Japan Monthly Report for February 2020

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 February 3^rd to March 1st (4 weeks)

This was the worst performing month since I started making these reports, as shortages for the Nintendo Switch and RingFit Adventure worsen as well as the lack of big new releases, hardware sales bring down the whole month.

• Hardware: Less than 5 billion yen in revenue came from hardware, it’s the lowest month since April 2018 as the PlayStation 4 sees it’s worst month in years and sales of the Nintendo Switch are heavily affected by shortages with the main system having minimal shipments at least the Lite version is still readily available.
• Software: Over 7 billion yen in revenue came from retail software, it’s the first time in months since software generated more money than hardware. A small drop over last February, while there were no huge titles released for the month, the more mid-sized releases performed well, that and lasting sales of older titles made up a decent performance.

Software

The best-selling games of February 2020 were:

1. [PS4] Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers – 135.499 (Over 1.3 billion yen in revenue)
2. [PS4] Granblue Fantasy Versus – 105.452 (Over 800 million yen in revenue)
3. [SWI] Pokémon Sword / Shield – 90.937 (Over 500 million yen in revenue)
4. [SWI] Hatsune Miku: Project Diva MegaMix – 66.541 (Over 400 million yen in revenue)
5. [SWI] Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers – 55.304 (Over 500 million yen in revenue)
6. [SWI] RingFit Adventure – 52.206 (Over 400 million yen in revenue)
7. [SWI] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 41.535 (Over 140 million yen in revenue)
8. [SWI] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 37.734 (Over 250 million yen in revenue)
9. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 36.743 (Over 200 million yen in revenue)
10. [SWI] Dr Kawashima's Brain Training for Nintendo Switch – 32.800 (Over 100 million yen in revenue)

A couple of PS4 games came out on as the top sellers on yet another Switch dominated month. The first spinoff of Persona 5 saw, expectedly, most of its sales on the system were the other games are while Granblue’s debut on home console was also rather impressive.

Launch sales of Persona 5 Scramble were the highest for a musou game in Japan since Dragon Quest Heroes II back in 2016 while also being the 2^nd biggest launch for a Persona spin off since Persona Q back in 2014, a very strong launch on it’s on right as it’s not too far behind Persona 5: Royal. This was the first multiplatform title of note for the year and as expected PS4 had most of its sales, nonetheless sales on Switch are decent.

Granblue Fantasy has been one of the most popular mobile games in Japan for many years now, so a console version seemed inevitable and there’s an RPG is supposedly coming later this year, it was very interesting to see that the first iteration of the IP on consoles would by a fighting game by ArcSystem Works. Performance for the game is good considering the genre, fighting games don’t do anything too special in Japan nowadays yet it was impressive to see launch sales of Granblue Fantasy Versus to be considerably higher than those of Street Fighter V and Tekken 7, it should have no problem becoming the bestselling traditional fighter on PS4, yet these games keep selling below arena fighters as despite its impressive performance won’t match the sales of titles such as Jump Force, Gundam Versus or Dissidia Final Fantasy. Still, the fact that fans are loyal and numerous enough to make a traditional fighter a success paints well for the upcoming RPG.

The final new release for the month was the new Hatsune Miku title on Nintendo Switch, this would be the first “regular” Miku game on a Nintendo system seeing as the 3DS games all star “chibi” Miku, additionally it was an interesting proposition as the game includes less content than the years old PS4 title, Project Diva: Future Tone. SEGA must’ve had low expectations as they didn’t ship enough copies to satisfy demand and the game had shortages all month. Performance of the game is decent as it did close to what the latest PSV and 3DS games did. Due to the nature of this game once there wasn’t enough stock it was a done deal retail sales would be rather low as fans would just buy digitally (SEGA indicated the game had high digital sales) so don’t expect sales to rebound after stock becomes meaningful, it could’ve sold over 100k at retail, but it’s now too late.

