Week 19, 2015 (May 4 - May 10)
Week 20, 2015 (May 11 - May 17)
Week 21, 2015 (May 18 - May 24)
Week 22, 2015 (May 25 - May 31)
May 2015 was quite possibly the absolute worst month in the Japanese industry as far as salesf software and hardware are concerned, some notable things to say:
- Week 20 was the worst week in recorded history, as I mentioned in a previous thread I'm translating some old Famitsu data, and nothing on 1995 - 1997 come close to it, we know its the worst since 2001, but I couldn't find an an actual worst one, prior to this one the worst was the week ending on May 19th 2003, were the best selling game was Fire Emblem: Blazing Swords with 15.426 units and the top selling hardware was the PS2 with close to 50k, while week 20 was higher on software, it was nothing on hardware, in fact, the PS2 on that week alone sold more than all hardware combined on week 20.
- Codename S.T.E.A.M. is the single worst debut for a Nintendo published game ever with less than 2k sold on its opening week, however on the other side of the spectrum, Splatoon on WiiU became the best selling game on the month, despite being available for only 2 days, both are new IPS so to see such a huge difference its interesting, its also the first time since May 2014 that a WiiU game has been the best selling of the month, the last title to do it was Mario Kart 8 which is back on the charts a year after its release.
Overall extremely weak month, as I said possibly the worst, only 1 game sold more than 100k retail and overall software sales are terrible with barely any new releases, in fact its because of that that evergreen titles are back on the chart like Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS, Pokemon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire and Minecraft on Vita, its also worth nothing the success of The Witcher III on PS4.
What to expect next month?
Home console numbers won't be pretty, WiiU is getting no retail releases for the whole month, for PlayStation home consoles it ain't much better, the new expansion of Final Fantasy XIV and DMC4 are the only noteworthy software to be released on June.
Handhelds on the other hand should see better numbers, the Nintendo 3DS hf should do good with Fire Emblem If (expected to be the best selling game of the month) along with the new Rythm Heaven and sales should pick up and the New Nintendo 3DS LL should be back on top of the hardware charts, ending PS4's 4 month streak; Vita should do better as well with Persona 4: Dancing All Night (which is bundled), while Minecraft has been keeping the platform afloat pretty much all by itself it needs more compeling software to keep things going, the Vita hf is also expected to surpass the 4m mark by the end of June and should surpass the Nintendo Game Cube by the end of summer.
The pie for May, as you can say the difference between the PS4 and the Vita is minimal.
Pie for the year thus far.
Won't be getting to 25%, PS4's lineup for the summer is pretty barren, I'm not expecting it to be the best selling system of the month until September.
Back to software, because I'm inconsistent.
Keep in mind that there's a margin of error here as its all done manually, even so this has to be the absolute worst month for the PS3 software wise, and probably the first time since launch that no new PS3 games made it to Famitsu's top 30.
Puzzles and Mario's knocked Bloodborne off of this list, Splatoon has a big chance of entering next month as well as Fire Emblem If and maybe P4DAN, GE2:RB also surpassed DQH on PS4 from last months rankings.
This list shouldn't see any change until September with the release of The Phantom Pain.
Same goes for this list.
Minecraft retail surpasses SAO, Minecraft its also now the best selling game on the system, it should surpass the 500k mark by the end of June.
Both of these should say as of May 31st, sorry about that; Splatoon knocks DQX 3.0 off of the list, it could top it be the end of June.
Flashback: January - February - March - April
