Famitsu Numbers for 2023 Week 12 are now in. The data and charts in the OP for Japan sales have been updated. Complete data can be found here. The Famitsu thread for this week is here.

A dissapointing week all round really. PS5 is still selling great for a PlayStation home console and increasing it's lead on PS3/PS4 though it is a steep drop week on week and we'll see if Resident Evil 4 can do anything about that.

Switch is a pretty hefty drop WoW too and is 42% down on last year. If this keeps up all the way till Zelda I may have made a mistake predicting 3.7m-4m sales for it this year.

Xbox, while we don't expect much from them in Japan, is it's worst week since the beginning of September 2022.

i see ps5 is about to take over

I wonder when the next 20 million seller in Japan will happen

Switch 2 probably. Whatever the next system to do it is it'll be a handheld/hybrid. No home console since the PS2 has gotten remotely close to 20m and I don't see that changing anything soon. The benefit of portable play really helps Japan sales in the modern market.

Famitsu Numbers for 2023 Week 13 are now in. The data and charts in the OP for Japan sales have been updated. Complete data can be found here. The Famitsu thread for this week is here.

Switch manages a small improvement this week which is good to see, PS5 a small drop despite RE4 releasing and XBS has a second terrible week.

Here is the data for this week which is the 317th week of sales for the Switch and the 124th week of sales for the PS5/XS:

Global sales for February 2023 have been released which corresponds to the 28th month of sales for the PS5 and XSX and the 72nd month of sales for the Switch. 

Charts and tables in the OP have been updated, here is the data for this month:

Notes:

PS5 posts possibly the highest February sales for a PlayStation console ever. We know it was the best February in the USA ever but we don't have the global data for PS2/PS1 to confirm that for global sales. It reduced the gap to PS4 sales by almost 0.8m in a single month.

Switch is down over 30% YoY in February and the gap to the DS slightly widens launch aligned. Switch needs to see a big improvement later in the year if it is to have any chance of catching the DS globally.

Xbox Series sales are fairing better in February than January but are still slightly down YoY and current indications are March is going to be a very rough month for Xbox Series sales. It will never win a battle of legs against the x360 so it must continue to keep putting out better months and build a large gap before the x360 strikes back.

Edit: Added adjustments for Xbox Series. All months last year were adjusted by varying degrees resulting in Xbox Series sales dropping by around 234k.

Famitsu Numbers for 2023 Week 14 are now in. The data and charts in the OP for Japan sales have been updated. Complete data can be found here. The Famitsu thread for this week is here.

Switch sales are looking a bit healthier, only around 25% down YoY this week compared to over 30% down in previous weeks. PS5 drops a bit more though it only needs to keep average sales above 14k over the next couple of months to keep widening it's lead on PS4. Then FFXVI is coming. PS5 sales would need to drop a lot more for it to start threatening it's lead over the PS4/PS3.

Zippy, do you think Final Fantasy XVI can give a good boost for PS5 in Japan? Because I see some people on VG Chartz kinda skeptical about it.

Famitsu Numbers for 2023 Week 15 are now in. The data and charts in the OP for Japan sales have been updated. Complete data can be found here. This weeks Famitsu thread is here.

A pretty good week for Switch again though the unexpected twist this week is PS5 sales rising substantially compared to last week. Interestingly higher than RE4 launch week with no PS5 game releases this week. Does this suggest there were stock issues the previous 3 weeks and demand still isn't being satisfied? I find it difficult to think of a reason RE4 should provide zero boost and now we suddenly get an increase in sales this week. Xbox isn't worth commenting on again, we'll see if it can return to posting consistently above 1k again at some point but currently it's looking destined to lose to the 360.

It will definitely contribute to the PS5 selling a decent amount more consoles but I'm not sure how big the boost will be on actual launch week. It's difficult to predict PS5 sales at the moment. RE4 seemed to provide no boost, the week after still nothing. Now 2 weeks after RE4 PS5 sales have jumped back up significantly for seemingly no reason.

So I think FFXVI will give a good boost to PS5 in Japan but whether that materialises as strongly on launch week or not remains to be seen. Over the course of the whole year the PS5 will sell a lot better for having FFXVI than not though that's for sure.