This is honestly shocking, because even though Nintendo has traditionally done very well in Japan, Sony has always held the lion’s share of software sales in the country. The PS1 and PS2 were absolute monsters, the PSP was where most Japanese games migrated to even as the industry struggled with the transition to HD; the PS3 eventually managed to rally most of the Japanese industry behind it, with the PS3, PSP, and PS Vita forming a combined ecosystem that saw a lot of Japanese publishers continue to prioritize and emphasize PlayStation systems for their projects. Once the PS4 came on to the scene, it took a while to get going, but even while it was finding its footing, the PS3 and PS Vita held up the fort, and eventually, the PS4 and Vita continued that ecosystem further.

The issue is, PlayStation wasn’t getting Japanese third party support because of any particular effort by Sony, or quality inherent to PlayStation platforms. It was getting that third party support because there were quite literally no other platforms for those games to go to. Xbox consoles are a non-factor in Japan – they’re out of reckoning for this one (though Xbox has been gaining some good ground with the Series consoles in the land of the rising sun the last few months, surprisingly enough). So it always came down to PlayStation or Nintendo.

There, the answer was always obvious – yes, the Wii had sold more, but the audience it had cultivated wasn’t particularly interested in buying RPGs, action adventure games, or visual novels – the types of games Japanese developers thrive at making. Yes, the DS was massively successful, and its audience did want to buy just about any game you could put on it – but it was extremely weak in terms of hardware, meaning a lot of games couldn’t come to it even if the developers wanted. The PS3 and PSP became the platforms to go to by default, essentially.

The 3DS was a clear attempt at courting the PSP audience, and it actually did make inroads there, but the Vita allowed for easy cross-porting between it, the PSP, the PS3, and the PS4, which as a combined ecosystem was still far more valuable (and easier to get into) than the bespoke and singular 3DS could manage. So in spite of the 3DS’ monstrous success in Japan, and the Vita’s relative failure, most third party support in the country still went to PlayStation. The Wii U was an abysmal misfire, meaning it was never in reckoning, in turn making the PS4 the default system to go to.

Essentially, then, what Nintendo needed to do was to come out with a device that was capable enough to host games Japanese developers like to make, cultivated an audience that liked buying the kinds of games Japanese developers like to make, was easy to develop and publish games for, and which had a big install base. Until the Switch, one or the other of these factors has always been missing, which had only reinforced Sony’s position as the de facto, default place to go to for Japanese developers. But that’s the thing, if your success is built not off of your own merits or anything you have done, but rather, the competition’s consistent misfires, then eventually you’re going to lose the top spot. Unless you make active efforts to solidify your position, and just rely on the competition bumbling, it will come back to bite you.

Sony has not only not made the appropriate efforts to cultivate the Japanese market, but has, in fact, done everything in its power to alienate and diminish it. From closing its local in-house Japanese development studio to imposing arbitrary content and administrative restrictions on Japanese games and game creators, to simply arrogantly throwing their weight around, with things as trivial as their reversal of the X and O button functions in the PlayStation UI and the lack of support extended to local developers, Sony has been burning bridges with a lot of Japanese developers and publishers for a while now.

So between Sony’s consistent sidelining of Japan, and Nintendo finally getting a system out that checks all the boxes, what has happened? We have ended up with a situation where a PlayStation system is no longer the default, where at the very least a lot of the Japanese support it commanded as de facto exclusive (because, again, where else would those games go?) has become at least multiplatform (such as with long running PlayStation exclusive franchises such as Atelier), or outright exclusive (such as with Disgaea). We’ve ended up at a point where Japanese games sell more on Switch – not just in Japan, but worldwide now.

None of this is really new information – but it does tie into a broader point about Nintendo and Sony’s contrasting strategies, and how they are indicative of the broader directions the two companies have chosen to take for their respective brands. Sony has decided to go all in on the high end, the prestige associated with the next blockbuster big budget release. Those are the games Sony chooses to highlight and associate with – which isn’t to say smaller fare isn’t allowed on PlayStation, of course, it is, but Sony really doesn’t care about any of that. This is why indie games have also suffered a similar fate as Japanese games on PlayStation – they are mostly sidelined, because Sony wants all eyes on the next big blockbuster, whether its own, or from its partners.

