2018 was a big year for Nintendo, with the Switch and the system's library of the games dominating the charts for many months of the year worldwide. Famitsu has now published its own report, revealing the top 10 highest-selling video games and top-selling hardware in Japan last year.
According to the estimates within the report, software sales had a 108.2 percent increase over the previous year, raking in 264.21 billion yen (approx. $2.38 billion USD) and video game hardware sold 84.1 percent of what it did during 2017, equating to 170.09 billion yen (approx. $1.53 billion USD).
On the Nintendo front, the Switch was crowned as the top-selling system and a total of eight Switch games featured in the top-selling software chart for 2018. Capcom's Monster Hunter World only just took out first place, which had nearly a one-year headstart on Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Take a look at the top-selling video games and hardware in Japan last year, courtesy of Gematsu:
Japan’s Top-Selling Software of 2018
- Monster Hunter: World
- Platform: PlayStation 4
- Publisher: Capcom
- Release Date: January 26, 2018
- Estimated Physical Sales: 1,985,886
- Estimated Digital Sales: 873,898
- Combined Estimated Physical and Digital Sales: 2,859,784
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
- Platform: Switch
- Publisher: Nintendo
- Release Date: December 7, 2018
- Estimated Physical Sales: 2,360,655
- Estimated Digital Sales: 309,229
- Combined Estimated Physical and Digital Sales: 2,669,884
- Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! / Let’s Go, Eevee!
- Platform: Switch
- Publisher: The Pokemon Company
- Release Date: November 16, 2018
- Estimated Physical Sales: 1,253,677
- Estimated Digital Sales: 107,945
- Combined Estimated Physical and Digital Sales: 1,361,622
- Splatoon 2
- Platform: Switch
- Publisher: Nintendo
- Release Date: July 21, 2017
- Estimated Physical Sales: 1,122,324
- Estimated Digital Sales: 68,630
- Combined Estimated Physical and Digital Sales: 1,190,954
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
- Platform: Switch
- Publisher: Nintendo
- Release Date: April 28, 2017
- Estimated Physical Sales: 926,553
- Estimated Digital Sales: 76,139
- Combined Estimated Physical and Digital Sales: 1,002,692
- Super Mario Party
- Platform: Switch
- Publisher: Nintendo
- Release Date: October 5, 2018
- Estimated Physical Sales: 764,853
- Estimated Digital Sales: 62,739
- Combined Estimated Physical and Digital Sales: 827,592
- Kirby Star Allies
- Platform: Switch
- Publisher: Nintendo
- Release Date: March 16, 2018
- Estimated Physical Sales: 664,815
- Estimated Digital Sales: 56,104
- Combined Estimated Physical and Digital Sales: 720,919
- Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition
- Platform: Switch
- Publisher: Microsoft
- Release Date: June 21, 2018
- Estimated Physical Sales: 525,045
- Estimated Digital Sales: 166,272
- Combined Estimated Physical and Digital Sales: 691,317
- Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII
- Platform: PlayStation 4
- Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
- Release Date: October 12, 2018
- Estimated Physical Sales: 479,511
- Estimated Digital Sales: 145,458
- Combined Estimated Physical and Digital Sales: 624,969
- Super Mario Odyssey
- Platform: Switch
- Publisher: Nintendo
- Release Date: October 27, 2017
- Estimated Physical Sales: 575,926
- Estimated Digital Sales: 22,020
- Combined Estimated Physical and Digital Sales: 597,946
Japan’s Top-Selling Hardware of 2018
- Switch
- Manufacturer: Nintendo
- Release Date: March 3, 2017
- 2018 Estimated Sales: 3,482,388
- Estimated Total Sales: 6,889,546
- PlayStation 4 (including PlayStation 4 Pro)
- Manufacturer: Sony Interactive Entertainment
- Release Date: February 22, 2014
- 2018 Estimated Sales: 1,695,227
- Estimated Total Sales: 7,552,090
- 3DS (including 3DS XL, New 3DS, New 3DS XL, 2DS, and New 2DS XL)
- Manufacturer: Nintendo
- Release Date: February 26, 2011
- 2018 Estimated Sales: 566,420
- Estimated Total Sales: 24,304,964
- PS Vita
- Manufacturer: Sony Interactive Entertainment
- Release Date: December 17, 2011
- 2018 Estimated Sales: 181,728
- Estimated Total Sales: 5,825,354
- Xbox One (including Xbox One S and Xbox One X)
- Manufacturer: Microsoft
- Release Date: September 4, 2014
- 2018 Estimated Sales: 15,339
- Estimated Total Sales: 102,931
Are you at all surprised Nintendo dominated hardware and software sales in Japan in 2018? Tell us below.
