Can you prove that even 5% of PS5's sold in Japan are being bought by scalpers? Or are we just making blanket statements? 

The digital excuse for Japan, is just that - an excuse.

Returnal was the top selling game in April on the PS5 digitally - at retail the game sold 6.5K, even with the best case scenario of 50% of launch sales being digital we are talking about the top selling game on PS5's storefront selling 6.5K in April... in the UK Returnal had 60% digital share and that market has been far quicker to adopt this method of purchasing games since they don't have a huge second hand market.

It's very likely that Resident Evil: Village on the PS5 will struggle to surpass 50K sales this year physically, third parties that are focused on Japan and Asian markets will look at the situation and be making their plans based on the figures they have access too. In Taiwan & South Korea the situation is very similar - so we are talking about the rapid decline of Sony in the region. 

Last year they had around 25% of the Software Market this year they will struggle to get to 5%. 

Not really the best comparison here. 

For one, that 6.5K figure isn't official, but you think its representative of a worldwide figure? The only leaked sales figure I could find for Returnal was 9K at retail for the UK. The best case scenario for sales is 50% digital? That is quite frankly laughable. You're arguing against data provided by Sony that shows the digital split reaching the 50% + mark in 2019, underlining how digital sales have been growing since the PS4's launch in 2013, but also illustrating how the majority of consumers on the Playstation ecosystem have been buying digitally for a few years already. Its not a trend that just started during a pandemic.

Capcom, like Sony and other publishers/platform holders, will look at the complete picture of sales which includes digital, and they can see physical sales are only a fraction of the pie, that also brings in less revenue than a digital sale, instead of pretending buying habits for consumers haven't changed in a decade, and basing their decisions solely on retail sales. All this talk about rapid decline of Sony in the region, yet the PS5 is outpacing the PS4 at a faster rate being more expensive, showing that the PS5 has more upside in Japan than the PS4.

You're conflating a lot of data and talking points here

We're talking about why PS5 hardware is disproportionately bigger than software in Japan. Remember its now outselling the PS4 in Japan LTD, so what games are people playing?

60% of Returnal sales being digital is significant and makes a huge impact on charting positions. So in discussing why PS5 games are charting worse compared to PS4 games, there is no way you can refer to digital as an "excuse" unless the digital ratio is low or if you thought PS4 games were also selling at a similar ratio in 2014. Your best case scenario of 50% is not low, and much higher than what we've seen for Switch games for example. MHR which has been heavily supply constraint, thus pushing people digital is only 33% digital in Japan.

However as your source mentions, 60% digital in the UK isn't especially high by UK standards. This result is likely because Returnals cost $90 in the UK and its been a huge point of contention, the only way to get it cheaper is through physical. Its digital price in Japan is more in line with regular software, so your base case scenario may be low balling but it's still huge. We simply need real data from the japanese market.

Also returnals was the not highest selling digital game on PSN globally, I'm not sure where you got that from?

https://blog.playstation.com/2021/05/10/playstation-store-april-2021-top-downloads/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Its No 3 in the US and No 4 in Europe (albeit after 1 day of sales)

If you have a source for it being the highest selling digital game in Japan (or anywhere for that matter) for the month of April, please share.

Someone on Resetera in the Media Create thread said Returnal topped the PSN PS5 chart for April in Japan. Idk. Wether that's true or not, it's digital share is almost certainly lower than in the UK.

Also, where did you get that 33% digital for MHR from? It was 40% at launch and we didn't get any numbers after that.

Ah my mistake, I calculated it from the launch shipments and probably misquoted gimbson. I recalled 1.3 vs 2m and done the math.

So Japan is looking like 300k shipments for RE8

The whole arguement of ps5 is weird. I know there are a lot of theories out there and I’m one of them that believe scalpers and/or people are buying for outside the region.

Anyway here is what I have to post...

+Miles at 46k was the best selling ps5 game in japan (as of March)
+ PS5 non-DE - 485,476 vs PS5 software sales - 179,650
Tie-ratio - 0.37
+Returnal was the best selling game on psn in apr with 1 day of sales
+Returnal being nice had 6k of digital sales which means every other was below that for a month
+RE8, it’s biggest game and debut can be anywhere between 25k-60k
+PS4 games aren’t even charting to justify ps5 sales
......

Can you prove that scalpers are not a factor, or are we cherry picking narratives?

Fact is that ebay is loaded with scalped consoles, likely from every market.  Throw in that the PS5 is not region locked, and there is no reason to assume it is not happening there as well.  Scalpers do not care about where their bots buy them up, even if purchased out of country.  All they care about is artificially inflating demand so they can drive their prices up for as long as possible.

Here's hoping we'll get more PS5s with these numbers.