And to be fair to Sony, those partners might well be indie or Japanese too. Sony does highlight Japanese games – such as Final Fantasy. Sony does highlight indie games – such as Kena: Bridge of Spirits. But all those games are carefully curated and selected high end “blockbusters”, even within their own niches, and so they get Sony’s approval. In contrast, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim can be an award winning, critically acclaimed game that is PS4 exclusive (not even on PC!), and Sony doesn’t even acknowledge it on its own store page.

This is the reverse of Nintendo’s strategy. Nintendo has embraced the mid-tier of the market, that segment of the market that the transition to HD all but killed until the Switch gave it a thriving ecosystem to subsist in. This is why Nintendo has no trouble holding 30 minute long streams dedicated to nothing but indie games every few months. This is why low- to mid-tier Japanese games such as No More Heroes III or Rune Factory 5 get showcased in their presentations so frequently. Nintendo has zero trouble highlighting the high end, of course – when it has high end games coming to its system, it pushes them for all they’re worth. But to Nintendo, there is no distinction or difference between a high end game or a mid tier one, and as long as it’s an appealing game, it will get marketed by the company.

What this has led to, in turn, is two very different software markets and ecosystems on PlayStation and Nintendo. Amusingly enough, they each seem to be imbibing what the other was like in the past. In the past, PlayStation was the platform that democratized game development, and highlighted and pushed everything. That’s why so many of these once small developers and franchises, such as Persona, grew on PlayStation platforms to begin with. Nintendo was known to highlight a “premium software” strategy, where carefully curated hits, its own as well as from select third party partners, were what were marketed. This led to two very different software markets and ecosystems across the platforms – PlayStation owners were more willing to buy out different kinds of software, rather than just the next big hit, and a lot of smaller games and developers saw massive success on there as a result. On the other hand, Nintendo owners were likely to just wait for the next big hit – almost always just a Nintendo game, but sometime a carefully selected third party title too, whether it be Star Wars: Rogue Squadron on the N64 or Resident Evil 4 on the GameCube.

Right now, we’re seeing the opposite of that. Sony has cultivated the blockbuster audience – the audience waiting for the next big hit from Sony, or the next major AAA blockbuster drop. This audience is focused on the latest and greatest, and as a result, a lot of it isn’t really too interested in picking up a random indie or Japanese game that looks like it was maybe cutting edge back on the PS2. And that’s obviously fine – there’s nothing wrong with preferring the cutting edge as a player, and there’s nothing wrong with Sony choosing to focus on that, given how successful they are right now.

Nintendo players, on the other hand, thanks to Nintendo taking the initiative to actively cultivate an audience that is willing to try out a whole bunch of things – from the newest indie game that looks even slightly interesting to the newest Japanese game in a long running niche series – are now taking more risks, a broader approach with what they choose to buy. Obviously, given the Switch’s freakishly high software attach rates, they’re pretty happy with what they get when they experiment with these games too, leading to this kind of software support for the platform being further perpetuated, and customers being exposed to an even broader array of games. There’s a reason that where once, smaller games would become huge on PlayStation before maybe migrating over to other systems, the opposite is happening now – there’s a reason that Hollow Knight and Hades were big on Switch before they were on any other console, and that reason is that Nintendo has created an ecosystem where developers and customers alike are likelier to have an affinity for broad, varied software across the spectrum, rather than just sticking to the next big blockbuster.

This kind of embrace of all games is why the Japanese industry has ultimately rallied around the Switch at this point, why the Switch is the Japanese games industry, in fact. Obviously, the PS5 will continue to get Japanese support – high end Japanese games such as Resident Evil can’t go anywhere else, and even with the smaller tier stuff, a lot of it will probably come to PlayStation because a multiplatform release strategy makes sense, with the ease of porting for modern systems. But more and more, we’re going to start to see the kind of ecosystem PlayStation cultivated over two decades to slowly migrate over to Nintendo going forward – assuming, obviously, that Nintendo doesn’t decide to pull a Nintendo and mess things up with the Switch successor.

