So according to David Gibson MHR sold over 50% in Japan and is still at 40% digital.
So shipment + digital in Japan is at over 3.5 million.
| RolStoppable said: Another boring week this time, but the upcoming week will prove to be competitive. No noteworthy game release in 2020, just the first major restock after Golden Week.
|
This year's advantage almost back to where it was before AC:NH's release.
| deerox said: So when do you guys expect the Switch to go below 50k again? Certainly this momentum can't hold up forever. |
Great numbers for RF5.
Also, Ring Fit Adventure is just unstoppable, simply insane.
404,375 
Splatoon 2 closing in on that 4 million mark, slowly but surely.
Even with its sequel coming next year it should make it.
2020 H1 TOTAL: 3.102.694
2020 H1 NSW HW: 2.666.882 (86%)
2020 H1 PS4 HW: 435.812 (14%)
2021 TOTAL HW: 3.164.828
2021 TOTAL NSW HW: 2.606.756 (82%)
2021 TOTAL PS4/PS5 HW: 558.072 (18%)
With 5 weeks left the TOTAL hardware this year has surpassed last year's total, next Week Switch will surpass what it managed last year and should have no issues being at 3 million by the end of H1 with the current pace. PS4/PS5 should also finish somewhere around 625K, so overall hardware wise we'd be looking at 83% for Switch and 17% across the PS4/PS5. Still considering the actual software sales on the PS5, we could be looking at a highly inflated number due to PS5 ending up on other markets such as China. Now that there is an official launch in China there we should get closer to gauging the actual demand in Japan in H2.
Top 30 2020 H1 Famitsu:
NSW - 20
PS4 - 10
TOTAL: 11.783.143
NSW TOTAL: 9.312.518 (79%)
PS4 TOTAL: 2.470.625 (21%)
TOP 30 2021 Famitsu:
NSW - 28
PS4 - 2
TOTAL: 8.413.287
NSW TOTAL: 8.096.536 (96.24%)
PS4/PS5 TOTAL: 316.751 (3.76%)
Software during this first half of the year compared to last paints the full picture more than half of the games are either Nintendo or Pokemon Co. Top of the charts we have Capcom & Konami with their first multi-million selling games on the Switch, Marvelous so far this year has outsold Square, Bandai Namco & Sega without too much trouble.
Capcom is poised to surpass 3.5 million with Rise, Stories 2 & Ace Attorney but there could well be other games that make their way to the Switch in the fall.
Konami is also looking like it should surpass 2 million with Momotaro, Yu-gi-oh & Baseball Spirits,
Square has a pretty big game launching on the Switch later in the year as the Dragon Quest III Remake the original was released back in 1988 and the Gameboy color version managed over 500K. Still it will be interesting if Marvelous manages to outflank them as Rune Factory 5, Olive Town & Sakuna are poised to bring them to over 1 million software for the first time in their history in Japan.
Without even knowing the fall game the big difference is that on the Switch third parties are starting to thrive thanks to much stronger release schedule. Last year their support was average but this year the support they are providing is what you would expect in terms of such a market leader in Japan.
As PlayStation ecosystem has declined in a major way in terms of active user-base. Currently the only games to surpass 100K on are Resident Evil: Village and Nier Replicant with Scarlet Nexus being potentially only the third game to make the Top 30 during H1... Software decline YoY on the PS devices will be around 2 million software within the Top 30 for H1, the situation isn't much different with-in the Top 100 where again Software sales are barely around 5% for H1 at the moment from known Famitsu figures. In actuality the accelerated decline was anticipated - PS4 was able to stabilize because it entered the market competing against Wii U which was such a failure that third parties never considered it seriously. The PS5 situation is something unprecedented as the past 12 months Switch has become the leading platform for third parties. Sony decided to kill their portable business and some might say that their entry into the VR space might become a bigger opportunity for them long term, but at the current moment this has severally impacted their smaller partners, as VR didn't end up as successful as the Vita both in-terms of hardware and software sales.
There is not a single game announced this year that would even approach 500K on the PS4/PS5 coupled with the Switch potentially moving over 10 million third party software in Japan and the message to third parties is pretty clear, especially while they have the real life example of a high big caliber game like Resident Evil: Village failing to surpass 100K on the PS5. Essentially the PS5 is dead in the water without some huge announcements to turn the tides in Japan.