As usual the best of the big sellers for the month are older games as Pokémon, Smash Bros., Mario Kart and Minecraft all keep on selling well, sales for some of these games actually increased during the later weeks of the month as the outbreak of COVID-19 worsens, some people may be getting games before quarantining themselves. RingFit Adventure on the other hand, while also selling well, sees it’s lowest month yet, and it was not because of lowered demand. As with the Switch hardware the ringfit itself is manufactured in China, thus stock of the game has been heavily affected as a result. Switch cartridges and PS4 blurays are manufactured within Japan, so if other games have stock issues (like with Miku and Granblue this month) is due to the publisher.

The best-selling games of the year so far:

1. [SWI] Pokémon Sword / Shield – 482.540 (Over 2.8 billion yen in revenue)
2. [PS4] Yakuza 7: Like a Dragon – 241.689 (Over 2.1 billion yen in revenue)
3. [SWI] RingFit Adventure – 209.324 (Over 1.8 billion yen in revenue)
4. [PS4] Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot – 147.705 (Over 1.5 billion yen in revenue)
5. [SWI] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 139.156 (Over 500 million yen in revenue)
6. [PS4] Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers – 135.499 (Over 1.3 billion yen in revenue)
7. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 134.266 (Around 750 million yen in revenue)
8. [SWI] Dr Kawashima's Brain Training for Nintendo Switch – 130.635 (Over 400 million yen in revenue)
9. [SWI] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 128.003 (Over 850 million yen in revenue)
10. [PS4] Granblue Fantasy Versus – 105.452 (Around 800 million yen in revenue)

The best-selling games of the past 12 months

1. [SWI] Pokémon Sword / Shield – 3.470.674 (Over 21 billion yen in revenue)
2. [SWI] Super Mario Maker 2 – 864.345 (Over 5.2 billion yen in revenue)
3. [SWI] RingFit Adventure – 704.963 (Over 5.8 billion yen in revenue)
4. [SWI] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 672.029 (Over 4.5 billion yen in revenue)
5. [SWI] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 623.873 (Over 2.1 billion yen in revenue)
6. [SWI] Luigi's Mansion 3 – 607.503 (Over 3.6 billion yen in revenue)
7. [SWI] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 597.805 (Over 3.3 billion yen in revenue)
8. [SWI] Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition – 492.970 (Over 4.1 billion yen in revenue)
9. [PS4] Monster Hunter: World - Iceborne Master Edition – 430.813 (Over 2.8 billion yen in revenue)
10. [SWI] Fishing Spirits: Nintendo Switch Version – 399.562 (Over 2.2 billion yen in revenue)

Around 1.3m games were sold on February, a mild drop over the same month last year, yet January being down by a lot of overall software sales are well behind those of 2019. Nintendo Switch remains as the top seller on software, though all the new PS4 releases made it much close than before, Switch sells 755k, PS4 521k and the rest do under 25k.

Nintendo remains as the biggest publisher in Japan, selling over 300k games despite no new releases for the month, Atlus is unsurprisingly the second biggest publisher moving over 200k games, SEGA pulls in third place with Yakuza and Miku selling 110k as the new publisher on dedicated platforms, Cygames, and the Pokémon Co. tie at 105k.

Hardware

For two full years in a row the Nintendo Switch has been the best selling hardware in Japan, and despite the original model having some big supply constrains sales are up year on year over last February as the Switch family sold over 275k units. We were able to see shortages not seen since the  summer of 2017 for Switch as stores are resorting back to using lotteries to sell whatever few systems they may have, at least the Nintendo Switch Lite is still fully in stock as to stop sales from collapsing all together. This is just going to get worse in the next couple of months, with the launch of Animal Crossing: New Horizons on March 20 the Lite may start to see stock issues too and Nintendo may be saving up original Switches for that launch as well.

At least the PS4 is not being affected, as demand for that system isn’t as high there are no reported problems, not yet at least. Event then PS4 sees it’s worst month in years, barely selling 30k units for the whole month, it’s going to be a tough year for PS4 and the whole situation makes it all the more difficult for a price cut or a revision to happen now.