domingo, 1 de septiembre de 2019

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

There were some very interesting surprises this month, with some games performing above what was expected and others performing below. Strong sales of expensive games such as Pro Baseball Spirits 2019 and Fire Emblem: Three Houses caused a notable increase in revenue as strong sales of the Nintendo Switch and its software made for a very positive month.
  • Hardware: Over 12 billon yen in revenue came from hardware, being an increase over June and July of last year. As with the rest of the year performance is driven by sales of Nintendo Switch, which saw its biggest month since March, while without price promotions, or games to sell hardware, PS4 saw the weakest month it’s seen in a very long time. Switch sales remained strong despite Nintendo working against it, revealing two new and improved SKUs that are both launching soon.
  • Software:  Over 9 billion yen in revenue came from retail software, being a 50% increase over June and July of last year. As with hardware it’s the biggest month in revenue since March, those elusive expensive games selling well are the reason with Pro Baseball Spirits 2019 having a surprisingly huge launch as well as a strong performance for the other games that launched in the month and lasting sales of older games.

Software

The best-selling games of July 2019 were:
  1. [SWI] Super Mario Maker 2 – 221.930 (Over 1.2 billion yen in revenue)
  2. [PS4] Pro Baseball Spirits 2019 – 202.523 (Around 1.9 billion yen in revenue)
  3. [SWI] Fire Emblem: Three Houses – 143.130 (Around 1.1 billion yen in revenue)
  4. [PSV] Pro Baseball Spirits 2019 – 52.259 (Over 400 million yen in revenue)
  5. [SWI] Yo-kai Watch 4 – 47.868 (Around 250 million yen in revenue)
  6. [SWI] Fishing Spirits: Nintendo Switch Version – 47.700 (Around 300 million yen in revenue)
  7. [SWI] Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball – 46.686 (Over 250 million yen in revenue)
  8. [SWI] Rune Factory 4 Special – 37.916 (Over 200 million yen in revenue)
  9. [SWI] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 34.974 (Around 250 million yen in revenue)
  10. [SWI] Attack on Titan 2: Final Battle – 31.679 (Over 250 million yen in revenue)

Super Mario Maker 2 remains as the best selling title of the month, being the 2nd game to remain as the best selling for more than one month after Days Gone did it in April and May, despite seeing a somewhat disappointing launch increase in comparison to the original Wii U game and New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, second month sales were much better than either of those games, and that’s something that should remain for the rest of the year, as it is the game has already sold over 500k units, so a million before the main holidays is very possible, specially with the new Nintendo Switch SKUs launching alter this year.

The biggest surprise of the month was the huge launch of Pro Baseball Spirits 2019 as it had the biggest launch of the series with the PlayStation 4 version alone, but even then, the Vita version also did much better than anticipated. This series comes from a break of a few years just like with Pawapro, the break that series took, as well as ditching the yearly release schedule for a release every other year helped a lot, moving that strategy to the Pro Baseball Spirits series also brought extremely positive results. It’s the best launch for a sports game on PlayStation 4 in Japan, even outdoing Konami’s other baseball titles. Pawapro always had more mainstream appeal, so it’s unlikely this one will outsell last year’s title, but even then, it’s a fantastic launch and truly the biggest surprise of the year, seeing as it ended up being the 3rd biggest launch of the year.

On what was a very disappointing result was the launch sales of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, this was expected to be the best selling game of the month but ended up seeing huge drops from its predecessors, seeing a 60% drop in sales in comparison to Fire Emblem: Fates and a 45% drop in comparison to Fire Emblem: Awakening, it’s the weakest launch for an original Fire Emblem game in Japan since Wii’s Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn in 2007. For what it’s worth, this was more or less expected as it’s another game included on the Nintendo Switch Voucher program, so it’s likely plenty of people that picked Super Mario Maker 2 digitally also picked this one up, or those interested on getting it and Astral Chain decided to go the digital route, as it comes with huge savings. The game has been the best seller on the Nintendo eShop during all of July, so big digital sales are expected, though even then, probably not enough to match the launch of Fire Emblem: Fates.