Nintendo is probably going to mess things up with the Switch successor.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Almost as if to vindicate the point, Sony has now made its most decisive action yet in terms of highlighting and broadcasting to the world that, in fact, it may very well be done with the Japanese market to the meaningful degree many PlayStation fans would hope for or expect. We recently got the news that Sony is going to be shuttering Japan Studio, the prestige in house Sony development team that ranks as among its oldest (and responsible for some highly iconic, beloved, and critically and commercially successful games) almost entirely, including even the third party support and localization teams (with those being rerouted to Sony’s international development studios instead). And with this, I think, we can lay any notions that declarations of Sony’s abandonment of Japan are premature to rest once and for all. It is now evident they are not.

But what exactly does Sony’s decision comprise of, and what are its implications? Well, it can actually be understood fairly in three broad strokes:

• Sony Japan, the development studio, is now mostly done;
• Sony Japan, in terms of local marketing and support for Japanese third parties, as well as Sony’s own Japanese IP, is also being wound down, and those functions will instead be handled by western studios, and
• Other Sony Japanese studios, such as Polyphony Digital and Team ASOBI, remain unaffected by this move

So, let’s tackle those one by one. In terms of Sony Japan’s loss as a development studio, that is truly a tragic outcome (especially given how iconic and integral to the history of PlayStation they have been), but, let us be honest, in practical and functional terms, this one will probably actually have minimal effect. Unfortunately, Sony Japan had already been slowly gutted by PlayStation over the last decade or so; Sony Japan had been bleeding important and notable talent over the last five years (they lost people as notable as Keiichiro Toyama, Fumito Ueda, and Masaaki Yamagiwa in this period), their game output had been dwindling in the last ten years (especially on consoles, they managed to put out only a fraction of games they used to on the PS2 or PS3), the budget allocated to them had been steadily going down, and Sony Japan games got next to no marketing support by PlayStation anywhere – not even in Japan, let alone western markets (even when those games were extremely well received, such as the cult favorite Gravity Rush series).

Functionally, all that happens is that the nearly no games they were putting out are now reduced to no games; the nearly no marketing they got is now no marketing (since there’s nothing left to market); and the nearly no important remaining personnel they had at Sony Japan are now no remaining personnel.

That is, of course, a cold way to look at it, because as I have said before, a lot of the heart and soul of PlayStation comes down to the diversity, depth, and variety provided to it by the Japanese games it gets in its library, that its competition Xbox definitely does not – or certainly not to the same degree. And Sony’s capability to have those games on its platforms is now hamstrung, at least in terms of being able to produce its own.

However, the wording of Sony’s confirmation, which explicitly states “the roles of external production… of JAPAN Studio titles will be concentrated within the global functions of PlayStation Studios” seems to suggest that Sony Japan may also have acted as an interface, a liaison, between the PlayStation platform and Japanese third parties – and that that function has also been gutted from them, and been reassigned to Japanese third parties – and this would be a hefty loss indeed.

Now, again, to be very clear, the writing has been on the wall here for a while too, for those who have been observant of many smaller things here. We have heard complaints from smaller Japanese developers about being forced to submit their games for certification to PlayStation’s western headquarters, adhering to their western certification guidelines, even if they have no plans on international release; we have heard of PlayStation arbitrarily applying content restriction guidelines, such as for violent content in CyberConnect2’s Naruto games, on Japanese games; we have heard of reports regarding Sony’s strategy from anonymous insider sources, who have claimed that Sony allegedly plans on focusing on big hits as far as Japan goes, counting on the fact that mid and smaller tier Japanese games don’t have any place else to go (which is a calculation that may have started to backfire on them, given the success of the Switch and the recent underperformance of PlayStation); we have heard Sony is not supportive of smaller Japanese developers; even something as innocuous and minor as Sony forcing the western layout and functions of the X and O buttons on Japan (which are the reverse of what Japan has been used to, where O is Accept and X is cancel, in keeping with Japanese cultural symbolism of those two symbols, and the long held standards of the Japanese console market) has pointed at this.

