So by the end of the year Samurai Warriors 5 on the Switch is likely to surpass 100K, good drop of only 60% from the launch and also decent WoM.
Despite the franchise being PlayStation focused for so long Koei Tecmo's muliplat strategy is paying off - imagine if this had been a PS exclusive it would have been a an even bigger drop compared to Samurai Warriors 4. Now the key thing for them is how it does in Rest of Asia as that's how they can make up the lifetime difference and might even see growth.
[PS4] Samurai Warriors 5 - 65.967
[NSW] Samurai Warriors 5 - 50.246
TOTAL: 116.213
[PS3] Samurai Warriors 4 - 255.938
[PSV] Samurai Warriors 4 - 91.107
[PS4] Samurai Warriors 4 - 19.380
TOTAL: 366.425
Elsewhere as expected Bandai's fantastic journey to the bottom of the Publisher rankings continues in Japan, soon they will be in danger of joining Level-5. After last year's decline they are now starting to hit the bottom. As a new IP Scarlet Nexus basically launched at the worse time for both the PS4 and PS5.. one is already pretty much a discontinued platform in Japan while the other hasn't had a title that even surpassed 75K physical sales and is unlikely to get one until the final quarter of the year(which is also not a certainty). Their marketing deal with Microsoft helped them nowhere, while their de-facto exclusivity in Japan(XSX is doing in comparison to X1 but it's basically non-existant in Japan), ensured it's basically a niche launch in their home turf... considering the budget, people involved and overall investment of time that likely went into the game - well certain figures at the company are already on thin-ice.
Things looked really good for them a couple of years ago with late-ports and AA family games like Fishing Spirits/Taiko doing real well, now that there is actual competition from other Japanese third parties the situation and they've stopped in launching family games that resonate with the Switch audience they are relying on PS to save their buts which has a zero chance of happening this year. Arise will definitely under-perform in Japan compared to the amount of time, resources and marketing that will go towards it and two such high profile failures in a single year will have long term consequences for the people who green-lighted their strategy for the past two to three years.
