We've got the latest Japanese charts (thanks, Gematsu) and there are a few minor changes of note. First up, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles retains the top spot this week with 20,964 units sold, but Nintendo Switch Sports and Mario Strikers: Battle League have swapped positions, slightly altering the top three. Mario Strikers' sales fell off considerably from the previous week, marking a 147% drop in total sales.
Meanwhile, in a rather curious turn of events, Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl have re-entered the top ten charts with 5,043 units sold, bringing the total sales since the games' launch to a respectable 2,560,536 units.
Otherwise, it's more or less business as usual. It's cool to see the Nintendo Switch make up the entirety of the top ten chart once again, proving the system's considerable popularity in its native Japan.
Here's a look at this week's charts in full:
- [NSW] Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles (Aniplex, 06/09/22) – 20,964 (111,849)
- [NSW] Nintendo Switch Sports (Nintendo, 04/29/22) – 18,789 (493,046)
- [NSW] Mario Strikers: Battle League (Nintendo, 06/10/22) – 13,002 (45,175)
- [NSW] Kirby and the Forgotten Land (Nintendo, 03/25/22) – 8,649
- [NSW] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Nintendo, 04/28/17) – 8,456 (4,682,390)
- [NSW] Minecraft (Microsoft, 06/21/18) – 6,887 (2,677,377)
- [NSW] Overlord: Escape from Nazarick (Kadokawa, 06/16/22) – 5,682 (New)
- [NSW] Ring Fit Adventure (Nintendo, 10/18/19) – 5,462 (3,181,291)
- [NSW] Pokemon Brilliant Diamond / Shining Pearl (The Pokemon Company, 11/19/21) – 5,043 (2,560,536)
- [NSW] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Nintendo, 12/07/18) – 4,364 (4,905,190)
With the hardware sales, the biggest shift this week belongs to the PlayStation 5, which dropped several spots to land at number six (with the Digital Edition just behind at number seven). It seems safe to assume that stock for the week must have been short, as sales have fallen off by nearly 10,000 since the previous week. The Switch remains the top dog, with the OLED model in particular shifting some impressive numbers. As we'd mentioned previously, of course, the Switch has now sold in excess of 25 million units in Japan.
Shout out to the New 2DS LL, too - still hanging in there!
- Switch OLED Model – 22,860 (1,899,156)
- Switch – 19,907 (18,399,758)
- Switch Lite – 7,638 (4,761,895)
- Xbox Series S – 3,423 (130,076)
- Xbox Series X – 3,272 (108,983)
- PlayStation 5 – 2,371 (1,451,795)
- PlayStation 5 Digital Edition – 664 (242,208)
- New 2DS LL (including 2DS) – 215 (1,187,058)
- PlayStation 4 – 18 (7,819,701)
Share your thoughts on the latest Japanese charts with us in the comments.
Further Reading:
[source gematsu.com]
Comments 36
I always forget about playing ring fit adventure until I see the name...time to break out the ringcon
I guess that State of Play didn't help that much!
Mario Strikers has been the biggest disappointment this year so far. I'm hoping the upcoming updates can turn things around but I fear by the time they're finished updating the game people would have already lost interest in it.
It's that boost in xbox sales that caught my eye.
Should we be worried?
The Xbox is outselling the PS5 in Japan!? 😱 I know it's still an uphill battle for Xbox Series that it'll never win in Japan, but at least it's doing better than the XBO did. Also, the Switch is still eating up the top 10! I love to see it.
Wow Sony got beat by everyone this past week. It's not everyday that Xbox beat PlayStation at their own region.
Regarding the Xbox beating PS5, the form factor of the Xbox, both series X and more so, series S, suits the cramp living spaces of your typical Japanese house.
As much as I want to love Strikers, I am glad that its sales are dropping.
This drip-feed approach is clearly not working for them and it needs to change.
Shocking numbers for Mario strikers! What’s gone wrong?
@Lord I hope its because people are tired of Nintendos BS policy when it comes to sports games on Switch
People have been saying over and over all over the internet that Mario Strikers would fail because it’s a rushed game, but noooo…. Some are just stubborn or like to defend this no-content strategy.