Even accounting for this, however, I feel like this will definitely start to have a bigger visible impact on the quantity of smaller Japanese games on PlayStation going forward. If these smaller companies find PlayStation hard to work with, which they may, especially if there is no local contact for them, and they have to deal instead with someone placed in a different part of the world, in a different timezone, speaking a different language, then they may choose to forego PlayStation for their releases (a move which will become more and more admissible as sales of Japanese third party games on PlayStation platforms continue to fall as they have been for the past year). Even in terms of bigger Japanese support, collaborations with independent Japanese developers may be impacted. Something like Bloodborne? After all, that was a Japan Studio collaboration with FromSoftware – but Sony explicitly notes that that function has also been rerouted to its western first parties. Even the long rumored (and never quite materializing) Silent Hill game could see adverse effects, as that too would fall under the purview of something like this.

If all you cared for from PlayStation are their big western third person action adventure games, you really should be safe, those aren’t going anywhere. Even in terms of Japanese support, if what you wanted are big blockbusters like Resident Evil or Final Fantasy, the future of those on PlayStation is secured, those won’t stop coming to the platform. But the flavor of PlayStation libraries came from smaller Japanese games and developers, both first and third parties, and going forward, we will definitely see that being impacted negatively as a result of this – it will almost play out like Xbox, which gets the big Japanese games without trouble, but smaller fare isn’t always guaranteed.

It’s a move that makes sense, financially – but conceding on an entire country as a market and as a development community might not be the wisest long term move, and may end up impacting the health of PlayStation, at least relatively. I don’t think PlayStation will suddenly fall to selling only 30 or 40 million units – I just think that its insane global success owes itself to it being a global platform, and very explicitly and specifically sidelining a market (and such a big one at that) is anything but global.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Contrary to what many would have you believe – and there are many who will try to deflect from this observation, taking it as a criticism of PlayStation, and trying to make excuses for it – this does not have to do with any broader context of the Japanese market that PlayStation is unable to do anything about. So, no, in spite of what you might have been told, this is not because the Japanese console market, for example, is shrinking. As a matter of fact, the Japanese console market has seen growth for four years straight now, with the console market in Japan being the biggest driver of growth for the Japanese gaming industry in 2020, seeing a 16.4% increase year-on-year.

This growth was driven entirely by the Nintendo Switch, with PlayStation barely registering as a relevant factor for the market anymore. Which brings us to the second point people like to raise in response to this observation about the PlayStation brand’s dwindling fortunes in Japan – people like to believe that Japan has no appetite for home consoles anymore, that only portable systems really have a future there, and that the Switch is only doing well because it’s a portable.

This argument is also as easily debunked as the notion that the Japanese console market is shrinking, by just taking a look at the Japanese sales charts. The Switch Lite, which is the cheaper, handheld-only model of the Switch, is outsold by the hybrid model – the one that can also function as a home console – by a factor of four every week. Two of the current bestselling Switch games in Japan – and by extension, two of the current bestselling games in Japan – are games that can only be played in console mode (Momotaro Dentetsu, the surprise Switch-exclusive hit from Konami that has sold 2.5 million so far already, and Ring Fit Adventure). All evidence we have, on the hardware and software side of things, seems to indicate that Japan has absolutely no issue with home console gaming, that, in fact, it even prefers the option to play on the big screen.

You don’t even have to stick to the Nintendo ecosystem to get more evidence of this. If the Japanese preference for portables over home consoles was an actual thing, why exactly did the PS4 outsell the PS Vita? The Vita did well in Japan, sure, but the PS4 managed to outdo it even so. Why was that? If Japanese players prefer handhelds, why did they spend more money on buying a home console?

The truth of the matter is that the amateur analyses that people like to propound to try and handwave PlayStation’s declining fortunes in Japan – by saying that the console market is declining, for example, or that only handhelds can sell – are all fallacious, as even a cursory look at the data can demonstrate. So if that is the case, then why, exactly, is PlayStation doing so poorly in Japan?

There are many reasons, but in the end, this comes down to Sony very consciously choosing to align itself to focusing on the western market, and directing all of its resources towards doing so. As a result, when making decisions regarding their consoles – from the actual development of the hardware and its UI to the games Sony commissions, to even their marketing and positioning – Japan simply does not factor in much for Sony, and certainly not as much as the rest of the world does.