404,375 
5 of the top 10 are third party Switch games.
This year seems to be the turning of the corner in terms of Japanese third parties, or at least some of them, putting some actual serious software on the platform instead of just throwaways.
Shin Megami Tensei V, Monster Hunter Stories 2, Samurai Warriors 5, Project Triangle Strategy, and others are in the pipeline.
deerox said:
Surprising considering the franchise history with Sony. |
combine the fact of the decline of the PS brand, the dominence of the switch, AND the fact that sony shot themselves on the foot by
driving away any sort of ecchi games on its platforms via enforcing 'western standerds' for its censorship at the same time as nintendo
loosening its own censorship of at least third parties... yeah the erogue/ecchi/visual novel crowd has almost completly migrated to switch
after the vita was discontinued
TheBraveGallade said:
combine the fact of the decline of the PS brand, the dominence of the switch, AND the fact that sony shot themselves on the foot by driving away any sort of ecchi games on its platforms via enforcing 'western standerds' for its censorship at the same time as nintendo loosening its own censorship of at least third parties... yeah the erogue/ecchi/visual novel crowd has almost completly migrated to switch after the vita was discontinued |
I don't think this kind of game play any significant impact of Sony brand decline in Japan, those are niche games played by some japanese otakus. What really impacted Sony brand was a change in direction of some of their biggest 3rd party franchises and Sony 1st party are not that relevant in Japan. And this has absolutely nothing to do with censorship, but with raw gameplay mechanics and other artistic choices. Numbers were just loosely googled for PS4, so correct at number if you please:
- Final Fantasy XIII 1.87 vs Final Fantasy XV 1.05
- Resident Evil 5 1.08 vs Resident Evil 7 0.41
- Metal Gear Solid 4 0.83 vs Metal Gear Solid 0.5
- Gran Turismo 5 0.81 vs Gran Turismo Sport 0.24
- Tales of Xilia 0.67 vs Tales of Berseria 0.22
Another thing: Sony is constantly failing to release a new hit for japanese audience. The only sucessful debut IP release during all of PS4 life was Ghost of Tsushima last year
The only reason PS4 somehow managed to come so close of PS3 sales in my opinion was the presence of a mainline DQ (absent on PS3) and a mainline Monster Hunter (Capcom always favored portable devices), by far the best selling PS4 games in Japan, Monster powered by the absence of a portable version and another console to play it, while for DQ managed to be outsold but the severely limited 3DS counterpart
PS4 didn't really face a dominant Nintendo console, 3DS was already past it's peak by the time the PS4 launched and Wii U never got off the ground.
So third parties overall thought that despite Sony abandoning handhelds the market would have no other choice but follow them to the PS4, so they mostly hitched their futures to the PlayStation ecosystem. We saw Capcom, Square, Bandai & Sega/Atlus completely focus all their major efforts on the transition from the PS3/PSV to the PS4 in the hopes that this would allow Sony to see growth from the PSV/PS3 era,
PS2/PSP: 21.98M/19.69M
TOTAL: 41.67M
PS3/PSV: 10.5M/5.86M
TOTAL: 16.36M
PS4/PSVR: 9.36M/ <1M
The PS4/PSVR total in Japan is likely going to end up below 12M so regardless of the strong support third parties provided to the PS4 it wasn't able to stop the decline. The main difference is that after three years of not launching that many games targeting the Switch, Third Parties now seem onboard. When the PS4 launched it was competing with the Wii U/3DS for third party support compared to the PS5 which is launching exactly as hardware sales of the Switch are peaking while we also have expanded third party support.
PSVR is also a device that so far failed to really make it's mark on the mass market. So Japanese publishers are unlikely to allocate much resources into developing full fledged games for PSVR2 until Sony is able to make the device a much bigger than the 5-10 million PSVR is looking to end up selling World Wide.
Total software on the Vita in Japan reached nearly 30 million units while PS3 managed over 74 million software sales. Meanwhile the PS4 is looking like it will end up with around 50 million software sales, so a fairly big decline for companies that tried to make the transition. This will lead to looking for opportunities for growth elsewhere.
Last year was pretty much the start of this process as we saw third parties sell more software on the Switch in comparison to the PlayStation ecosystem for the first time since the Switch launched.