The other releases for the month, Fishing Spirts and Rune Factory 4 on Nintendo Switch also did very well. The first one is the home port of a very popular arcade game, this is likely a slow burner and should sell well for the rest of the year, but even then, the game had much stronger start than expected. It’ll be interesting how this changes Bandai Namco’s strategy for Nintendo Switch, as their weird fishing game had sold more on one week than their port of God Eater 3, the first hunting game on Switch in nearly 2 years, and also sells more than the remaster of Tales of Vesperia. Rune Factory 4: Special is a straight remaster of a Nintendo 3DS game, and it sure looks like one, for what it is it did very well, paves well the road for Rune Factory 5.

Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball on Nintendo Switch saw a very good second month, this is another title that will sell well for the remainder of the year, selling more than Pro Baseball Spirits on PS4 is not out of the question, that one is now Nintendo Switch’s bestselling sports game, though that isn’t a huge bar to pass. On the other hand, Yo-kai Watch 4 saw a very disappointing second month, doing less than what previous games in the series sold did, a million for the game is out of question, by now it’s not very likely to even hit half a million.

The bestselling games of 2019 so far are:
  1. [PS4] Kingdom Hearts III – 838.927 (Over 6.7 billion in revenue)
  2. [SWI] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 814.819 (Over 5.3 billion in revenue)
  3. [SWI] New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 657.102 (Over 3.8 billion in revenue)
  4. [SWI] Super Mario Maker 2 – 418.083 (Over 2.5 billion yen in revenue)
  5. [PS4] Resident Evil 2 – 393.688 (Over 3.1 billion in revenue)
  6. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 350.116 (Over 1.9 billion in revenue)
  7. [SWI] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 334.573 (Over 1.1 billion in revenue)
  8. [SWI] Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu! / Let’s Go Eevee! – 332.655 (Over 1.7 billion in revenue)
  9. [SWI] Super Mario Party – 301.374 (Over 1.6 billion in revenue)
  10. [PS4] Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice – 260.223 (Over 1.9 billion in revenue)

Bestselling games of the past 12 months:
  1. [SWI] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 3.175.474 (Over 22.3 billion in revenue)
  2. [SWI] Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu! / Let’s Go Eevee! – 1.586.332 (Over 9.2 billion in revenue)
  3. [SWI] Super Mario Party – 1.066.227 (Over 5.7 billion in revenue)
  4. [PS4] Kingdom Hearts III – 838.927 (Over 6.7 billion in revenue)
  5. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 744.681 (Over 4 billion in revenue)
  6. [SWI] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 690.437 (Over 2.3 billion in revenue)
  7. [SWI] New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 657.102 (Over 3.8 billion in revenue)
  8. [SWI] Splatoon 2 – 613.568 (Over 3.3 billion in revenue)
  9. [PS4] Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 – 474.157 (Over 3.6 billion in revenue)
  10. [SWI] Super Mario Maker 2 – 418.083 (Over 2.5 billion yen in revenue)

1.6 million games were sold in July, being an increase over both June and July of last year. Nintendo Switch once again represents the most software sold, moving over 1 million boxed games, seeing its biggest month since January. PlayStation 4 comes as a distant second, moving less than 500k, the strong sales of Pro Baseball Spirits made it so PlayStation Vita moved more software than the Nintendo 3DS as the two handhelds sold 65k and 42k units respectively.

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Nintendo was the month’s top publisher moving over 500k games and seeing their biggest month since January, Konami’s baseball games made them the second biggest publisher by selling over 300k games, their biggest month since the release of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain back in September 2015, Bandai Namco was the 3rd biggest publisher moving around 100k games as Koei Tecmo and Level 5 close the top 5 publishers, with around 50 games sold each.

Hardware

The most interesting news from hardware this month weren’t the actual sales, as we saw the same results, we’ve seen for over a year now, but rather the new announcements. Sales for the Nintendo Switch have been very strong, but the price of the system has been an issue on it getting to the level of the Nintendo DS or Nintendo 3DS, this month Nintendo announced their answer to that with the Nintendo Switch Lite, a handheld only SKU of the system that is launching on late September, the most important thing about it is the price, as it’s launching at 20000 yen, 10000 yen less than the regular Nintendo Switch, that is a huge announcement in itself, but Nintendo is also releasing an improved version of the current Nintendo Switch with a better battery by the end of August. The system was primed for huge sales anyway, but the new models, mainly the handheld only one, should push it up a lot.

Nintendo Switch sells 219k, PlayStation 4 sells 47k, everything else combined amounts to less than 15k.
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