[source gematsu.com]
Comments 40
Now that’s more like it.
I still find this impressive when one considers how late in 2018 Smash Ultimate released.
I'm always wondering, where Famitsu are getting those digital dales from. 🤔
Smash whould have destroyed mh of it was releases earlier
Crap.
I bet 10k on some offshore gambling site it was going to be Hotel Mario and the Virtual Boy. I guess I'm off to the poorhouse.
Congratulations Xbox One for cracking the 100k. Only took a bit over four years.
I'm looking forward to seeing how Nintendo continues dominating Japan this year. Switch really picked up steam in the Japanese market in 2018, and seems to have gotten most big Japanese third parties on board by now. All that buildup should come to fruition this year, which looks crazy in terms of both first and third party game. I'll be particularly interested in seeing how Dragon Quest XI S affects software and hardware sales!
Finally a list that put the Pikachu and Eevee numbers together.
So much for digital sales on Switch. MHW sold more digital copies than all the Switch games digital combined 🙄
In general - when People paying 6,700 yen for a game, they want something they can hold.
@BenAV Xbox sales in Japan are mainly due to American soldiers and foreigners in Japan apparently. Unfortunately a lot of Japanese are prejudiced against foreign things. Hopefully Japan's new free trade deals and its recently more welcoming attitude to foreigners will make many Japanese more open minded which can only be a good thing for the Japanese games industry making a great thing even better. Tokyo Olympics next year will hopefully have a huge positive effect on Japan. Onwards and upwards!
@Lionyone That's interesting, didn't know that. I find that my personal tastes in games tend to be reasonably similar to Japanese players so it's really no big surprise to see the Xbox One (and Xbox line in general) doing so terribly over there considering I have zero interest in the system.
Crazy how well Pokemon and Smash did considering both were on the market for less than 2 months. In Smash's case, like 24 days!
Interesting that Switch will likely overtake the PS4 lifetime sales in Japan by the summer, quite an impressive feat really.
@Agramonte
Famitsu's digital sales estimates are garbage and aren't accurate at all.
Nintendo actually provided Japanese sales figures for Smash Bros Ultimate in their Q3 financial reports, and their figures placed its digital sales at over 500,000 by the end of December 2018. Famitsu's digital sales estimates were off by 40%.
There is no reason to believe any of those digital sales estimates for any of the listed games are correct at all.
Japan has some great taste in games.
But guys! I was told that Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee flopped!
Xbox in Japan. Now that’s a good joke.
@BenAV I own both a much loved Switch and a much loved Xbox 1S. Xbox is a brilliant system. Game Pass is the most incredible, most diverse, most big hitting, and by far the best value membership on any games platform. And for those like myself who enjoy realistic racing games and backward compatible games Xbox is by far the best console. So there's plenty on Xbox for many Japanese gamers to enjoy if they would be more open minded.
NINTENDOOMINATE! 💪🏻
@westman98
So Famitsu are using their fictional numbers straight out of their a**** despite the fact we have official numbers from Nintendo themselves.
@hoopderscotch Sadly he got lost on the way to Push Square and we've been stuck with him since.
I love how the sales figures are all estimates, yet all the numbers are exact!
@Heavyarms55
It didn't "flop", but a Pokemon game selling <2 million copies in ~7 weeks is really underwhelming. It's the worst-selling Pokemon RPG in the last 18+ years in Japan.
@MrBlacky from what i've read from multiple people they are all estimated numbers extrapolated from online surveys they send out to their subsribers. It is why they are considered, shall we say 'wildly inaccurate'!
To add to this, didn’t someone say Kirby sales would fall off a cliff after a week? I bet they always lose on the horses...
@Lionyone There is far, far more to it than the assumption that Japan are prejudice to outside products. Xbox One's sales performance is the culmination of a number of cultural screw ups by Microsoft dating back to the original Xbox.
1) 'Xbox' as a brand name is a bad choice for Japan. The letter 'X' is usually associated with bad. In fact, on the Playstation, 'O' is used to accept or approve whilst 'X' is used to cancel or say 'no' to something. Hence, the name 'Xbox' having an 'X' or 'Cross' in it is a poor choice and can be associated with as something bad.
