Japan Monthly Report for August 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 August was from July 29th to September 1st (5 weeks)

August is typically a slow month for releases, as most developers either hold their games for September, the end of the first half of the fiscal year, or release in late July, right when summer vacation begins, this year it was no difference with very weak new releases, making it so that the best selling games of the month were older titles. Nonetheless, strong sales of such games, as well as Nintendo Switch hardware make it so that revenue is flat in comparison to both July and August of last year.

• Hardware: More than 14 billion yen in revenue came from hardware, surpassing revenue of July and being on par with March’s performance. This sounds like a broken record at this point, but once again revenue is driven by sales of Nintendo Switch, as the system had a strong performance in Obon and also saw a huge boost in sales at the end of the month with the release of the improved SKU with a better battery. The PlayStation 4 also saw a healthy improvement over July, thanks to Obon.
• Software: Around 7 billion yen in revenue came from software, a drop from both July and last August, this is due to sales of older titles dropping (as it naturally happens) and low sales of expensive games. As mentioned several times, revenue in software is mainly driven by new releases, as such revenue naturally drops when that doesn’t happen. Nintendo Switch software is once again the main driver of software revenue.

Software

The best-selling games of August 2019 were:

1. [SWI] Super Mario Maker 2 – 163.918 (Over 920 million yen in revenue)
2. [SWI] Fishing Spirits: Nintendo Switch Version – 96.436 (Around 500 million yen in revenue)
3. [SWI] Fire Emblem: Three Houses – 85.967 (Over 560 million yen in revenue)
4. [SWI] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 57.731 (Around 400 million yen in revenue)
5. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 51.192 (Around 300 million yen in revenue)
6. [SWI] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 47.641 (Over 150 million yen in revenue)
7. [PS4] Pro Baseball Spirits 2019 – 39.071 (Over 250 million yen in revenue)
8. [SWI] Olympic Games Tokyo 2020: The Official Video Game – 34.849 (Over 150 million yen in revenue)
9. [PS4] Azur Lane: Crosswave – 33.763 (Around 300 million yen in revenue)
10. [SWI] Pokémon: Let's Go Pikachu! / Let's Go Eevee! – 33.021 (Over 150 million yen in revenue)

9 out of the 10 best selling games of the month weren’t release on August, and from those 4 weren’t even released this year. 2019 is depending a bit too much on sales of old games, the release schedule for the year has been very disappointing.

Super Mario Maker 2 emerges as the best selling game of the month for the 3^rd month in a row, the first game to do such a thing since these reports began 3 years ago, sales of the game are nearing 600k in a bit over 2 months, it’ll outsell New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe by the end of September, this is a title that should remain near the top of the best sellers for the remainder of the year.

Fishing Spirits on Nintendo Switch and Fire Emblem: Three Houses also saw a healthy second month, with the former selling more in August than in July and being Nintendo Switch’s surprise hit of the summer, as is, it’s the 2^nd best selling Bandai Namco game of the year, and by the looks of it, it won’t have problems becoming their best selling game of 2019. Despite a disappointing launch sales Fire Emblem: Three Houses saw a healthy second month, sales are yet to reach launch sales of Fire Emblem: Awakening, but it saw a better second month than it, and Fire Emblem: Fates, at least percentage wise.

On a more disappointing note we see second month sales of Pro Baseball Spirits 2019, which saw a very harsh drop despite having a huge month in July. The game hasn’t been very well received, seems like the game’s huge launch was due to the excitement of being the first entry of the series in years, the big launch in turned cause retailers to order extra copies, but the game hasn’t been doing too well after the launch period, as of now the game is seeing discounts as retailers are trying to diminish stock, not quite bomba bins yet, but harsher discounts that it would be getting otherwise.

The sleeper hit of the summer is near the end of the list with SEGA’S non Mario & Sonic Olympic game, that failed to enter Top 20 when it released in July and it’s not on Top 10, this is the kind of multiplatform title where the Nintendo Switch version sells several times over the PS4 version, it should keep selling well for the remainder of the year and probably quietly until next summer, when the Olympics take place, on top of that the Mario & Sonic Olympic game releases on November.

