Japanese Charts: Minecraft Legends Comes Out On Top After A Quiet Week

Just one more week until Pokémon SV hits 5 million physical!

Edit: But 2 weeks before it's reported due to Golden Week.

Golden week numbers could be insane for Switch if Mario is a hit. But we won't know until 2 weeks time I guess.

SV about to join the 5M club. Wonder how many units are gonna get moved when Tears drops.

I wonder who buys Xbox in Japan. The US has an army base there, perhaps it's people stationed there.

@Tober Japanese people love the game Minecraft. Minecraft is solely owned by Microsoft. Microsoft makes the Xbox. Therefore the game Minecraft is native to the Xbox - which the Japanese love. There are probably dozens, maybe even hundreds, of Japanese people who really like video games and are willing to enjoy consoles not made in the nation of their birth.

I know this because I am buying a Playstation solely for Street Fighter 6. Even though Sony, makers of the Playstation, are from Japan. I am not from Japan.

Cuphead on the list. That's fun.

Oof, that’s rough for Microsoft. I know XBOX isn’t big in Japan, but the series S should at least beat out a dead handheld.

@Cashews I get that, but it does not seem Xbox is putting any marketing muscle behind their Japanese market efforts. We never see Xbox mentioned in the list of most sold games. Not even in the top50 that Famitsu publishes a day after the top 10. That includes Minecraft that is a huge success in Japan..on the Switch.

@Tober From what I remember they tried a marketing push during the 360 era and it didn't have a meaningful impact. I imagine MS is just going to put it there and see what happens and live with it.

@Tober Sony also puts no effort. It's hard to compete there if you don't make handhelds, but there's just a lot of people in Japan, and some of them want to play forza and Halo.

I personally never understand for Japanese gamers that prefer Minecraft over than Dragon Quest Builders 2.
Minecraft just too overrated yet I never like the blocky characters and blocky environments.

@GrailUK It's more the Zelda OLED Switch that is going to lead to more Switch sales in golden week.

Switch hardware sales are comfortable on top again, so hopefully that means less baseless speculation on new hardware.

@BTB20 It could be quite the result for Nintendo, these next two weeks.

The Switch maket is such a solid and steady market, yet bringing big numbers everywhere in the planet. I could foresee this console playing an important role in the industry for a couple of years still, unless Nintendo has some magic with the Switch 2 and makes an easy transition.

It seems like the challenge of moving from the Switch is going to be a big deal for the whole industry.

@iLikeUrAttitude my speculation is pure market timing - nothing else. Q1 2024 would be the optimum time for an announcement. Or possibly October of 2023. But that in turn may show your hand to the enemy to easily.

@blindsquarel while I criticise the console, the Switch is far from dead

@NinjaNicky The 3DS is dead, the Series S sold less than the 3DS.

@BTB20 Well technically it's the 2DS that outsold XBSS but close enough. There was a week not too long ago when 2DS outsold XBSX+S!

Those New 2DS LL units, I wonder if those are just some leftover units that Nintendo is just getting rid of or do they still lightly produced those in Japan?

@NinjaNicky
The switch is far from dead and likely will thrive for a few years after nintendos next console releases. The 2ds on the other hand, is a dead system.

@blindsquarel
I'm hoping that the next System is backwards compatible meaning that OG switch games will be more Viable for a while into the new systems life rather than with the 3ds>switch transition where the libraries were split.

@Mgalens
It didn’t really make sense for the switch to be backwards compatible with 3DS games, since the switch can run much more powerful games. But I do think the switches successor will be backwards compatible. Nintendo has had a history of doing this with their handhelds, so it only makes sense.

@blindsquarel I didn't even see the 2ds on there. Thing is, they're cheap to buy still and because they're not making anymore games, a lot of people will buy them to hack them and have all the games for free. I done it with my PSP, original 2ds and my Wii.

@blindsquarel
yeah in the 3ds>switch's case it felt far too different overall, though i am hoping the next system will be kind of a ds>3ds situation, taking the previous systems concept and improving on it.

Why did the 2DS LL last so much longer over there than any iteration of the 3DS? Is the 3D feature not as popular in the land of its innovation? And did the eshop go down over there too, yet it's still being sold?

@Thomystic The New 2DS LL only lasted 3 years. It was the final revision of the 3DS and launched in 2017 (a few months after the Switch) and was discontinued in 2020. All that's being sold now is excess stock.

Removing unnecessary features is actually quite common with late Nintendo hardware revisions. The Game Boy Micro removed GB/GBC backwards compatibility, the Wii Mini removed GameCube backwards compatibility and internet functionality, etc. Even consoles that didn't receive a full revision often removed features, like the late GameCube models removing component cable ports.

3DS/Wii U eShops are down everywhere.