Japanese Charts: Tactics Ogre Debuts Strong, Outselling God Of War: Ragnarok

Amazing. Ogre tactics should be in my mailbox when I get home and damn I'm excited.

I thought God of War would've made a bigger splash than that. It couldn't even pass Splatoon 3 across both its releases.

Next week is going to be exciting for the Switch's sales numbers. I wonder how big the launch for Pokémon is going to be. 🤩

Really surprised that GoW isn't topping the charts

And people here were saying Ragnarok would stay 1st for 2/3 weeks and calling me a debbie-downer for stating it wouldn’t even pass Tactis Ogre. PS4+PS5 combined first weeks sales are LESS than GOW 2018 PS4 (46k) despite being on two platforms.

The game looks real good, it's certainly caught my eye. Good to see it doing well.

@StarPoint Not surprised at all, very little about it appeals to a Japanese audience.

@WiltonRoots,

See the Switch sold around 100,000 consoles, pretty good for a regular week, this is the news here.

japanese game culture is weird .. the rest of the world is normal

Japanese games are more popular in Japan than western games.

This is news to some, apparently.

I'm really shocked how poor those sales for Sonic are, I thought he was quite popular in Japan?

@Rob3008 Was, is the key word.in the 90s and early 2000s (Dreamcast days) Sonic was at his peak in Japan. He's still popular but nowhere near as much as he was

God of War is still high on the charts in Japan, so it's not so much much that "western" games don't sell in Japan. It's more that this Japanese SRPG is more popular.

Really hoping this leads to more games in the series getting a similar treatment. I still have my copy of Ogre Battle 64 but I'd love to see it get another chance.

No doubt in my mind that Tactics Ogre deserves to beat GoW.

@johnvboy yes, but saturation point? Power? Steam Deck etc....

@Astral-Grain I think people are not reading the Japan part & think this is worldwide charts lol

@eaglebob345 Splatoon 3 is basically Japan's national sport at this point. It shouldn't have been a surprise lol.

@GrailUK kind of crazy how that worked out...one of Nintendo's most questionable new IP (at the time) is now one of its best selling 😅

@Rob3008

How are these poor sales? Sonic Frontiers is taking up 3 of the top 10 spots

I was a little worried that Tactics Ogre wouldn't make a splash because I don't really hear people talk about it or the series, but good to see that it still can drum up interest.

@Bizzyb Oh, I regard Splatoon on Wii U as a roaring success. Of course, as the actual console was a flop, it's numbers look much worse.

Calm before the Pokemon storm.

Yikes those Xbox numbers! No stock or no demand?

@RushDawg Combined it's still only about 45k for a AAA release of a well known, popular IP.

Even with these new games hitting the chart, nothing could stop the money making squids that was Splatoon 3. Next week Pokemon Scarlet and Violet will destroy all of them though. Also funny how Sonic Frontiers manage to beat God of War Ragnarok despite with a lesser budget. Goes to show fun gameplay beats better graphics anydays. Usually the Japanese doesn't get into Sonic this much so them buying up Sonic Frontiers means Sega is on the right track with the game.

@KindofaBigDeal Xbox are usually gear towards subscription based service, a trends not many Japanese audience wants since they are all about physical products so it make sense that not many Japanese gamers buy up the Xbox consoles there. The few who do buy into em are either buying em to resell online or are just western people living there who bought em so they could play with their families or friends overseas.

@Rob3008

Combined, its still outselling every other release that week, save for Tactics Ogre and God of War. It literally outsold every other game on the market last week, save for 2 other releases. Not really sure what you're expecting here.

In any case, having 3 of the top 10 spots for the week is in no way a "poor" performance.

Good for Tactics Ogre, that one's definitely on my wishlist. Really enjoying how we're getting several strategy titles coming out on Switch, this year alone.

@Rob3008 Sonic was never that popular in Japan compare to Mario, the blue Dragon Quest Slime, and Mega Man. Starting with Sonic Frontiers he may very well be popular soon though, it all comes down to how Sega would market him for the Japanese audience.

Japan doesn’t care about new GoW game when it loses to a rerelease of an old Japanese SRPG

@KryptoniteKrunch Yeap and we still got 8 more coming next year too: Advance Wars 1 & 2, Metal Slug Tactics, the Front Mission Trilogy, Disgaea 7, and Fire Emblem Engage. Wouldn't surprise me if Square Enix make a Triangle Strategy II after this too or remastered Ogre Battle 64 and Final Fantasy Tactics in the future.

@Arawn93 The problem is there's not much to do in a game where you basically play as a grumpy old guy and his ugly kid in a cinematic world. The game had to include some cutesy stuffs (like faeries and midgets with glittering eyes and boobies) and actually feel like a game for them to buy into, something similar to Dragon Quest or Pokemon.

@WiltonRoots,

Ah the old Steam Deck, which reminds me, Nintendo life have not done an article on it for a while, you know pointing out what the Switch should be etc etc.......

@johnvboy

Why should the Switch, a 5+ year old console be like the Steam Deck, a console that was released in 2022? That makes zero sense.

