Japanese Charts: Pikmin 4 Posts An Out Of This World Debut, Knocking Zelda From The Top Spot

I'm glad PS4 machine is still selling well.

@Anti-Matter Ae you sure you are on the right site, mate hahah

That's amazing for a series that was never known to be a big seller

I kinda hope the Xenoblade series will see that kind of launch numbers one day

Nice to see Pikmin 4 selling well. Now there’s no reason for there to be another decade wait for the 5th game. The Switch is a great system to get a game to sell well, I believe it can bring F-Zero back to its former glory.

i wonder what % of pikmin 4 game were bought in japan it has to be the majority... i would think worldwide..

In one week Pikmin has outsold FF16 overall, am I reading that correctly?

It's great to see the Switch really boosting series like Metroid, Animal Crossing and (of course) Pikmin to new heights!
Star Fox next perhaps???

Glad to see the sales are strong.

Pikmin 4 gets more sales in a week than FF XVI in a month. Nice going!

Switch should cross the 30 million units sold in Japan next week: it's only 5,000 units short.

@GrailUK
I still have hype with my PS4 games.
My Switch games collection is literally get outnumbered by my PS4 games collection (54 Switch games vs 61 PS4 games).
I didn't say I don't have interest with Switch anymore but my hype with PS4 is still on fire since year 2022.
But I will step up my games with Switch during this second semester (July - December 2023) as I have agenda to reach target collecting at least 60 Switch games before end of year 2023.
At the same time, I also have agenda to buy another PS4 machine with 2 TB internal HDD installed to play my Group 2 PS4 games with bigger GB size before end of year 2023 or beginning of year 2024.

Oh, btw.
I don't have really big interest to talk about 1st party Nintendo games except ACNH, ARMS, Mii games.
I still a 3rd party gamer.

Interesting figure is Nobunaga’s Ambition NSW vs PS4.

Are more people favouring portability over performance? I mean its not mega surprising in Japan.

@Anti-Matter I'm just being cheeky. Pay not attention to me. Gaming is for everyone Even folk who love PS4!

That's a great debut for Pikmin! Hope it doesn't take 10 years to get Pikmin 5...

@Nintoz It is great!
Whenever the topic of F-Zero, or Wave Race, or any other neglected series comes up, the naysayers always like to point to the "underwhelming" sales (e.g., 1 million) in the past. But with the likes of Metroid and Pikmin seeing newfound success- not that they were failures before!- it goes to show that things have changed in the past two decades or so.

The Switch has a massive install base, so any game sales can potentially be 5x higher than they were in the GameCube days. And Switch owners really love building their libraries (esp. with first/second-party games), so things are better than they were in the Wii era as well (when some of the deeper cuts may not have had as much of a chance).

The switch is so crazy even a Fzero could sell well on it.

Pikmin has now became bigger in Japan than Final Fantasy.

If you claimed a Pikmin game would sell more in 1 week than a mainline FF game would in 1 month you'd be called insane back in 2001.

Next week is the 30 million milestone. 4,000 units to go. Crazy

Surprised, and delighted to see such strong numbers on Pikmin 4. Hopefully it can keep up the momentum.

The thing with it outselling FF, though, is when you compare attach rates…but either way, it’s amazing to see Pikmin outsell it!

"Onto software now, and things are once again leaning in Nintendo's favour following the week's big release. The Switch OLED keeps the top spot this time around"

Someone let Jim Norman know that's the hardware section, not software. 🤷

We bought 2 copies of Pikmin in our house, 1 digital and 1 physical, for our 2 Switch.

This looks like a great number for Japan and I'm not surprised Pikmin has outsold FF there since it's an FF game in title only and the Switch install base must be 5x the PS5 but I'd like to see the global numbers before getting too excited. PS5 has sold 40mil, Switch is at what 120mil, that's 3x as much.

@GrailUK I hope that was a joke? Hes clearly a true gamer and not a brand loyalist.

@Dr_Lugae how do you figure that? A bigger franchise?
Switch install base 30 million, ps5 4 million. That's over 7x the install base.
Pikmin 4 (which is great) first week attach rate is just over 1%.
Ff16 (which is also great) first week attach rate nearly 8%.
Plus let's not forget Sony's sales are more digital now, anywhere from 60 to 80%. So who knows what the real sales are for Japan.
Anyway good to see you mention FF16 again this week. You must be happy SE are so pleased with its sales figures.

As a lifelong Pikmin fan, seeing the franchise finally getting the respect and success it's deserved since launch is such a joyous occassion. Being a Pikmin fan this past month has honestly been the most cathartic experience in my gaming life.

Hopefully these sales numbers shows Nintendo that Pikmin CAN be a profitable source of income in the long run and they decide to bump up production/resources so we get a new game every 4-5 years and not a flaming decade...

I’m glad to see Pikmin 4 putting up some good numbers like that. Always loved the series. I hope the series has some legs and continues to sell well. It’s a great game.

Congrats Pikmin 4. I am only missing Minecraft, Nobunaga's Ambition and Final Fantasy XVI from this list.

with digital could be around 500k

Awesome! Such is the Power of Pikmin and Dandori!