Third Parties 2020 Top 30:
NSW - 15
PS4 - 15
TOTAL: 6.823.624
NSW TOTAL: 3.676.199 (54%)
PS4 TOTAL: 3.147.425 (46%)
Third Parties 2021 Top 30:
NSW - 23
PS4 - 6
PS5 - 1
TOTAL: 5.087.441
NSW TOTAL: 4.646.673 (91%)
PS4/PS5 TOTAL: 440.768 (9%)
This year we are already seeing a consolidation of third party sales to the Switch and this might further accelerate if PS5 software situation remains anemic.
Bold: exclusives
Maybe I'm missing some games that can clear 100K but just looking at what is launching by September Switch third party software sales will surpass 8 million, while PS4/PS5 will remain below 10% market share among third party software in the Top 30.
In the past the best selling games and what made PlayStation devices sell was third party games supplemented by Sony Japan, now outside of Sony financing games there isn't much that will end up exclusive to the PS5 especially if moving forward Scarlet Nexus, Tails or Arise and Lost Judgement fail to surpass 200K sales. We've already seen Resident Evil: Village declining in a major way right before our eyes, as it's unlikely to sell it's 250K+ initial shipment. While the PS5 version is unlikely to ever clear 100K sales. This will make retailers cautious on stocking up PS games, making shelf space even smaller and leading to much lower mind-share among consumers and especially younger audiences.
If PS5 remains with less than 10% market share among third parties for a couple of years in a row, well basically anyone closely aligned to making PlayStation exclusives will become irrelevant to Japan.
There was never such a danger when facing the Wii U or 3DS since the 3DS was never as relevant as the Switch outside of Japan despite selling a decent amount. Switch's becoming the best selling console of all time world wide basically means that it's likely we would also see the strongest third party support from Japanese publishers in the history of Japanese gaming on a Nintendo system surpassing what was achieved on the DS.
Last edited by noshten - on 30 May 2021
| noshten said: There is not a single game announced this year that would even approach 500K on the PS4/PS5 coupled with the Switch potentially moving over 10 million third party software in Japan and the message to third parties is pretty clear, especially while they have the real life example of a high big caliber game like Resident Evil: Village failing to surpass 100K on the PS5. Essentially the PS5 is dead in the water without some huge announcements to turn the tides in Japan. |
It seems to me not so dissimilar from the PS4s situation. PS4s biggest selling game in 2014 shifted only 144k physical copies (obviously excluding Knack which was bundled) which is certainly not impressive. PS5 is in a worser boat but the same forces are at play. Essentially support for AAA Japanese games will prevent it from being dead in the water, these games are shown to be more dependant on global audiences and some shrinking of the japanese audience doesn't stop them from reaching new overall sales heights.
RE8 is looking to be the first RE to eventually shift 10m and Monster Hunter World sold 3x more than any previous entry did. Final Fantasy XV being the 3rd best selling despite the luke warm reception. Such huge success should mean PS5 goes on to receive many more flagship Japanese exclusives in Japan. News of DQXII being developed with UE5 and being more adult makes me think its likely to be heading for PS5 with a desire to reach new sales heights through appealing to westerners. Thats an assumption on my side but the point is PS5's software support for big titles is not looking to weaken anytime soon.
Beyond this we also have to make sense of all of the data thats in front of us.
1. PS5 hardware is comfortably outselling PS4 in Japan
2. PS5 software is performing awefully in Japn
Either.
1. For some magic reason PS5 demand is not driven by software, in which case it will only continue to have greater success than PS4 in terms of hardware until we get evidence of the contrary
2. Weekly hardware numbers are not a true representation of the market for whatever reason (i.e consoles being resold elsewhere),in which case we have to wait for the smoke to clear (supply equalising demand) to make sense of the future of the system,whilst already knowing it has an exclusive lineup stronger than what the PS4 had in the same period
Of these two the later seems the most likely.
Last edited by Otter - on 30 May 2021
I definitely agree with a lot of what you said about big franchises but Dragon Quest XII is not going to magically not appear on the Switch's audience which would be around 22-28 million by the time it launches, this specific franchise being PS5 exclusive is pretty much the last thing I expect.
The only way it makes sense is if Sony is buying Square or partnering with them in some form. Especially as we are about to see Dragon Quest III Remake come out as multiplat likely to sell best on the Switch by a pretty huge margin.
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