What in the world is driving Lite sales up and OG down? Is Pokémon really that game you want on the go and Lite/OLED are better for that? Seems to be the best explanation aside from Nintendo prioritizing stock of some models over others...

Actually, not really. Pokémon isn't out yet. Maybe Nintendo just sent more Lites out to retailers than the base model of Switch?

Tatics Ogre is legit an incredible game. I wouldn't take the laughable review on this very site seriously at all. Most places gave the game a 9 or higher. It deserves to sell well. The best version of one of the best tactics games ever made.

@RushDawg,

It was a joking sarcastic post not aimed at you, a private joke between to friends on here, do not take it seriously.

Although one thing that did get aimed at the Switch, and even more so with the Pro version, was it's 720p screen, how dare it not be at least 1080p, then the Steam Deck arrives in all of it's power and glory, with an errr........720p screen, seriously you could not make any of this up if you tried.

@RushDawg Whether Sonic is in the top 10 or not doesn't matter. The strength for the rest of the top 10 is going to vary greatly based on what games have released recently, so relative position is best ignored. Sega's investors aren't interested in Sonic's placement relative to other games, but instead total units sold.

45k opening week for a AAA game from a Japanese company in Japan isn't good numbers.

@RushDawg the position is irrelevant, it’s the sales that matter. Those sales are not great. Not bad, no, but simply not great.

@johnvboy More importantly why is Sonic doing better on the Switch than the Playstation versions by more than 2 to 1? Don't they watch Digital Foundry? 😀

@Quarbit You must know that this is the by far the biggest opening for a Sonic game in Japan since Sonic Adventure 2 on the Dreamcast.

@WiltonRoots,

Yes the old Digital Foundry, the source of all those frame rate and graphical teardown videos, and yet only around a million subscribers.

No wonder regular people start to look bored when you talk to them about all this stuff.

@johnvboy Thing was LABO outsold the previous God of War in Japan as well. Unless it's put into bundles with the PS5 there's not much likelihood of it shifting over there.

@AmplifyMJ

The position is totally relevant, as it it indicates the total size of the market. Expecting much bigger sales is unrealistic when the market just isn't that big.

In any case, it looks like we're in agreement. I never said the sales were great, I was simply arguing that they weren't poor.

@Quarbit

Of course the position matters, as it gives a sense for how much is selling in the market. 45K doesn't sound like a lot, but when you consider that the best selling game of the week only sold 57K copies, you definitely can't call 45K "poor". Go back and look at previous "Japanese Charts" articles. You'll see that 45K for a new release is pretty standard and definitely not a "poor" performance.

@johnvboy People who enjoy digital foundry aren’t regular people? That’s a new one! Copied from Reddit, I suppose?

@SonOfDracula,

They are core gamers, not the masses, and not calling them, as I am one myself, I just recognize that my passion for all this is in the minority and very Niche.

Not sure why you brought up Reddit.

@johnvboy It sounded like a redditor post the way you insinuated that regular people can't enjoy what DF offers. I have no idea why you would suggest that people who enjoy graphical comparisons are niche, not sure what metric you're using. Then again, this is a Nintendo site, so expecting people to have even a modicum of knowledge about a GPU and how they perform is asking a lot.

@SonOfDracula,

As I said I was not intending to insult anyone, I was just pointing out that frame rate and graphic obsessives are niche, the metric I am using is Digital foundry themselves, only a million or so subscribers, that fact itself has to be a bit of an indicator.

To be honest I bet there is a lot of people on here that are very clued up when it comes to this sort of thing, as many will own multiple consoles, perhaps even a gaming P.C as well.

Video games are a huge industry, but the amount of people who comment on forums and watch digital foundry videos, and also play video games for a large part of their spare time, are in the minority, core hobby gamers I like to call them.

Not an insult by the way.

Let’s be honest, GoW is a walking simulator interactive movie. If you look at the core definition of video games, GoW doesn’t fit the definition. Having played the previous iterations I can only imagine that it gets rave reviews because most of them are pre-paid, and the rest are too cowardly to tell the truth.

@johnvboy Even if every one of those subscribers owned a Switch (and of course they don't if they are super obsessed with sitting that close to a screen!) they would still account for less than 1% of folk who own a Switch!

@GrailUK,

Very true, it's always funny when some people fail to see it though, which is why they get a little annoyed when it's pointed out. But like you said even more niche on the Switch, due to it's pretty wide appeal.

@GrailUK It has substantially more subs then NL does posters

Sooooo I guess that makes them right and you wrong? Well if we go by this so called logic anyway

@Doktor-Mandrake Sure, if you're about 4 years old lol

@GrailUK well I mean it's you pushing this rhetoric "they're just a small minority and opinions don't matter"

There's a reason John states on his switch videos MULTIPLE times that he loves switch before critising anything and it's because of childish haters that can't stand the idea of anything negative about their beloved switch

@Doktor-Mandrake It made number one in uk charts. I was simply saying folk don’t have the reach they think they do. You are the one inferring I’m 4 years old and making it about who is right and wrong.