I can't argue that at all. Maybe next gen will go better for them here, though obviously they've been seeing pretty fantastic sales elsewhere in the world.
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Nintendo Switch surpasses 7 million units in Japan, close to PS4 LTD
- Thread starter Meelow
- Start date
Huh?
Bamco:
- Xenoverse 2
- Fighter Z
- Taiko
- MHA
Plus rereleases like Dark Souls remastered, Vesperia, Katamari.
Konami: Bomberman (lol, Konami is dead)
Squeenix:
- DQXI
- DQ Heroes I & II
- DQ Builders I & II
- Octopath Traveler
Plus rereleases of DQX, FFVII, IX, X, XII, Mana, Lost Sphear, a new Chocobo Dungeon.
Atlus: SMTV
SEGA:
- Sonic Mania
- SEGA Ages
- Valkyria Chronicles 4
- Shining Resonance
- Sonic Racer
Platinum: Bayonetta 1, 2 and 3.
Capcom:
- MHG XX
- MegaMan 11
Plus rereleases of Okami, Dragon's Dogma, RE, fighting collection, beat em up collection.
NIS:
- Ys VIII
- Disgaea 5 complete
A ton of ports
GCN wishes it had that kind of support, and the switch hasn't even reached the second year, support is growing.
I'm not even counting the indie Japanese stuff, which is a ton, and I'm sure I'm missing some very popular visual novels.
So... Basically, it's selling on the virtues of its concept as a hybrid, that's happening world wide. Even its muted sales versus other handhelds seem to be about the price.
Minor correction: It's not a new game, it's an enhanced port of the Wii game.
They're a European company actually if you go by sales. There's no region they dominate more than in Europe, perhaps other than in the Middle East.
Thanks (although it's a mystery dungeon game, not a fan, but to me it's irrelevant if it's an old game or a new one, it will have the same randomly generated dungeons, and by the same, I mean, different)
Forgot RE7 cloud edition
Europe isn't a country.
And that poster meant they are led from America, by primarily US-based engineers, developers, trends and market decisions. It's an x86 PConsole with American company AMD's chips in it, designed by an American engineering team led by an American Mark Cerny, designed primarily around winning the American market via shooters, violent action and racing and sports games. Santa Monica, Insomniac, Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch, San Diego are all American. Their next biggest studios are Japanese, like Polyphony and Japan. In Europe only Guerrilla is really notable from a focus/sales perspective.
Where did I state that Europe was a country? This is a sales thread, and I did specify that in regards to sales, there's no other region in which PlayStation dominates as much as does in Europe.
I think launching PS4 in Japan 3 months after North America and Europe, as well as moving their gaming headquarters to California in 2016 were clear signs that Sony value the western market more than the Japanese one.
It's also a shame that they're deemphasizing that Japanese DNA when it comes to their gaming portfolio and brand identity. I'd like to see Sony regain some success in Japan because I think it's healthy for the Japanese game industry to be able to develop for higher spec traditional home consoles like the PS4 and see a large domestic return instead of having to take the risk of relying on international audiences.
Also I'd like to see something big from SCEJ other than Gran Turismo.
It's also a shame that they're deemphasizing that Japanese DNA when it comes to their gaming portfolio and brand identity. I'd like to see Sony regain some success in Japan because I think it's healthy for the Japanese game industry to be able to develop for higher spec traditional home consoles like the PS4 and see a large domestic return instead of having to take the risk of relying on international audiences.
Also I'd like to see something big from SCEJ other than Gran Turismo.
Please don't quote Smough the account has 4 posts on it and all of them a boring drive by posts.
lol, imagine using your fourth post since the creation of the forum to write that
I wasn't meaning to have a go, but was pointing out sales in another region were not really relevant. The discussion is looking at reasons why PS4 has sold poorly in Japan,
While being technically being Sony their 'home country', Sony is, as that person said, for all intents and purposes is an American company for Playstation. PS4 is really a successor to the Xbox brand in design and focus.
They won't care when they have made by far their highest ever profits.
There's not much more they could do anyway. PS4 got every game possible to sell in Japan, including ones that kind of made no sense a few years ago, like a main new Monster Hunter sequel, when the series had only ever sold well on handhelds before, and a main new Dragon Quest, which has never before appeared on a losing system.
