Japan Monthly Report for October 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 October was from September 30th to November 3rd (5 weeks)

October is an interesting month as it’s right between two notable events in Japan, the end of the first half of the fiscal year in October, and right before the main holiday season that begins in November. Due to that the month is usually slow on notable releases, that wasn’t the case last year, and it’s somewhat the case this year, but the big games of the month ended up being surprises or release right at the end of the month.

• Hardware: Over 12 billion yen of revenue came from hardware, an expected drop from September and an increase over last October, sales of Nintendo Switch represents most of units sales and revenue, the base system by itself is up year on year to last October and you have sales of the Nintendo Switch lite on top of that. Total sales of the system should surpass 10 million in November.
• Software: Over 8 billion yen in revenue came from retail software a drop from both September and last October. Performance of software on the month was mixed, with some games underperforming and the big games releasing right at the end of the month and thus having a smaller impact, there was a huge surprise though, with Nintendo’s RingFit Adventure, but was not enough to make up for an otherwise lackluster month.

Software

The best-selling games of October 2019 were:

1. [PS4] Persona 5: Royal – 201.488 (Over 2 billion in revenue)
2. [SWI] RingFit Adventure – 183.685 (Over 1.5 billion in revenue)
3. [PS4] Call of Duty: Modern Warfare – 155.575 (Over 1.3 billion in revenue)
4. [SWI] Luigi's Mansion 3 – 150.649 (Around 1 billion in revenue)
5. [SWI] Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition – 118.344 (Over 900 million in revenue)
6. [SWI] Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town – 90.954 (Over 550 million in revenue)
7. [PS4] Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Breakpoint – 78.485 (Over 650 million in revenue)
8. [SWI] Disney Tsum Tsum Festival – 54.350 (Around 350 million in revenue)
9. [PS4] Monster Hunter: World - Iceborne Master Edition – 43.312 (Over 250 million in revenue)
10. [SWI] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 41.221 (Around 150 million in revenue)

The biggest surprise of the month isn’t the game at #1, but #2, Nintendo’s RingFit Adventure was a surprise hit, the game was nearly able to triple it’s first week sales and has been sold out for the whole month, seems like Nintendo has a new hit in it’s hands as we haven’t seen a new IP perform like that since the original Splatoon. It’s still far from what games like Wii Fit (it’s closest comparison) did but it’s a great performance anyway, the game should sell well in the holidays and even after that.

3 years ago, on the second Japan Monthly Report Persona 5 on PS4 was the best-selling game of the month, this time it’s expanded rerelease, Persona 5: Royale does the same. It’s the best launch for a Persona rerelease outdoing Persona 4: Golden on Vita, it’s launch was big enough to be the third biggest launch of the series all together, only below the original versions of Persona 5 and Persona 4. The drop in sales of Persona 5 to Royale is also rather impressive, from 270k on vanilla (only the PS4 version) to 200k, with Royal likely having a bigger digital launch as well. Even then Royal is expected to be more frontloaded than the original releases now that the IP is much bigger.

The other big PS4 game for the month was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare which performed well below expectations as after 2 weeks the game couldn’t match launch sales of neither Call of Duty: WWII or Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, the last two entries in the series, if anything it’s a 50% drop over BO4, with that Call of Duty joins a year full of underperforming western games, including Anthem, The Division 2 and also on this month’s Top 10 Ghost Recon: Breakpoint all performing well below what western games did on PS4 years prior.

The biggest Nintendo Switch launch was then Luigi’s Mansion 3, another game on Nintendo’s Digital Voucher program and another game that saw retail sales heavily affected due to that, Luigi’s Mansion 3 saw a 50% drop in comparison to it’s predecessor, Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon that launched on 3DS in 2013, it’s very unlikely for digital sales to make up for that drop however, so this game is just seeing dropping sales from it’s predecessor. Even then with the upcoming holiday season the game should keep selling well, with the upcoming Pokémon games is the biggest Switch release this holiday season.

Other new releases include a remake of a previous Story of Season’s title and a Switch port of a popular mobile game, both did alright, lasting sales of older games including last month’s best sellers, Monster Hunter: World – Iceborne Master Edition and Dragon Quest XI S also had a good performance as did the oldest game on the chart, Minecraft on Switch.

The bestselling games of 2019 so far are:

1. [SWI] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 956.650 (Over 6.3 billion in revenue)
2. [PS4] Kingdom Hearts III – 838.927 (Over 6.7 billion in revenue)
3. [SWI] New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 699.858 (Over 4 billion in revenue)
4. [SWI] Super Mario Maker 2 – 683.037 (Over 4 billion yen in revenue)
5. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 481.365 (Over 2.6 billion in revenue)
6. [SWI] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 462.166 (Over 1.5 billion in revenue)
7. [SWI] Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition – 421.548 (Over 3.5 billion in revenue)
8. [SWI] Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu! / Let’s Go Eevee! – 401.320 (Over 2.1 billion in revenue)
9. [PS4] Resident Evil 2 – 393.688 (Over 3.1 billion in revenue)
10. [PS4] Monster Hunter: World - Iceborne Master Edition – 389.551 (Over 2.7 billion in revenue)

Bestselling games of the past 12 months:

1. [SWI] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 3.317.305 (Over 23.3 billion in revenue)
2. [SWI] Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu! / Let’s Go Eevee! – 1.654.997 (Over 9.6 billion in revenue)
3. [SWI] Super Mario Party – 875.909 (Over 4.6 billion in revenue)
4. [PS4] Kingdom Hearts III – 838.927 (Over 6.7 billion in revenue)
5. [SWI] New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 699.858 (Over 4 billion in revenue)
6. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 689.800 (Over 3.7 billion in revenue)
7. [SWI] Super Mario Maker 2 – 683.037 (Over 4 billion yen in revenue)
8. [SWI] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 644.151 (Over 2.1 billion in revenue)
9. [SWI] Splatoon 2 – 465.398 (Over 2.5 billion in revenue)
10. [SWI] Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition – 421.548 (Over 3.5 billion in revenue)

More than 2 million games were sold in Japan for October, a mild decrease over September and an increase over October, Nintendo Switch keeps moving the most software selling over 1.2 million games, PS4 is behind doing less than 800k with the rest moving less than 50k.

For 11 months in a row Nintendo is the top publisher in Japan, moving over 500k units in October and over 5 million for 2019, Atlus is then the month’s 2^nd biggest publisher selling over 200k units with Square Enix, Sony and Bandai Namco as the other big publishers for October.

Hardware

Once again Nintendo Switch is the top selling hardware, doing more than 7 times than all other systems combined, somewhat surprisingly the original model outsold the Lite, though it seems that interest on the biggest game the system got this month, RingFit Adventure may have been the reason, as that game is incompatible with the Lite model.

The last week of the month also includes sales of the Like Pokémon Bundles, so perhaps sales slowed as some were waiting for that SKU to drop, either way Lite is doing below what we were anticipating.

PS4 saw a big drop in sales from both September and last October with games like COD and Persona 5 not doing much for the system, it’s clear that PS4 has hit a saturation point in Japan, at least with its current price, a price drop is long overdue.

Switch sales 390k, PS4 does 43k, everything else is below 10k combined.