I don’t understand why, if we mortals can see that this would happen… why didn’t Nintendo?
It’s so sad seeing a fun, dormant franchise, failing like this. I mean.. a 147% drop??!! And there’s not even a huge release to topple it from the top like that.
Every time you think Pokemon's completely gone from the sales charts, they always come roaring back. They're like a late-night moth: whenever you're least expecting it, WABAM! They zip around you like nobody's business.
One day, if a console sells like 1 or 2 units, I don't want numbers, I want names hahaha!
@Judgedean Japan is not PlayStation‘s „own region“ any more. With the creation of Sony Interactive Entertainment in California in 2016, PlayStation became an American company for the Japanese. You know, with PS5 they even changed the controls for menus in Japan from the „SNES standard“ (confirm with A = O, cancel with B = X) to the „Xbox standard“ (swapping O and X functionality), like it was in the West ever since with PlayStation systems. This may be a small thing from our perspective, but for the Japanese this and the shutdown of the Japan Studio mean that PlayStation doesn’t respect its legacy in Japan. Nowadays, SIE is a „Hollywood company“ with heavy focus on cinematic third person action adventures, and I think that‘s a shame.
@YoshiF2 Uh, where did you get that 147% figure from? It fell around 70% compared to last week when it debuted, that's the usual second week drop for most new games.
Actually, Battle League apparently beat Charged's opening week. They sold a similar amount of physical units from what I've heard... but there were no digital sales back then for Charged. In my case I got the game digital because it's very small, just around 2 GB.
Demon Slayer is one of the most popular IPs of recent times, so it's not unthinkable to assume it stole the spotlight away from BL. Another factor is that Switch Sports debuted recently, it must also have eaten away at BL's sales figures.
@Max_the_German Agreed with everything you said. Yes, it is a shame.
@Lord the game has no content
Mario Strikers is a ton of fun but… yeah, I have to agree with others that it’s lacking content. The original GameCube release didn’t have a ton of content but that was made back in 2005. I think it’s reasonable to expect a few more characters, stadiums (or stadium halves), and single-player content. They were really banking on the online multiplayer to carry this title… but that’s not doing it for them. I also don’t think it was wise to release the game so soon after Switch Sports.
I’m having a lot of fun with it despite what I mentioned but man Nintendo needs to stop this slow content drip-feed for $50+ titles.
So was Switch stock short last week then when OLED dropped from first place or is that excuse just only reserved for Sony?
Also laughing at people assuming that Strikers “doing bad” because it had “no content” without actually taking things into context like how the past Mario Soccer games sold in Japan.
Sorry but a tacked on Story mode would not have gave Strikers a sudden 100k+ sales. Strikers was never super popular in the region. That is like saying Zelda games flopped just because they sell notably less in Japan compared to rest of world
Not to mention we don’t even know the legs potential for this game until a month minimum. Look how low Ring Fit sold on launch and how much it gained since lol
who the heck is buying a 2DS rn
@Max_the_German
Xbox and PlayStation have actually taken over Sega’s buttons layout on the controller
@Researcher This I didn’t know, and I don’t get it: Saturn had the six-buttons controller, and Dreamcast was the first (?) Sega console with the four-buttons diamond arrangement. But PSX was a generation (and a couple of years) ahead of Dreamcast. Where is my fault?
@Researcher Which is almost a copy of the Super Famicom/Super NES controller. The only differences is the stick and they used analog triggers instead of shoulder buttons. Sega using Nintendo's diamond layout means they embraced Nintendo's idea more than their own.
@Max_the_German The reason Sony is using the Super NES layout for PlayStation was because PlayStation originally was suppose to be a CD add-on for the Super NES. The only reason the Sega Dreamcast controller used the diamond layout is cause Bernie Stolar, the mastermind of the Dreamcast controller creation used to work for Sony handling the PlayStation branch.
@Max_the_German
"Nowadays, SIE is a „Hollywood company“ with heavy focus on cinematic third person action adventures, and I think that‘s a shame."
