDF: Iron Rain was the most expensive game this month and it underperformed, that and the lack of notable releases made for a weak month in software sales, and this is something where the Nintendo Switch can’t really make up seeing as we’re no seeing many game releases.

Software

The best-selling games of April 2019 were:

1. [PS4] Days Gone – 114.319 (Over 850 million in revenue)
2. [SWI] Super Dragon Ball Heroes: World Mission – 99.552 (Ove 700 million in revenue)
3. [PS4] Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain – 74.312 (Around 600 million in revenue)
4. [SWI] Yoshi's Crafted World – 59.864 (Over 320 million in revenue)
5. [SWI] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 50.774 (Over 300 million in revenue)
6. [PS4] Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice – 44.009 (Around 300 million in revenue)
7. [SWI] Nintendo Labo Toy-Con 04: VR Kit – 43.175 (Around 300 million in revenue)
8. [SWI] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 40.442 (Around 130 million in revenue)
9. [SWI] New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 36.819 (Around 200 million in revenue)
10. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 32.716 (Around 200 million in revenue)

It’s very interesting too see just how big western titles continue to do this generation, when Spider-Man released last September I commented how that game (and God of War and Detroit: Become Human) doing well above expectations in turned raised expectations for the then upcoming Days Gone and The Last of Us: Part II, and even with that Days Gone also did better than expected, to the point that it was the best selling game of the month.

Launch sales of Days Gone were slightly higher than those of Horizon: Zero Dawn, it’s the 3^rd best first week for a western Sony title only behind the aforementioned Spider-Man and Uncharted 4, launch sales were also enough to top sales of Detroit: Become Human and nearly matched those of God of War, its also doing better than western titles of third parties having outsold retail sales of Anthem and The Division 2 on its launch week alone. In turn expectations for The Last of Us: Part II have increased even more, a 200k-300k opening for that game isn’t out of the question, very optimistic about Ghost of Tsushima as well.

The other notable PS4 release was the new Earth Defense Force title, Iron Rain; this title is interesting as it seems like they’re now targeting the west as the game had a worldwide retail launch (EDF5 was digital only and released internationally one year after Japan) and was released domestically under the EDF name rather than the Japanese title, Chikyu Boeigun. Hopefully their integrational bet paid off as the game heavily underperformed in Japan, having sold in nearly a month less than what EDF5 sold on its launch week alone, EDF5 is also the series’ and publisher most successful game having shipped 350k units domestically so having the new title selling less than 100k is disappointing. Its clear that Japan wasn’t their target.

PS4’s release schedule is barren until October, with the only game expected to sell over 100k between now and then being the new Pro Baseball Spirits (which would’ve been here had it not been delayed to July), the first game with a 100k potential, that we know of, would be Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Breakpoint coming in early October and then Persona 5: The Royal releasing later that month, so far I wouldn’t put high hopes on the Monster Hunter: World – Iceborne retail release.

On the new Nintendo Switch titles, we have the new title in the Dragon Ball Heroes series and the latest Nintendo Labo Kit. Dragon Ball did well all things considered having a launch close to the previous 3DS games but weaker legs, the current price of the Switch, and that of the game itself, may limit the audience of that type of games for the time being as the 3DS entries, being mostly budgeted games, sold well for long periods of times, with the first and last titles on the system selling 300k each.

Nintendo also tries again with Labo, this time with a VR version and with support on other games, the announcement of the VR modes for Zelda and Mario definitely raised eyebrows, and the game is performing better than the Drive Kit and Robot Kit launches aligned, though still it’s a lackluster performance, Labo keeps doing well below other Nintendo titles on Switch.

The rest of the best sellers is filled with the usual suspects, notable are the second month sales of Yoshi’s Crafted World and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.

From’s new title has sold over 300k units, it’s their second fastest selling brand new title, only behind sales of the original Dark Souls, as is the game has also already outsold Bloodborne and it has so far shown a much better long time performance then any of their soul titles, 400k is not out of the question for it, specially if the game gets rereleased later on.

Yoshi also did well, the game already outsold the previous game on both Wii U and 3DS, yet its sales are well below what previous Yoshi titles did and it’s the weakest of Nintendo’s sidescrolling titles, doing worse than Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze launches aligned and already being below New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe on the weekly charts less than a month after release.

The best selling games of 2019 so far are:

1. [PS4] Kingdom Hearts III – 822.080 (Over 6.7 billion in revenue)
2. [SWI] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 682.495 (Over 4.5 billion in revenue)
3. [SWI] New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 584.806 (Over 3.4 billion in revenue)
4. [PS4] Resident Evil 2 – 386.678 (Over 3 billion in revenue)
5. [SWI] Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu! / Let’s Go Eevee! – 250.761 (Over 1.3 billion in revenue)
6. [SWI] Super Mario Party – 241.975 (Over 1.3 billion in revenue)
7. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 239.284 (Over 1.3 billion in revenue)
8. [PS4] Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice – 238.869 (Over 1.8 billion in revenue)
9. [SWI] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 222.964 (Over 700 million in revenue)
10. [PS4] Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown – 206.474 (Over 1.6 billion in revenue)

Best selling games of the past 12 months.

1. [SWI] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 3.043.150 (Over 21.5 billion in revenue)
2. [SWI] Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu! / Let’s Go Eevee! – 1.504.438 (Over 8.85 billion in revenue)
3. [SWI] Super Mario Party – 1.006.828 (Over 5.45 billion in revenue)
4. [PS4] Kingdom Hearts III – 822.080 (Over 6.7 billion in revenue)
5. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 817.387 (Over 4.5 billion in revenue)
6. [SWI] Splatoon 2 – 804.742 (Over 4.4 billion in revenue)
7. [SWI] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 748.009 (Over 2.5 billion in revenue)
8. [SWI] New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 584.806 (Over 3.4 billion in revenue)
9. [PS4] Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 – 474.157 (Over 3.6 billion in revenue)
10. [SWI] Mario Tennis Aces – 414.854 (Over 2.3 billion in revenue)

Around 1.3m games were sold in April, a slight decrease over last April and a 30% drop compared to March, Nintendo Switch games were the most sold this month with some 716k units coming from the system, behind it was the PS4 with close to 490k games sold, and then much further back was the 3DS at 60k sold, everything else combined doesn’t amount to 30k.

Nintendo remains the top publisher of the year selling over 300k games, more than twice as much as their nearest competitor, Bandai Namco which sold around 150k, Sony was the third biggest publisher thanks to Days Gone selling over 120k as Square Enix and D3 Publisher tie for 4^th place selling around 80k each.

Hardware

Nintendo Switch is Japan’s best selling system for the 14^th month in a row, once again the console had the lionshare of sales, with 3 out of every 4 consoles sold in April being a Switch.

Total sales for both the PlayStation 4 and the Nintendo Switch surpassed 8 million units this month, just one week apart from one another, total sale of both systems are good, but lately PS4 sales have slowed down a lot, with the system selling just 50k units in April, less than half of what it did on March, Switch is expected to outsell the PS4 during the first week of May.

Switch sells 183k, PS4 does 52k, 3DS did 16k and everything else combined less than 3k.