Farsala said:
I think the funny part is EA at #9, despite what most fans say about that company... Top western company besides Minecraft. |
Just goes to show that despite everything football is still huge and Pro Evolution Soccer could be a big game on the Switch if Konami releases it next year.
Next year Konami could very well be the first Japanese 3rd Party to have a million-seller in Japan on the Switch. Momotaro Dentetsu sales in Japan are going to be huge this holiday, I don't doubt this will be the top-selling game in the franchise. It's months before the release and the game is still in the Top 5 at Amazon, there is also a 2nd version of the game at #77. And this is supposably a casual game that doesn't do the most pre-orders as the majority of people buying it do so at launch. Much like Super Mario Party, it will eventually get to 1M most likely at some point next year.
Square's support on the Switch has always been good, they've been moving DQ audience there from very early on. They launched the second-most games from a Japanese 3rd Party behind Bandai Namco. With at least 8 games that have surpassed 50K physical sales. The main issue with Square has been supplied for their games, JRPGs are notoriously front-loaded and every time Square launches a JRPG on the Switch not named DQ they seem to underestimate demand. Octopath could have sold >250K physical if it wasn't impossible to find, Trials of Mana could have been around 150K, with the second-hand market they have surely missed some sales because of their approach. It will be interesting if they learned a lesson with Bravely Default 2.
Bandai will have Pro Baseball Famista 2020 & Captain Tsubasa this year, coupled with a late port of Jump Force, people might complain about certain games missing the Switch but it's a matter of time before their entire pipeline is there. Bandai simply doesn't have much of a choice since the majority of the anime games they work on need to be on the device dominating the Japanese Videogame market. This year Switch has 87.47% of the hardware market... this won't change much with the PS5 launch. As outlined before even during the peak of Wii/DS Nintendo only had 66.7%:
- 2016: 47.1%
- 2017: 69.8%
- 2018: 67.4%
- 2019: 79.1%
- 2020: 87.47%
Simply put the current situation is unprecedented and companies who haven't build up a good audience and brand awareness on the Switch are going to struggle to sell their games in Japan.