2) Lack of respect. Microsoft made a number of large screw ups with Japanese developers. For example, did you know that Resident Evil was going to be exclusive to Xbox and not the Gamecube? Well, thanks to this screw up below, Capcom chose to go with Nintendo instead:
For Mikami, Nintendo said games were toys, created by the brilliant Shigeru Miyamoto. Sony said games are entertainment, powered by the Emotion Engine. And Microsoft had no answer.
The only real devs in Japan Microsoft got onboard have been SEGA, Capcom and Square Enix (Final Fantasy). To my knowledge, the rest of the major players focus on Nintendo and Sony, possibly a result of the bad job they did back in the day.
3) Western Style marketing. A lot of the speeches and presentations for the Xbox in the past came across as "a PR driven plug" and rather than talking about the industry, Microsoft just spoke about their product.
It's likely the reason the Xbox doesn't sell well is a culmination of the things I mentioned above and more, as well as the brand having a bad history at this point, at least to the Japanese market.
As for outsider products not selling, the iPhone is one of the most popular smart phones in Japan so it's not like outsider products cannot do well in Japan.
To me, the Xbox is a classic case of 'know your market' and culture clash and the impact a poor brand image can have on a market.
Vita sold very decent in Japan compared to PS4. (5 million 800k vs 7 million 500k). This system deserved some better fate
There we go! Now thats what I like to see.
@westman98 Sure. But that's only in comparison to other, main series Pokemon titles. And although Game Freak insists on calling it a main series title, it's still really not. The game still sold plenty well in general when looking at a platform exclusive title on a relatively new system.
I do hope that the lower sales do push GF back toward their traditional main series titles, but LG Eevchu was by no measures a poorly performing title.
Looks like most people prefer physical copies. Good news for people like me who prefer physical.
After looking at the Physical and Digital sales....... Yep they better not go Full digital anytime soon. Hopefully 30+ years, physical will stay strong! Edit: So as I see in the comments that the estimated sales for digital are probably all wrong, but my comment still stands!
Also, if Sony fix their problems (cough cough memory cards cough) with the Vita instead of running away from it, then it would be even more successful. (Also why the **** are the memory cards still expensive still??? Like I would rather just pay $35 CAD Max for the 64 gb card.)
MHW is a good game in general, i don't think being 'coming home to consoles' mattered,Heck its an exclusive MH remade from ground up afterall. If what PS4 gets is a port of MH Gen, i believe the sales will just equate those 3ds titles.
What's mind boggling is How the hell did mediocre reskinned games like pokemon and smash top the charts?? No wonder renowned game companies like Capcom and Squarenix dumping Japan and aim for western market, gaming trend in japan is becoming irrelevant.
What about Tropical Freeze? I thought it sell well in Japan, too. I cannot believe Kirby sold more, is it that Japan likes Kirby more than Donkey Kong?
@Evilworm Over 20% and 25% (for PLG and SSBU sales respectively) came from North America, alone. (For comparison SSBU about 21% of all copies were sold in Japan and PLG sold about 15 % of all copies were sold in Japan)
@MrBlacky
Famitsu's digital sales estimates come from online polls.
Which is basically the equivalent of pulling numbers out of their you-know-what.
@westman98 even if they off under reporting by 40% they still would not amount to much compared to physical sales. And if the numbers are an estimate. They can also be over estimating the numbers.
Either way - it is the same. When people looking to spend 6,000+ yen on games they go for physical.
@hoopderscotch you haven't read my post on Daemon, Scalebound or Astral Chains. If you mean my usual disregard for overpriced ancient ports and cookie cut indies dumps on the Switch. That should not represent "everything Switch-related" - that is in-itself the problem, not me mentioning it 🙄
Err, the rest has nothing to do with my post... I was Pointing out the delusional bubble that somehow "digital sales" is a large hidden quantity from sales charts.
@Agramonte
Well of course physical sales are larger than digital sales. Nobody suggested otherwise lol.
I'm fairly confident that Famitsu is underestimating the digital sales of all games on that list, especially the Nintendo games.
@BenAV I'm no fan of X Box, but there's clearly a deep rooted prejudice against them simply because they're western. I guess the Japanese are lucky we don't think the same way in reverse.
Wow. Xbox sales are LOW in Japan. (Not that I would get one compared to the Switch anyway though)...
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