And it makes sense, too. When the PS3 was floundering, Sony threw everything at the wall. The PS3 got games from Sony studios and subsidiaries from around the world. Its sales, hardware and software, saw a reversal in the west, and not so much in Japan. Therefore, with the PS4, Sony chose to focus on what had worked with the PS3, while not really emphasizing what hadn’t as much – and that was a sensible and rational move, especially for a company that was financially struggling as much as Sony was at the time. And that move, then, went on to inform PlayStation’s subsequent alignment for the next decade.

To be clear, this is a totally valid and fair strategy, and it is one that has seen massive returns for Sony (after all, PlayStation did just have its most profitable quarter ever). So there’s nothing wrong with what Sony is doing, and it is working out very well for them, after all. However, it is important to note that global growth and success does not have to come at the exclusion of growth and success in Japan either – the Nintendo Switch is currently breaking sales records not just in Japan, but all over the world. It is currently selling faster than the PS4 ever did, and is set to end up having sold much more than the PS4’s eventual lifetime sales around the world. It is seeing insane software sales not just in Japan, but everywhere. It is breaking all records, including ones that PS4 set, not just in Japan, but everywhere. This growth and success in Japan has not hampered growth and success anywhere else – or vice versa. So Sony didn’t have to de-emphasize Japan as much as they did.

In the long run, PlayStation will continue to get the big AAA Japanese games, because those games have nowhere else to go – Nintendo consoles will never be technically proficient enough to run them, and PlayStation allows for a better shot at Japanese and global success for a AAA Japanese game than Xbox or PC would. So some Japanese games will continue to come to PlayStation for the foreseeable future. But some of them even get Xbox releases. PlayStation’s library has been as diverse and as varied through the generations, standing out from the competition, in part because of the wealth of smaller scale Japanese content that it gets. Stuff like Disgaea or Atelier or Atlus games – and these games have now found a new home on the Switch, with the market following them there (the Switch versions of games such as Disgaea 6, Atelier Ryza 2, and Shin Megamin Tensei: Nocturne HD have all outsold their PS4 counterparts).

And as PlayStation’s importance continues to dwindle in Japan, more and more of these games will start migrating to the Switch (there is no currently announced upcoming Atlus game that doesn’t have a Switch port, for example, and western releases of NIS games such as Disgaea 6 are eschewing PlayStation versions entirely). The bulk of the market, obviously, doesn’t care for this – as noted, PlayStation enjoys immense success even right now regardless of this shift or sidelining of Japan. But I feel like at least some part of the soul of PlayStation, as it were, will be lost, the more and more Sony continues to de-emphasize Japan to focus only on the big hits and the western market.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

The last generation of consoles tended to be a rough one for Japanese companies, big and small. As gaming itself exploded, both financially and technologically, a lot of even the behemoths of the Japanese industries struggled. Whether it was chasing trends, issues with internal engines, or the shifting tastes of consumers, many undoubtedly hit a lot of speed bumps.

Over the last few years, it feels like most have settled back into their groove, slowly but surely. Probably the prime examples are Capcom and Bandai Namco, both of whom have seen their primary franchises revitalized with sales and profits being steady. What’s led to this new outlook? Well, Japanese developer SWERY (Hidetaka Suehiro) has some thoughts- mainly that the Japanese industry finally got over some of its biggest flaws.

In an interview with Wccftech, SWERY was out to promote his upcoming game, The Good Life, but also mulled over the current Japanese game industry revival. When asked what he thinks led to that, he said it’s as simple as Japanese creators taking a hard look at the market share they’d lost and reevaluating what they needed to do to get back on track.

“This is the result of what Japanese creators have been doing for the past five years, which is realizing that they were starting to lose their status in comparison to the West,” he said. “The Japanese market, people in general populace didn’t realize that. The creators did. So they really started studying the new methodology for games, utilizing the West and that’s finally starting to come to fruition.”

Another aspect he thought was helpful was the fact that a lot of Japanese companies have gotten over the need for custom game engines, as many of the bigger companies have switched to using Unreal or Unity, which are both western standard engines. One issue that led to ballooning budgets last generation was seemingly every major Japanese company wanting its own custom game engine, something only Capcom still does by and large.

“Yeah, so that tends to be a thing in the Japanese game industry, where you want to make this exclusive tech and then hide it for yourself, then you get the advantage ultimately,” said SWERY. “But these engines that you’re speaking of, they started to become the big thing. So there was no more point in hiding your tech, you had to catch up with the rest of the world. So that’s why creators switched over to other engines.”

