Japanese Charts: Super Mario Maker 2 Loses Top Spot To Professional Baseball Spirits

Of course, Japanese peoples like Baseball sports. 😏

That baseball game looks pretty great! Bet @DocEllis is all over it!

Wow that’s a nice baseball game.

Checked out the baseball game too... It actually looks pretty good. I don't even LIKE baseball.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Marvel (or superheroes in general, for that matter) aren't as big in Japan so imo 6th is pretty good!

Look at Baseball GO!... 😎

Play a real baseball game at home on PS4 and "handheld friendly" Powerful Pro Baseball on the GO (has some legs).

Perfect combo (and 2X the love for Konami) 👍

Fail for MUA 3. It already sold 1/3 fewer copies in the UK launch. It should have stayed Multi-Platform.

MUA1 sold like <3500 on PS3/Wii when it launched. Pretty strong boost for the sequel.

I know nothing about Professional Baseball Spirits 2019, but it seems weird to me that there is a Vita version of that game but no Switch version. Does that seem weird to anyone else?

@Tyranexx they possibly like it even more, baseball has definitely waned in popularity in North America.

Who the hell likes baseball except US and Japan?
And the answer is no one

@Agramonte
Either MUA3 was a Switch exclusive or it wouldn't exist; Nintendo funded its development.

Using retail UK sales is a pretty stupid way to judge success anyways - by that measure, every big game this year outside of RE2, KH3, Days Gone, CTR, and Mario Maker 2 would be seen as underwhelming flops.

Awh - I want the baseball game. Why PS exclusive? Konami?

Not too shocked. Japan has a ridiculous love of baseball and Konami’s baseball titles get lines of people buying them each year there. That said, I’m so underwhelmed by MUA3 that I regret buying it at all.

@Tyranexx It's a bit too boring for me generally to watch on TV, though I do live in Kansas and most of the time the Royals have been bad for quite some time minus that small run where we won the world series lol.

Those mua3 sales are abysmal. Looks like it might fall off the charts in it's next week or 2. I wonder how the avengers game will do.

@westman98 Yes. It is artificial, They get a check from Nintendo regardless so they do not care. Nintendo even help promote it for months. Just make a better MARVEL game - and put it everywhere. Even As-is, Steam will sell more than 9K.

KH3 was the biggest launch for the series in the UK. DG was the biggest physical release and a brand new iP. MM2 is the biggest Nintendo release this year in the UK. They actually helping build the IP brand in the UK (even DG did better in Japan), not go backwards.

@LunarFlame17 yes it does

#6 and almost 10,000 physical copies sold... Not bad for MUA3, as some mentioned, the first game sold far less. If it weren't for the baseball games no doubt it'd have sold more at retail.

I do wonder how well it sold digitally. It's part of the voucher program, so a significant number of people may have decided to buy it digital at a lower price with the vouchers.

If they included digital sales in the ranking, MUA3 could scale perhaps a few positions.

@Agramonte I’m sorry no other platforms wanted MUA3

@arpaktiko It was big in the USSR until the NKVD arrested all American ex-pats there.

I know Japanese like baseball but to see a psv title in number 3 is surprising

And seeping Sony in general with 3 titles in the top 10

The hardware isn’t really declining, it just slowly going back to normal, but will rise again next this weekend with fire emblem

Who is this "Konami?" They should make more games. Or at least outsource any IP they might possibly have to other devs.

A PS Vita game in the top 10? Well this is unexpected especially for a platform that should had been dead.

@Agramonte
It's not artificial. The game literally wouldn't exist without Nintendo ala Bayonetta 2/3.

MUA3 was hardly promoted in Japan and didn't even receive a Japanese dub. It was tailor made for the US market.

@Agramonte
Remember it is a marvel based game, nobody care about marvel in Japan, they are not reading comics (as manga is far superior this days, especially for the Japanese market) and they aren’t really watching the marvel movies
The last game on the series sold just a bit more than that in Japan and it was on about every system in the market at the time, this is a game founded by Nintendo, and is supposed to appeal to western audiences, not Japanese

@westman98 So it is artificial. No publisher picked it up because they knew it was a risk - and they were right. Nintendo can care less - they not paying for carts, licensing fees or 30% of digital sales.

Days Gone was a game made for the west... about an annoying biker. It ran circles around this on a smaller install base. Avengers End Game is the 3rd largest grossing movie in japan of 2019. What else do they need.

@Tantani

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/intl/japan/yearly/

Also, SpiderMan had no problems selling in Japan. If this was anything other than Nintendo it would end up on PC like Octopath and Travis Strikes Again. It can sell 9K on Steam in a heartbeat.

@Agramonte What does artificial even mean in this context?

@Agramonte
A Steam version of MUA3 will sell dozens of copies given that PC gaming isn't a thing in Japan.

Meanwhile, Spider-Man was a highly promoted AAA blockbuster that at least managed to get a JP dub. MUA3 was a blip on Nintendo's radar as they didn't even bother giving it a release month to itself with FE Three Houses launching the week after.

Also, are those Japanese Avengers Endgame box office numbers really that impressive? I mean, it's doing great by MCU standards, but the MCU wasn't that big in Japan to begin with as there are a ton of movie in Japan that made more money than Endgame. By comparison, MCU films occupy 3 of the 5 biggest movie of all time in the US, with Endgame being at #2. It made more in 7 days than all but a dozen other movies made during their entire lifetime in theaters.

Switch had only 8/10 top selling spots and only sold 45k units in Japan this week. Pack it in guys, Nintendoomed. Don't even sell it, throw your Switch away, it's trash. Time for Nintendo to give up and go 3rd party. #tOTallySeRiousdood

@westman98 PC gaming wasn't a thing in Japan. It's been catching on quite a bit in the last few years. A lot more high end PC stores have popped up in Nipponbashi in Osaka and Akihabara in Tokyo.

Are the USA and Japan like the only two countries that have a large baseball following? Are there any others?

@Alpha008 Baseball is also big in certain Latin American countries

@Alpha008 Yeah Latin America it's huge. Where do you think all the Latin based MLB players come from?

@Agramonte
counter point: 2018 Japanese box office, 2017,2016....

The biggest movie of all time (Endgame) caught them in the hype, but this is just an abnormally, the other movies didn’t even slip into the top 10

And this game would never even come out if Nintendo didn’t want it to,

And according to what it will sell 9 thousands on steam in Japan?

wow! PS Vita on the list!

@Heavyarms55 it wouldn’t be a Japanese charts article without any Switch success being shat on and a constant reminder of how fantastically amazing the PS4 is. Oh and bottles getting popped because a western PS4 game made the top 3 against those wretched Japanese titles.

@WiltonRoots "#tOTallySeRiousdood" was supposed to be a clue that my comment was a joke dude.

@Heavyarms55 I know I was laughing at our resident sniper in these articles.

@arpaktiko Me, thank you very much.
@kalmaro I have the 2013 version on PS3. Good baseball sim.