Glad to see the game is selling well. Miyamoto's wish came true.

@Serialsid A bigger franchise in the traditional sense in that it sells more games.

You can play about with percentages to say anything, Mario Kart 8 for the WiiU sold to a higher percent than Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for Switch. But MK8 sold 8m and Deluxe is 54m, and in the end the number of players who play and enjoy the game is more important than the percentage of the userbase.

Yeah I find it pretty amusing that Square Enix consider it a good result... well in their words, they find just the initial sales a good result, whatever that's meant to mean.

Pikmin is bigger than Final Fantasy in Japan now. Crazy to imagine such a thing just 4 or 5 years ago.

Those are big time numbers. I can see Pikmin pushing 3 million or more units through Christmas which has got to make them happy I'd think.

After buying an xbox recently and realizing just how much better this machine is than the other two consoles - I am rethinking my earlier opinion that the next console will be announced Q1 2024. They really could go another year without so much as a peep with the excellent games they keep producing. And gosh dern it all I'd be fine with that.

@Ooyah came here to say exactly this. Mind blown.

@Dr_Lugae it sold slightly more to a much much bigger user base, nearly 8x the user base! Doesn't sound bigger to me! It will be interesting to see its legs and its worldwide numbers. I hope it does great.
And for SE to be happy with the numbers of FF16 and its attach rate must mean they are decent. They're usually never happy.
For most games, 3 million in the first week is a great result, especially on a system at 40 million. Most games don't do the insane numbers some switch games do like the new zelda.
Just look at street fighter 6, available on multiple platforms, 2million in the first month and they were very happy with the numbers.
Res Village did 3 million on multiple platforms in its first week, your talking 150+ million user base just on console alone. So I find it interesting you find FF16 numbers so bad!
I mean you could look at Bayonetta 3 for really poor sales numbers. Took nearly 4 months to hit 1 million on an install base of 115 million at launch.

Oh boy, it looks like next week Final Fantasy XVI will be out of the top 10. It was nice knowing ya a game that pretends to use the FF name but not really an FF game. PS5's last hope for Japan right now is Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, if that doesn't sell in Japan then FF itself is dead to the Japanese market.

Lol Pikmin 4 launch already casually selling more then 1+ month FFXVI in Japan.

@Serialsid lmao install base isn’t everything. PS5 could have 100 million people on the platform, but their games won’t be selling as much as Nintendo games regardless.

Reminder this is a new mainline FINAL FANTASY release with over a month head start in a popular genre against a new PIKMIN what was previously considered a top third/low 2nd string Nintendo IP in the niche RTS genre lol.

Your also conveniently forgetting FFXV launch sold more with less PS4 in install base then what FFXVI had to work with. SE can come up with whatever cope excuses they want so it doesn’t scare away shareholder, but the fact remains FF is on an evident decline.

Great opening numbers for Pikmin 4. Really happy to see this series grow in popularity.

😄 Miyamoto-san is definitely smiling out there somewhere

@ Ooyah

Actually Pikmin has always been well liked I'm Japan. The real surprise was being #1 in the UK to start at least. US #s will be very telling

Great start for Pikmin! Be interesting to see the launch sales of all the other games in the series.

Now give me a new Wave Race, F-Zero, Star Fox (a proper one not that glorious Wii U mess), Eternal Darkness, Pilotwings!

@Hero-of-WiiU rather have a wave race hd collection than f zero

Yes would be good to see the numbers for previous vs 4 as I thought 3 was the best entry but with a Wii I release it would probably have the worst sales.

@Serialsid ???
So if you compare it with more than 100 milllion PS4 before PS5 come out, which AA games sold this many in it's last year ? Which AA PS4 games in 2020 (minus holiday 2020 for obvious reason) sold as many as this Pikmin 4 in the last year of Switch Gen 1 ? Pikmin 4 sold 3 or 4 million worldwide in it's 1st month is guaranteed

@Arawn93 I never said ps5 games would sell as much as the switch. Switch is a beast in Japan. But I'd bet you if there were 30 million ps5's in Japan FF16 would have sold more than pikmin 4. So yes install base does make a difference.

And your also conveniently forgetting that PS sales are now between 60-80% digital. Much much higher than in 2016. So the actual sales numbers for the first week might be a lot closer to 15 than we know. (And higher than pikmin)

Anyway FF games have never been massive sellers apart from FFXIV at 24 million. And that was multiplat. Most are between 8 to 15 million, again all multiplat with many years of sales. So to say a game that launches at 3 million in the first week on a 40 million install base shows a decline is laughable. And remember FF is now geared towards the western audience. Remember a quarter of all switch's in the world are in Japan. One country from 196. That's an insane number, the charts for Japan in no way represent the rest of the gaming world.

these numbers are way more then anyone could have anticipated nintendo really sold the game well good public relations and 120 million switch users will sell a lot of games though i do wonder what % of pikmin 4 sales were from japanese gamers compared to world wide sales..