SWERY’s next game, The Good Life, is a Kickstarter project coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. You can check out more about it here.

One of the things that Xbox boss Phil Spencer has been consciously working to fix is the paucity of Japanese support on the platform. His very public outreaches have begun to have an impact already—we see developers like Bandai Namco and Capcom support Xbox wholesale now, and even more niche games like NieR Automata have started to make their way to the platform.

It seems like Spencer isn’t done, however. Much like last year, he has announced he will be visiting Japan and South Korea to speak to developers ahead of E3—meaning we can probably expect a bunch of major Japanese game announcements for Xbox again this year. Last year, we got Devil May Cry 5, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and Jump Force, for example, while also getting a look at Kingdom Hearts 3 and NieR Automata, so announcements of that caliber will be appreciated.

Personally, I’d love to see Yakuza and Persona on Xbox, if only for the sheer surreality of the situation.

Looking forward to the week in Korea and Japan visiting studios and publishers. Always inspired by the great games these studios are delivering. Talking about E3 and getting input on future plans is always fun.

— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) March 31, 2019

While the Switch has stolen its thunder in Japan, the PS4 still continues trucking along, silently hitting milestones at a slow and steady pace. Today’s Media Create numbers, which we already reported, revealed that the PS4 has now hit 8 million units sold in Japan since its debut in February 2014. This number comes, therefore, 61 months after the console’s launch in the country.

This means that the PS4 is still the top selling current generation console in Japan—that said, the Switch, with 7.74 million units sold (in just 24 months) is probably just a few weeks away from overtaking it, especially given the pace of sales that Nintendo’s hybrid has enjoyed in the land of the rising sun since its launch.

This seems to align with the pace of sales the Switch has seen elsewhere, too—for instance, in the USA, the Switch is the fastest selling current generation console, coming in ahead of the Xbox One, PS4, and Nintendo’s own Wii U (not that that last one is a big achievement, though).

The Nintendo Switch has completely taken over the Japanese market, where no other console has been able to keep up. In fact, in the last twelve months, the Switch has been the top selling console in Japan every single month, based on Famitsu data; this is in spite of high profile PS4 exclusive launches such as God of War and Spider-Man, as well as major third party releases like Kingdom Hearts 3 and Resident Evil 2 in that period.

This aligns with the Switch’s performance life to date in Japan, which sees it within touching distance of the PS4 in the region (even though the PS4 has a three year head start on the Switch). The Switch’s success has been predicated on Nintendo’s hits-driven strategy, propelled by recent games such as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Pokemon Let’s Go, alongside continued sales and success of their evergreen titles such as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Splatoon 2, and Super Mario Odyssey.

Given how ridiculously stacked this year’s lineup is for the Switch, we can see it continuing to dominate the hardware charts for the foreseeable future, not just in Japan, but also the rest of the world.

We already knew that the PS Vita was due to be discontinued this year, even in Japan, which is the last territory where it is still supported as an active system. Now, Sony has made it official. According to the official Japanese PlayStation website, shipments for the only two models still in production (the black and blue Vita 2000 models) are due to come to an end soon.

No end date is actually specified, but Gematsu, who got tipped off about the impending end of production, note that for PS3, the gap between a similar notice being posted and production ending was two months, which means we may expect something similar for the PS Vita as well.

The PS Vita had a hard life. It was entirely unable to compete in the handheld market against Nintendo’s 3DS, unable to hold its own in a post-smartphones world, saw most support bleed over to the 3DS or to smartphones, and what little niche it had managed to carve for itself got taken over by Nintendo’s Switch when it launched in 2017.

While the Vita suffered indignity upon indignity by the hands of Sony, it was in the end a system far ahead of its time, and hopefully history will be kinder to it. For now, we know that production on its game cards has ended, as has PS Plus support for the handheld.

Monster Hunter still has incredible power, not just worldwide—where its performance has caused it to become Capcom’s highest selling game ever—but also in Japan, which is where the series first found success. According to a report published by Famitsu (translation via Gematsu), it sounds like Monster Hunter World was the highest selling game in Japan in 2018 once physical and digital sales are combined.