The best new selling game of November was Azur Lane: Crosswave, which is the console adaptation of a very popular mobile game, we don’t see much of those nowadays despite such games selling well on the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita, but chances are that increased budgets on PS4 and Nintendo Switch are stopping such titles. The closest comparison to Azur Lane would be something like Kancolle Kai, to which Azur Lane performed much worse. For what it’s worth it’s very good sales for a small developer like Compile Heart, if anything it’s surprising they even got the license.

Other noteworthy new releases, which didn’t sell that much include Nintendo and Platinum Games new title, as well as Tokyo RPG Factory newest effort, with Astral Chain and Oninaki respectively.

NieR: Automata is an outlier in the performance of Platinum Games, sales of that game shouldn’t be expected for their other games, something that Astral Chain showed very clearly, the game sold on par with what Bayonetta 2 did on Wii U and is closer to the average Platinum Games title. For what it’s worth the game is included on the Nintendo Switch Voucher program and seeing how it’s the most expensive Nintendo game on Switch it was a primed candidate to be used on vouchers, so chances are it saw a strong digital performance. Something around 100k LTD for the game would be good.

The bestselling games of 2019 so far are:

1. [SWI] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 872.550 (Over 5.7 billion in revenue)
2. [PS4] Kingdom Hearts III – 838.927 (Over 6.7 billion in revenue)
3. [SWI] New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 676.210 (Over 3.9 billion in revenue)
4. [SWI] Super Mario Maker 2 – 582.001 (Over 3.4 billion yen in revenue)
5. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 401.308 (Over 2.2 billion in revenue)
6. [PS4] Resident Evil 2 – 393.688 (Over 3.1 billion in revenue)
7. [SWI] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 382.414 (Over 1.2 billion in revenue)
8. [SWI] Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu! / Let’s Go Eevee! – 365.676 (Over 1.9 billion in revenue)
9. [SWI] Super Mario Party – 332.868 (Over 1.8 billion in revenue)
10. [PS4] Splatoon 2 – 270.651 (Over 1.5 billion in revenue)

Bestselling games of the past 12 months:

1. [SWI] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 3.233.205 (Over 22.7 billion in revenue)
2. [SWI] Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu! / Let’s Go Eevee! – 1.619.353 (Over 9.4 billion in revenue)
3. [SWI] Super Mario Party – 1.097.721 (Over 5.9 billion in revenue)
4. [PS4] Kingdom Hearts III – 838.927 (Over 6.7 billion in revenue)
5. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 693.103 (Over 3.7 billion in revenue)
6. [SWI] New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 676.210 (Over 3.9 billion in revenue)
7. [SWI] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 652.657 (Over 2.1 billion in revenue)
8. [SWI] Super Mario Maker 2 – 582.001 (Over 3.4 billion yen in revenue)
9. [SWI] Splatoon 2 – 523.143 (Over 2.8 billion in revenue)
10. [PS4] Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 – 474.157 (Over 3.6 billion in revenue)

About 1.5 million games were sold in Japan in August 2019, a mild drop over July and a large drop over last August, Nintendo Switch keeps representing the lion share of software sales moving over 1m games, as of now more than half of total software sales of 2019 are of Nintendo Switch games. Once again, a distant second is the PlayStation 4, which moved over 350k games, a notable decrease in sales over last July and a huge drop in revenue, as PS4 software revenue mostly depends on new software. Revenue in Nintendo Switch software also dropped, but not to the degree of the PS4 drop.

Nintendo is once again the top publisher of the month selling over 500k games in August and now over 4m games for all of 2019, 1 out of every 3 retail game sold in Japan this year has been a Nintendo title, it also goes to show just how important as over 60% of Nintendo Switch titles sold in 2019 are from Nintendo. Well after them goes Bandai Namco selling around 150k games, then goes Konami at 90k games, SEGA at 60k and Square Enix at 50k.

Hardware

Sales of hardware in Japan typically see an increase during August due to the Obon holidays, this was no difference this year with the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch seeing a healthy increase over the holidays, Switch ended up holding up much better than anticipated given the announcement of the SKU with the improved battery life that was to release at the end of the month, which in turned caused an increase in sales bigger than anticipated.

With the release of the Nintendo Switch Lite in September, sales should see a large increase over the rest of the year, a price cut for the PlayStation 4 within he holidays also wouldn’t be unexpected, we’re about to enter the most interesting part of the year.