I'm not completely convinced Japan 'hates' home-only consoles though. They just have't had one designed for them in 10+ years. The Wii sold very well for 3 years until support evaporated. It's just that since then the only home-only consoles have been large, noisy, HDD eqippped western game focused ones. And the stillborn Wii U. And even then the Wii U outperformed the rest of the world in Japan, largely because of Splatoon.
It's less that they "hate" home consoles but work schedules and society in modern Japan make it much more difficult to have hours of leisure time at home. It's not uncommon for people to work 12+ hour days when they're only "supposed" to work 8. Even high schoolers and college students have so much academic work and extracurricular activities, but they can still get 45 minutes of playtime in on subway commutes on the 3DS, Switch, and so on.
The reason I imagine the Wii U fared okay in Japan is because of the tablet; the concept of being able to play console games on a portable device, even when the TV is being used for something else, was designed with Japanese households in mind, where it's more common for there to only be one TV.
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I'm sorry but this is plainly untrue. While the home console approach doesn't appeal to japan as much, software has absolutely not been an issue for PS4. All of the biggest third party games in japan are on the platform (FFXV, DQ11, MHW) and an absolute plethora of mid tier Japanese third party games, all of which aren't on the switch, at least not yet.
You have a point that first party Sony games focus more on the West nowadays, but those have never even been the major games on PS systems in the first place.
This is what people say, but there has not been a control console released to prove it. PS3 and PS4 were 'Xbox style' consoles led by western developed and western focused games. The last non-shooter-box (and non Wii U) console released was the Wii, and it sold very well for 3-4 years and only died when support died. Handhelds certainly sell very well, but that was largely true when consoles were still selling well too, The GBA was right there with the PS2 from 2001-2004, and the DS and Wii both sold great alongside each other.
Yeah nah. The Wii U selling well because of the tablet sounds incredibly spurious. The top selling game by far does not allow off TV play, and the other top selling games are all multiplayer.
They sell very well in Europe but I'm pretty sure the America's, specifically the US, is still the #1 market for them. Besides when I said American company I didn't just meant sales, I meant that they physically moved their PlayStation HQ out of Japan to California.
How many units did the Wii U move pre and post-Splatoon in Japan? I have no doubt Splatoon was a system seller, but I don't know if it was singlehandedly responsible for the system having any tangible success. And those other multiplayer games can still be played online as well if someone is playing strictly on the tablet. Iwata addressed this discrepancy in Japanese households for the tablet:
Obviously there are still plenty of Japanese gamers content to play on consoles, and it's true that PS3 and PS4 were much more focused on western demographics, but I think it's a bit of a chicken and the egg; because it's been a decade since a home console was released that was especially successful among the Japanese demographic, now you have a big gap in time when so many gamers have not been invested in the home console industry and getting them back to it would probably not be easy. Mobile gaming especially is a massive industry in Japan. If the PS5 came out in 2020 with every big name Japanese developer teed up, would Japanese gamers bite? I'm not sure.
I did say "Sony first party". I know there's plenty of Japanese third party support that caters to Japan, I'm talking strictly Sony. Where are the quirky Japanese Sony games they did so well in the PS1 and PS2 eras? The Ape Escapes, the Parappa the Rapper, the Wild Arms, the Legend of Legaias, etc? Now it's all western triple A game's that yes they sell very well but at what cost? I love my God of Wars and Spider-Man's but I want my steady flow of Gravity Rushes and Puppeteers too!
Is the top selling game Mario kart 8? Because I'm pretty sure it does
We have the latest Famitsu numbers, fore Dec 31-Jan 1.
Basically Famitsu has Switch at 7.1 million and PS4 at 7.68 million, a bit closer than Media Create, where there is about a 700,000 difference.
Code:
+-------+------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------+
|System | This Week | Last Week | Last Year | YTD | Last YTD | LTD |
+-------+------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------+
| NSW | 225.698 | 186.806 | 159.636 | 225.698 | 159.636 | 7.115.244 |
| PS4 # | 132.566 | 75.683 | 103.607 | 132.566 | 103.607 | 7.684.656 |
| 3DS # | 28.969 | 11.775 | 64.986 | 28.969 | 64.986 | 24.333.933 |
| PSV # | 3.577 | 2.658 | 13.119 | 3.577 | 13.119 | 5.828.931 |
| XB1 # | 257 | 362 | 273 | 257 | 273 | 103.188 |
+-------+------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------+
| ALL | 391.067 | 277.284 | 341.761 | 391.067 | 341.761 | 45.065.952 |
+-------+------------+------------+------------+------------+------------+-------------+Basically Famitsu has Switch at 7.1 million and PS4 at 7.68 million, a bit closer than Media Create, where there is about a 700,000 difference.
