The holiday shopping season may be largely over in the west, but over in Japan, it continues and bleeds over into the first week of the new year. So last week saw a veritable explosion of sales for video game hardware and software in the country, as Japan at last began to sort of resemble the glory land for video game revenue that it used to be not so long ago.
The biggest beneficiary of this uptick in sales was Nintendo- Nintendo not only took the lion’s share of software sales (25 of the top 30 selling games last week were on 3DS or Wii U), but their individual titles ended up seeing massive boosts (Pokemon Sun/Moon topped the charts, with a 71% gain in sales; Super Mario Maker For 3DS almost doubled its sales over last week, Miitopia doubled its total sales in Japan in one week, and even third party games on Nintendo systems like Yokai Watch 3 saw massive spikes in sales).
Equally importantly, Nintendo also had the highest selling hardware in the region, with the 3DS selling 229,500 units, which is more than all the other systems in the region put together. Sony, while losing out on the software front, did manage to have a respectable showing on the hardware front, with the PS4 selling 107,000 units, and even the beleaguered Vita pulling in almost 59,000 units in sales. The one exception to Sony’s systems benefitting from this all around increase in sales? The PS4 Pro, which even in the biggest shopping week of the year, sold only 9,400 units. At least as far as Japan is concerned, then, it is clear that the PS4 Pro is a bust. But then again, it was never intended for that territory, and the PS4 on the whole seems to be holding out well in Japan, so I don’t think Sony is too worried.