Not really.
Sony still provide some 3rd party multi console kids games on PS4 & PS5 for gamers who like to play cartoonish looking games and I got quite a lot choices.
@Anti-Matter I agree, they offer also that kind of games you mention. And I insist that there is a heavy focus on cinematic over-the-shoulder games.
@Serpenterror Thank you for explanation! The history of PSX I know of cause, but Bernie Stolar and his background are new to me and explain a lot.
For Mario Strikers to see a 147% drop in sales, that would mean zero sales this week and nearly half the people who bought it last week returning their copies to the store. That’s a bad week!
(Or dodgy maths, possibly.)
@SmileMan64 ummm I got the number from this very same article? 🤨
@krull that’s not how percentages work. It’s a 147% drop from last week. It means that if that the second week it saw a drop of 50,000 units. It means that this week it sold 125,000 less copies from the total of last week.
@Arawn93 you don’t need to have a “tacked on” story mode to have content. You can have items, modes, characters, stadiums, rulesets, special moves, etc.
NOT a barebones online mode and that’s it.
Also, it’s not doing great either in the UK, and that’s the land of football. And again, you can’t compare Ring Fit because 1) the cost 2) it is a peripheral game 3) it’s an excercise game 4) it released during the peak of the pandemic.
So, no, it’s not doing great in any region at all.
@YoshiF2 Uh what? According to who that it’s not doing good? Your making it sound like Strikers cost a ton of money to make lol. Still placing high in most regions and due to being a Mario sport game will have legs for months just like with Tennis and Golf which people like you also claimed would do bad while Nintendo themselves said otherwise lol
Also none of that crap you mentioned would have magically made Strikers launch 100k+. The sport matters in the end. Soccer isn’t super huge in Japan and United States which are big videogame markets. Mario Sluggers would have done better in those regions if we are being honest
The point of bringing up Ring Fit is not to be meltdown mode because of arbitrary sense of “not good launch game flopped” when launch for these kind of casual sport games matter less then say JRPG genre that are super frontloaded. Both Golf and Tennis had legs for awhile.
So no stop being silly with these assumptions. Actually pay attention to industry trends next time.
I was considering getting Strikers for switch, then I looked at the actual gameplay and was completely turned off.
It's nothing like the GameCube version.
I skipped the Wii one as well because it differed way too much. Switch version looks cheap. Doesn't look like you're playing soccer, it seems like you're playing Foosball instead.
I'm a hater.
@YoshiF2 I see. I missed that part, thanks for clearing it up. However, it still makes no sense, they must have mixed up the numbers or something.
Mario Strikers: Battle League debuted in Japan with 32.173 physical sales, and on its second week sold 13.002, just a drop of around 60%. No serious mathematician could get a 147% drop from that.
@Arawn93 how do you know more content wouldn’t have helped the sales? That’s you assuming. That’s a fallacy. With more content, better reviews, better sales. So, stop being silly with your assumptions.
Also you’re going with your narrative. How convenient that you’re leaving out the fact that sales in Europe are not that great, and it’s a region where the sport is super popular. AND it’s a Mario game. The popularity of the game is important, obviously. But a game where you can play it for more than 2 hours without saying “ok, I’ve seen all there is to this game” is important too. I mean, a legacy FIFA has even more content than this, AND that’s saying something.
This content drip feeding doesn’t work at all with Mario Sports game, and the sales shows. You should pay attention to industry trends next time.
@SmileMan64 depends on how you see it. 13,002 x 2.5 (147%) IS 32,500.
However, 32,173 x 0.6 is 19,303. 32,173 minus 19,303 = 12,870.
Both are correct
@eltomo , um yeah? SF6 is on it's way to every console "except for the Nintendo Switch.😝😈" The Nintendo Switch is lacking on having really good exclusive Nintendo titles like Kirby epic yarn from the Nintendo Wii. The Switch is literally a Wii but better in every way the more I think about it, but Nintendo needs to make more or remake more games for their own system.
Switch sports is still a hit game and earns those numbers
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