Not even sure why compare. U should compare switch to 3DS cause that cover the same market. Console gaming is dead in japan for long time and people who think Japanese buy switch because it is being console are nuts. The reason why switch is so popular in japan is because of it portable form factor.
Dick comparison thread like this is so pointless. And I'm not Sony fan. Don't point finger.
Dick comparison thread like this is so pointless. And I'm not Sony fan. Don't point finger.
Sorry but it doesn't make sense because even japanese company like capcom and Konami have westernized their games and Sony had already done that with the PS2 (Killzone, God of War, R&C and so on) and they already had games on PS1 with american market in their mind.
It's the japanese market that is slowly dying and it's primary a Nintendo market (the best market for WiiU for example).
Oh and since you bring the concept of "made by american with american chip" you forgot that even the switch is designed by an american company with American chipset since they have the same chip of an Nvidia tablet...
Switch hardware costs 2x 3DS hardware at that point of the lifecycle, and Switch software is about 25% more expensive too.
Those are all home consoles prices.
Totally agree it's chicken and egg. I didn't say it as definitive, just 'I'm not convinced' it's cut and dry that Japan wouldn't buy a home-only console.
Splatoon, which does not allow off screen play because the map is on the screen.
Nintendo is not Sony, they are not a manufacturer, and has outsourced to western designs since the N64.
Sony used to design their consoles and chips in-house in Japan. Even the Cell, while co-developed by IBM and Toshiba, was a Sony project, and the PS3 was fully designed by Japanese engineers, though they had to shove an Nvidea GPU in at the last minute because Cell wasn't working. The PS4 was done in America by Americans in collaboration with American companies (including Bungie). It was announced in America and launched first in America.
We get weekly updates every week, just visit the threads called Media Create Week X.
because they cost almost the same and are both gaming consoles
it's perfectly fine to compare them
i agree and dearly miss that era of Sony first party output too :,(
But in the big picture, the lack of those kind of releases is not the reason for PS4 underperformance. The issue runs deeper into the hardware itself and general trends in the declining Japanese market.
if switch became so popular just because of its form factor, why did vita flop so hard?
If switch is compared to 3ds, do we ignore the massive price differences in hardware (and software)? And that the console by definition is not covering the same market (expensive hybrid vs cheap handheld)?
This! Me being one of them. Working about 10-12 hours per day here in Tokyo and have a 1.5 hours commute to my workplace = 3 hours back and forth. Problem is that many trains are so crowded during rush hour that you can't get a seat or a place to lean on without getting worried about falling with your switch in case of an emergency break. So out of those 1.5 hours I'm only able to play around 30-45 mins on average when I get a seat or place to lean on safely. On weekends(Sat + Sun) I play at home.
Vita had a lot of problems, mainly memory price and developer support. I say that as someone who has had a vita since day 1.
Switch is like what the vita should have been, with some added innovations that make it a great little console.
how is it pointless? you don't think any major video game platform, in less than two years, almost outselling another major game platform (in one market) that's been on the market for close to 5 years is impressive or noteworthy?
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In fact, PSV sales show how Japan likes handheld platforms more. PSV sold little in Japan too but something like 40-50% of total worldwide sales. Also, it attracted a lot of third parties at the beginning. Also 3DS Japanese sales versus worldwide sales show how much Japan likes handheld platforms: about 30% of worldwide 3DS hardware sales were done in Japan.
Price-wise, Switch is closer to a home console than to an handheld.
you have to consider game prices too. nintendo never published $60 games on their handhelds, but now games like kirby, pokemon, etc are all $60. the market, for all intents and purposes, treats the switch as a home console that has the added benefit of being able to play away from the tv or outside the house. it's only in forum discussions where some people argue that it being a handheld as well makes its massive success less impressive.
So ps4 are sold more than 7 million units.. after all this time i thought it was only sold around 3 or 4 mil units
Switch is acting more like a home console worldwide. Price, game prices, software sales.
