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Forums - Sales - Famitsu Sales: Week 49, 2025 (Dec 1 - Dec 7)

Kai_Mao 3 hours ago
Sephiran said:
IcaroRibeiro said:

The decline of third party game sales in Japan is corresponding to a lack of offering to them in handheld form on Sony systems. Some IPs will recover naturally when offered in portable mode

Wii, Wii U, PS4 and PS3 had tons of exclusives and neither sold even 15 million. Playing portable is a huge deal for japanese people, Sony having a portable option is simply a must for japanese market, even if it only to play PS5/PS6 games 

I don't get the downplaying of software being a factor. Doesn't Nintendo benefit heavily from stuff like Pokemon being miles above in popularity than anything Sony have in Japan? Software plays an important role in which platform is popular in different countries. The reason Europe prefers PS5 is because the software on PS5 is more appealing for European markets than what is available on Switch 2, and the same is true for Switch 2 in Japan. Kirby Air Riders will likely be a bigger seller in lifetime sales than anything Sony has released in 5 years in Japan. Nintendo simply has more popular IP in Japan than Sony has. It seems to contradict reality to think that Japanese will care about games like God of War when they play those games on a handheld, and Switch 2 will have such a massive install base in Japan that fairly few popular Japanese third party games will skip Switch 2 to only focus on a PS handheld. Which means Sony would need to be incredibly aggressive in moneyhatting games to skip Switch 2 in the future, and if they started doing that Nintendo would just use their own massive warchest to moneyhat games to skip PS as well.



Interestingly, if Switch 2 eventually gets the next 3D Mario, 3D Zelda, and next-gen Pokemon, those games alone can make up for not having the appealing software PS5 has in Europe (which is funny because Switch 2 has FC at least, even at 30fps). Switch 1 sold over 40 million in Europe, even dominating in a few European countries. Sony and PlayStation do not have the same luxury to help elevate sales in Japan. Ghost of Yotei seems to be holding its own in Japan, but that game alone wont get PlayStation back on track in Japan.

Looking back, it’s pretty remarkable how Switch 1 just dominated Japan even over the PS4. The PS4 had almost everything going for it. Wii U was a dud despite having a new emerging IP in Splatoon, Xbox was (and remains) a non factor in Japan, and the 3DS was doing well but short of its predecessor in the DS. PS4 had every big Japanese third party game under the sun:
- Kingdom Hearts III
- FFXV
- FFVII Remake
- DQ XI (even though it sold less than the 3DS version)
- Nier Automata
- Persona 5 (and Royal)
- The Trails of series
- Tales of games
- Street Fighter V
- Tekken 7
- Monster Hunter World
- RE2 and 3 remakes
- RE7 and 8
- Metal Gear Solid V
- DMC5
- and more that I likely missed
Yet the Switch 1 dwarfed the PS4 in sales in Japan. Heck it even got games like Persona 5 Royal, Nier Automata, cloud versions of the latest RE games, and the Trails of series. Just as remarkable, games like Splatoon 2 and 3 and Animal Crossing New Horizons dwarfed some of these noted popular games in sales in Japan. Tell anyone in the 2000s that a third person shooter with squids would outsell the latest Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest and they would laugh at you. It’s pretty insane.



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curl-6 20 minutes ago

The likes of RE Requiem and Pragmata coming to Switch 2 could rob PS5 of potential system sellers; previously, the main reason for Japanese players to get a PS console the last few gens, in the absence of Japanese oriented first party titles, was to play the big third party games that didn't come out on Nintendo. With more of these games coming to Switch 2 now, there's less reason to buy a PS5.

Pragmata in particular has topped Famitsu's most wanted list for a while now; a lot of folks may have bought a PS5 to play it, but now they don't have to.