Week 5, 2016 (Feb 01 - Feb 07)

Week 6, 2016 (Feb 08 - Feb 14)

Week 7, 2016 (Feb 15 - Feb 21) 

Week 8, 2016 (Feb 22 - Feb 28) 

February

- As expected Kancolle was the best selling game of the month, that's a good start for Vita as the best selling game for the first two months of 2016 was on the system, it's also the first time Vita has had a two month streak. As far as anything else is concerned there are some positive and negative results, SMT4:Final didn't do quite what I expected and it looks like Dragon Quest Builders won't be having Minecraft legs, though it sold more than enough. Setsuna didn't do all that, but much wasn't expected from the game, similar situation with Attack on Titan. Street Fighter V did very poorly, but the franchise has lost all relevance in Japan, as much as dedicated fighting games have so it wasn't unexpected.

- Splatoon left with a 9 month run on the chart, the longest for any Wii U game, though, it may be back next month.

- On hardware sales, PS4 overtook the New 3DS LL on the YTD race and was the best selling SKU, PS4 should keep the momentum throughout the year; Vita as well had a pretty good month outselling the New 3DS LL and almost matching it YTD. Wii U had a terrible month, shortages bla bla, but still, it's ridiculous it sold less than the PS3, though one system is getting games while the other one isn't.

- On general software PSV, PS4 and Wii U managed to improve upon their February 2015 performance, and are also up YoY, didn't expect that from the PS4 which is as a whole perfoming better than I anticipated; Megaten couldn't make up for last year's Zelda and PS3's releases couldn't make up for Dragon Quest Heroes so both are down and take down all sales as a result.

While things are going well for the PS4 and PSV, things for the market as a whole aren't looking great with large drops on both hardware and software, things shouldn't get better in March, specially for software.

What to expect next month?

This

3rd (32 days of tracking)

[PSV][PS4]Gundam Breaker 3

[PS3][PS4]Life is Strange

[3DS]Haikyu!! Cross Team Match!

10th (25 days of tracking)

[PSV][PS4]Summon Night 6: Ushinawareta Kyoukaitachi

[XB1][PS4]Tom Clancy's The Division

[3DS]Medarot Girls Mission: Kabuto / Kuwagata 

[NWU]The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD

17th (18 days of tracking)

[PSV]Digimon World: Next Order

18th (17 days of tracking)

[NWU]Pokken Tournament

24th (11 days of tracking)

[PSV][PS4]Dead or Alive Xtreme 3

[PSV]Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X

[PSV][PS4]Psycho-Pass: Sentaku Naki Koufuku

[PSV][PS3][PS4]Winning Post 8 2016

[PS4][XB1]Dark Souls III

[3DS]Ansatsu Kyoushitsu: Assassin Ikusei Keikaku!!

[3DS]Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 3

31st ( 4 days of tracking)

[PS3][PS4]Star Ocean 5: Integrity and Faithlessness

April 2nd (2 days of tracking)

[3DS] Yokai Sangokushi

Yes, while Yokai Sangokushi is an April release it falls on the period we're calling March.

March's best selling game will be Dragon Quest Monters Joker 3, which should also be the best selling game of the year by the end of the month and potentially 2016's first million seller, apart from that titles like Dark Souls III, Star Ocean V, Yokai Sangokushi and Pokken Tournament should follow. Dark Sould should build up on what Bloodborne did, Star Ocean is rather tricky, after the terrible Star Ocean 1, 2 3 and specially 4 seems like the fanbase is somewhat burned as there doesn't seem to be much interest on the game, hope for good previews and word of mouth for it's performance, how it does on April is more interesting than March which is the same case with Yokai Sangokushi that'll have a very brief release period, Yokai Watch games haven't been very frontloaded so how it does later will be more telling, Pokken is Wii U's last mayor release until Paper Mario, so there's that.

With all the games is getting the PS4 should be the best selling hardware, Dragon Quest should put 3DS above Vita.

Two Thousand Fifteen

January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December

First Half Year Recap

Full Year Recap

2016

January

Very weak month software-wise. Mario Tennis showed some good legs somehow and Kancolle unsurprisingly topped the charts.

And congrats to PS4! It's not easy to top a handheld in Japan, even if it's old.

Nice work as always, Kylee.

Ooo, very nice. I'm interested to see if KanColle has legs.

btw I purposedly left out the old Pokémon games from this, as you know it's Virtual Console not an actual new release.

Wii U sales really took a hit with the shortages.. hopefully they will fix that soon..

Nothing surprising this month, aside from Ultra Smash's legs I guess. Attack on Titan did better than preorders suggested also.

March should be much more interesting since it has much bigger releases like DQMJ3, Yokai Sangokushi, Dark Souls III, Star Ocean 5, Pokken Tournament, etc. Wii U and 3DS will surely be up next month, as should the PS4. Not sure about the PSV though.

Always good to see these!

That 3DS snd its 20mil user base is soooo huge compared to the others. It always stands out.

You expect Dragon quest Joker 3 to get 1m?

AFAIK, this one has much less marketing and hype.

Will be interesting to see how it does in comparison to Dragon quest builders LTD. (all SKUs)

What an exceptional month for PlayStation. Great to see ps4 and Vita doing so well!

Always good to see an improvement from the PS4. I'm expecting SnK/AoT to get a revival when the anime returns.