It also has many PS4 ports and multiplats. Dragon Quest Builders 1/2, FighterZ etc. How many PS2 ports did GBA have? Or PS3/PS4 ports to DS/3DS?
It's competing with home consoles much more than any previous handheld has, with the possible exception of early PSP and early Vita.
It also has many PS4 ports and multiplats. Dragon Quest Builders 1/2, FighterZ etc. How many PS2 ports did GBA have? Or PS3/PS4 ports to DS/3DS?
It's competing with home consoles much more than any previous handheld has, with the possible exception of early PSP and early Vita.
this is an important factor too. the fact that out of the box it can act as a home console, is getting simultaneous releases along with ps4/xbo like mortal kombat, doom eternal, vesperia, getting late ports like skyrim or crash trilogy, etc, means it's completely competing in the same market as other home consoles and acting like it is competing on its own in a completely separate market is pretty disingenuous.
Personally I think what's more impressive is Software performance on the Switch, it's currently outpacing 3DS despite having 3 million fewer hardware sales - and this is without even factoring digital which has grown substantially since 2012.
Splatoon 2 and Smash are about to reach 3 million units sold, it took Animal Crossing New Lead another quarter to reach 3 million and this was the first game to surpass 3 million units on the 3DS. With what we know about next year's lineup and the revision thats also coming with a potential price cut - Switch will likely be up considerably in terms of Software sales YoY in 2019 in Japan. While for hardware I hope we finally surpass 4 million units sold in an year thanks to Pokemon and Animal Crossing.
Famitsu Switch Top 10 by Week 1 2019:
Hardware TOTAL: 7.115.244
Famitsu 3DS Top 10 by Week 1 2013:
Hardware TOTAL: 10.068.192
As you can see the major difference is the amount of 3rd party titles in the top 10 comparing the two platforms. On the Switch you have Minecraft which just broke half a million a few weeks ago while on 3DS you already have MH3U, DQM:TW3D & Inazuma Eleven which have sold a combined total of around 3 million units. Japanese 3rd parties really dropped the ball, in 2019 this needs to change and with Yo-kai Watch 4 and DQXI S launching we are seeing signs of this. Still they missed out the last two years.
Splatoon 2 and Smash are about to reach 3 million units sold, it took Animal Crossing New Lead another quarter to reach 3 million and this was the first game to surpass 3 million units on the 3DS. With what we know about next year's lineup and the revision thats also coming with a potential price cut - Switch will likely be up considerably in terms of Software sales YoY in 2019 in Japan. While for hardware I hope we finally surpass 4 million units sold in an year thanks to Pokemon and Animal Crossing.
Famitsu Switch Top 10 by Week 1 2019:
- Splatoon 2 - 2.922.909
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - 2.628.087
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - 2.095.845
- Super Mario Odyssey - 1.919.356
- Pokemon: Let's Go, Pikachu! / Let's Go, Eevee! - 1.326.324
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 1.200.282
- Super Mario Party - 862.361
- Kirby Star Allies - 678.243
- Minecraft - 576.116
- 1-2-Switch - 445.401
Hardware TOTAL: 7.115.244
Famitsu 3DS Top 10 by Week 1 2013:
- Animal Crossing: New Leaf - 2.422.948
- Mario Kart 7 - 1.937.412
- New Super Mario Bros. 2 - 1.875.303
- Super Mario 3D Land - 1.802.218
- Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate - 1.747.244
- Dragon Quest Monsters: Terry's Wonderland 3D - 899.410
- Nintendogs + Cats: Shiba / Toy Poodle / French Bulldog & New Friend - 602.954
- Fire Emblem: Awakening - 453.672
- Paper Mario: Sticker Star - 451.538
- Inazuma Eleven Go: Shine / Dark - 446.798
Hardware TOTAL: 10.068.192
As you can see the major difference is the amount of 3rd party titles in the top 10 comparing the two platforms. On the Switch you have Minecraft which just broke half a million a few weeks ago while on 3DS you already have MH3U, DQM:TW3D & Inazuma Eleven which have sold a combined total of around 3 million units. Japanese 3rd parties really dropped the ball, in 2019 this needs to change and with Yo-kai Watch 4 and DQXI S launching we are seeing signs of this. Still they missed out the last two years.
What have the 3 best selling Switch games in common?
Splatoon 2
Smash Bros. Ultimate
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
Clearly the secret for successful software is anthropomorphic squids.
