Correction here. Ratchet and Clank made a profit. Those headlines about loosing money was based on one out of context slide which was a forecast a year ahead of release, not actual sales.



The game outsold that lifetime prediction (2.2m) in its first 9months (2.7M). That alone would of made it profit but it went on to sell over 4m by end of 2023, so very profitable.

https://exputer.com/news/games/ratchet-and-clank-rift-apart-4-million/

Japan is not a high revenue software region for Sony. Their first party titles perform solid but not exceptional (100-200k), third parties licensing is really where the revenue ought to be for them, but the Japanese software market outside of Nintendo and a few surprise hits is not in a great place.

If hardware profit margins were very low based on the yen, they haven't lost much by sales cutting in half. And the increased revenue on hardware ($70 equivalent dollars) is likely way more tangible even at half the units being sold. If before they were making $10 on every PS5 sold in Japan, now they're making $80. If they sell half as many PS5s, they're still making $30 more on hardware sales then they were before.

The real danger is not whether this financially makes sense in the short term. but whether it causes long term brand damage and dooms their future platform. A platform which won't be able to benefit from 3rd party exclusivity because the Switch 2 will likely share most of its third party library.

Switch outselling PS5 by a factor of 5:1 for the week and 2:1 YTD.
PS5's YTD is also getting close to being just half of 2023's; partly this is due to inflated demand last year as stock finally became freely available, but still.

I don't remember if it had a PC day one release as well ? Otherwise, I do think it has prolly done around 200K first week when you include digital numbers in the mix.

Also is your last comment about the state of physical sales for JRPG in the market or overall ?

Cuz we know for a fact from the last White Papers sale numbers that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 sold 500K+ the last time it was published. The XC games had a tendency to benefit a lot from the vouchers promo they offer weirdly enough. Quite the outlier from the usual Nintendo physical/digital ratio there.

But priorities in the genre have changed honestly, the mobile are BIG into the genre financial pie with the plethora of gacha JRPG on mobile/PC and also if you look at the usual price for those games, they're bigger investments than other games in general. 

Anyway, I'm not afraid the genre can find success in some right places, but it's gone from it's A day there, that's for sure.

Counting digital + PC + Xbox, Metaphor probably sold 300k+. But it's hard to say because some genres do better than others on PC.

Metaphor shipped 1m day 1. So unless JRPGs are less popular in Japan for some reason, a significant amount of sales are digital.

I had no idea Xenoblade sold that much with digital included. I really forgot about digital ratios and PC releases. With digital included I think Final Fantasy XVI might have passed half million too. 

About PC release do you mean SMT V? I think it was Switch exclusive. But with digital it should have moved close to 200k in first week. Persona 3 Reload was multiplat with Xbox and PC

Mobile games definitely took a portion of JRPG audience. Fire Emblem Heroes for instance is significantly bigger than its console counterparts 

Dragon Quest is the last man in the list of mainstream JRPGs in Japan, and I have a feeling 3 HD will sell close to 1 million first week, really hope to not be wrong lol

300k sounds a bit too much even with PC included. Elden Ring did 50% of its sales digital+PC+Xbox, and by that time PS5 was strongly supply constrained 

I think 210-230k is more realistic? 

PC is rapidly growing in Japan. If memory serves me right, overall spending on 3rd party PC software/content in Japan last year was much higher than Switch and Playstation.

With that said, we don't have enough data on digital sales and how much of the money spent is going to services and microtransactions. So your estimate may be more accurate.

Top 30: https://nintendoeverything.com/famitsu-software-sales-10-7-24-10-13-24-top-30/

1. [PS5] Metaphor: ReFantazio – 82,827 / NEW
2. [PS5] Dragon Ball Sparking Zero – 63,922 / NEW
3. [PS5] Silent Hill 2 – 29,374 / NEW
4. [PS4] Metaphor: ReFantazio – 25,385 / NEW
5. [NSW] Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom – 19,710 / 268,039
6. [NSW] Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord – 8,061 / NEW
7. [NSW] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 6,372 / 6,025,572
8. [NSW] Minecraft – 4,695 / 3,652,504
9. [NSW] Animal Crossing: New Horizons – 4,310 / 7,930,668
10. [NSW] Nintendo Switch Sports – 4,188 / 1,442,980
11. [NSW] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 3,347 / 5,598,422
12. [NSW] Ring Fit Adventure – 3,296 / 3,643,580
13. [NSW] Powerful Pro Baseball 2024-2025 – 2,910 / 303,019
14. [NSW] EA Sports FC 25 – 2,784 / 20,718
15. [NSW] Pokémon Scarlet / Violet – 2,665 / 5,423,808
16. [NSW] Sword Art Online: Fractured Daydream – 2,172 / 16,010
17. [NSW] Momotaro Dentetsu World: Chikyuu wa Kibou de Mawatteru – 2,002 / 1,143,230
18. [PS5] Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord – 1,918 / NEW
19. [NSW] Sunsoft is Back: Retro Game Selection – 1,915 / NEW
20. [NSW] Luigi’s Mansion 3 – 1,787 / 1,037,703
21. [NSW] Super Mario Bros. Wonder – 1,759 / 1,935,378
22. [NSW] Momotaro Dentetsu: Showa, Heisei, Reiwa mo Teiban – 1,713 / 3,032,157
23. [NSW] Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics – 1,670 / 1,335,654
24. [NSW] Splatoon 3 – 1,662 / 4,372,700
25. [NSW] Super Mario Party – 1,623 / 2,341,847
26. [PS5] Sword Art Online: Fractured Daydream – 1,536 / 11,181
27. [NSW] Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 1,523 / 2,334,111
28. [NSW] Super Mario Odyssey – 1,478 / 2,513,509
29. [NSW] It Takes Two – 1,319 / 88,891
30. [PS5] EA Sports FC 25 – 1,304 / 17,714

NS - 23

PS5 - 6

PS4 - 1