@Serialsid 8 and 15 million are not massive sales? xenoblades for a acclaimed rpg series does not sell well.. which is odd considering you have 120 million switches..

@johnedwin just compared to some of the switch big hitters and the biggest selling games. For most developers, selling over 5 million is a big success.

@Jemae Pikmin 4 is a AAA game, well most the the games media are calling it as such. And it's been marketed like one too.

Will be interesting to see its worldwide numbers. As I said in an earlier post, a quarter of the switchs in the world are in Japan, so I wouldn't go off these charts for world numbers.
By the way, I do hope it sells great. Always loved the series.

@Serialsid Are you kidding ? Hahaha. Pikmin 4 not AAA game, it's only AA game. Can you not make an excuse please. Please answer my question above, which AA or even AAA PS4 games in 2020 (except holiday season) make a sales figures likes this Pikmin 4 ?

2DS LL sales down 10 from last week - what does this significant statistic mean for the industry??

hooray pikmin!

@Jemae According to Wikipedia, a AAA game is "an informal classification used to categorize video games produced and distributed by a mid-sized or major publisher, which typically have higher development and marketing budgets than other tiers of games". Pikmin 4 fits all of these requirements. Pikmin 4 was published solely by Nintendo so yep, it checks the "major publisher". Nintendo likes to take their sweet time with the games (10 years between 2 and 3, and then another 10 years between 3 and 4), so it's obvious that this series is more of a creative endeavor than anything else. And when you take 10 years to make a game, that's gonna cost ya a pretty decent chunk of money, especially if a new hardware generation starts in development and you have to rework and restart. So that's another box down. And since the game was revealed, it's been featured at length in every Nintendo direct. It's also Nintendo's big late summer/early fall release, so it's had no competition within the Switch's market. The marketing for the game has definitely been pretty substantial. So yeah, it's a AAA game.

@epicgamner nope, Pikmin 4 is AA likes Ratchet & Clank PS5, not AAA. Please answer my question regarding AA or AAA PS4 games in 2020 (last year PS4) that sell as many as Pikmin 4 in their debut week. Anyone ? Because someone said PS5 didn't have as many unit as Switch. So what about PS4 in 2020 already have >100 million units ?

That's an awesome debut for Pikmin 4. Based on these figures which are Japanese physical only, is it fair to say it probably sold ~1-1.5 million worldwide in its debut weekend?

@Jemae I can’t answer your question. Not yet, at least. We first need to define what AAA and AA actually mean, and what YOU think they mean. Otherwise we’ll just go in circles. Also if you can rephrase your question that’d be great since the way you wrote it is kind of confusing.

@Jemae @epicgamner Both of you are just arbitrarily putting nonsense letters on games you place in categories in your head. AAA is meaningless. It means nothing. Pikmin is AA, AAA, AA.5.

It's all so silly. It's a made up term.

Pikmin is Pikmin - made by Nintendo.

@Cashews You’re definitely not wrong about the focus on them being silly. That and review scores are both, in my book, waaaay too overused. Ik I was just hard focusing on these terms in my comments but it was for the sake of the point I was trying to make. But like it or not, made up or real, it matters a lot in the eyes of many. Also, I don’t see what’s arbitrary about calling pikmin 4 a big Nintendo game and therefore it being a AAA game. Based on the definition, that’s just what it is. But to be clear, I am in total agreement with how there’s too much focus on them.

I just played the pikmin 4 demo. Have to admit, I was rather impressed. It’s now on my “games I actually want to buy” list.

I did play the pikmin 3 demo and while I liked it, it wasn’t enough to convince me this is something I want to invest in. So cudo’s to the devs for making a demo that has caught my attention, otherwise this would have remained on the “I’ll kinda keep my eye on it” pile

@Jemae its a 1st party game, made by and published by Nintendo. With a massive marketing campaign. It's a AAA game! Show me a AA game with the marketing Pikmin has had! Games everywhere in the UK.
Last year of ps4, LOU 2, 4 million in opening week.
Ghost of tsushima, 2.3 million in 3 days, a brand new IP!

Again I hope pikmin 4 is selling great worldwide, but I wouldn't base its global numbers on these charts. Japan is the switch capital of the world.

I can't believe we live in a time where Pikmin has outsold Final Fantasy at Japanese retail in a single week! What a time to be alive.

@Serialsid Last if Us, Ghost of Tsushima, God of War yes that is PlayStation AAA games, not Pikmin. Nintendo AAA games likes Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, Smash Bros, Mario Kart. Nintendo AA games likes Pikmin, Kirby, Metroid

@Cashews It's not silly. This AAA, AA game term was used in gaming communities, developers etc.

I was sure Pikmin 4 would smash records. It's the first time we have a proper Pikmin game on a best selling platform, GameCube and especially Wii U had such tiny and less diverse playerbases in comparison.

@Jemae you said any AA OR AAA that had sold better numbers in 2020!
Well you must know more than all the gaming media, they seem to think its a AAA game. It's certainly marketed like one.

@Jemae less then 10 million ps4 have been sold in japan the switch has about 30 million in japan that is still a massive difference.