Monster Hunter World’s success, alongside, no doubt, the success of Pokemon Let’s Go, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and of course, longstanding Nintendo evergreen games such as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, actually helped propel the Japanese software industry to seeing a growth in software revenue year on year. This is in contrast to hardware revenues, which saw a contraction, no doubt owing to the PS4’s collapse in Japan, leaving the Switch as the lone performing system in the country.

You can check out the full charts for yourself below. Do remember that Famitsu’s numbers for digital game sales are (contested) estimates, and may not be entirely accurate.

■ Japan’s Top-Selling Software of 2018

1. Monster Hunter: World
   • Platform: PlayStation 4
   • Publisher: Capcom
   • Release Date: January 26, 2018
   • Physical Sales: 1,985,886
   • Digital Sales: 873,898
   • Combined Physical and Digital Sales: 2,859,784
2. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
   • Platform: Switch
   • Publisher: Nintendo
   • Release Date: December 7, 2018
   • Physical Sales: 2,360,655
   • Digital Sales: 309,229
   • Combined Physical and Digital Sales: 2,669,884
3. Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! / Let’s Go, Eevee!
   • Platform: Switch
   • Publisher: The Pokemon Company
   • Release Date: November 16, 2018
   • Physical Sales: 1,253,677
   • Digital Sales: 107,945
   • Combined Physical and Digital Sales: 1,361,622
4. Splatoon 2
   • Platform: Switch
   • Publisher: Nintendo
   • Release Date: July 21, 2017
   • Physical Sales: 1,122,324
   • Digital Sales: 68,630
   • Combined Physical and Digital Sales: 1,190,954
5. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
   • Platform: Switch
   • Publisher: Nintendo
   • Release Date: April 28, 2017
   • Physical Sales: 926,553
   • Digital Sales: 76,139
   • Combined Physical and Digital Sales: 1,002,692
6. Super Mario Party
   • Platform: Switch
   • Publisher: Nintendo
   • Release Date: October 5, 2018
   • Physical Sales: 764,853
   • Digital Sales: 62,739
   • Combined Physical and Digital Sales: 827,592
7. Kirby: Star Allies
   • Platform: Switch
   • Publisher: Nintendo
   • Release Date: March 16, 2018
   • Physical Sales: 664,815
   • Digital Sales: 56,104
   • Combined Physical and Digital Sales: 720,919
8. Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition
   • Platform: Switch
   • Publisher: Microsoft
   • Release Date: June 21, 2018
   • Physical Sales: 525,045
   • Digital Sales: 166,272
   • Combined Physical and Digital Sales: 691,317
9. Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII
   • Platform: PlayStation 4
   • Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
   • Release Date: October 12, 2018
   • Physical Sales: 479,511
   • Digital Sales: 145,458
   • Combined Physical and Digital Sales: 624,969
10. Super Mario Odyssey
    • Platform: Switch
    • Publisher: Nintendo
    • Release Date: October 27, 2017
    • Physical Sales: 575,926
    • Digital Sales: 22,020
    • Combined Physical and Digital Sales: 597,946

Kingdom Hearts 3 ended up topping software charts in Japan last week, selling over 600,000 units and also buoying the PS4 to the top of the Japanese hardware charts for the first time in a year. Now, according to Game Data Library, a Twitter account that tracks shipments and sell throughs for some major releases in Japan, we also know what the first week shipment for the game was for the country.

Game Data Library posted that the first week shipment for Kingdom Hearts 3 was 870,000 units, which means that the sell through for the game was pretty high—over two thirds of the copies shipped were sold through. This should also help ensure that there are no shortages for the game in the coming weeks (such as what happened for another Square Enix RPG last year, for example).

We also learn that Resident Evil 2, which sold over 250,000 units in Japan last week (and came in second place on the software charts), had a shipment of 350,000 units, meaning its sell through was similarly over two-thirds of all shipped copies.

On the whole, it’s a good performance for both games, and hopefully they maintain legs in the long term and keep selling.

First week shipment for Kingdom Hearts III and the Resident Evil 2 remake in Japan were of 870.000 & 350.000 units respectively.

Good sell through for both games. pic.twitter.com/1RfSMAUE6H

— Game Data Library (@GameDataLibrary) January 31, 2019