Japan Sales Charts: Huge Drop in PS5 Sales But Still on Top, Just

Doesn't seem like Japan has as much of a market for large, full power consoles as they once had. I wonder if it's a demographic thing, a cultural thing, or an economic thing.

Xbox sales are strange, fluctuates from nothing, to good numbers back to nothing

A bit of a misleading title to say PS5 is on top when the Switch has sold about 9,000 units more but never mind facts eh?

@sentiententity I think it is more of a handheld thing.

@KaijuKaiser
I’ve always wondered whether living in such cramped conditions would make VR more or less popular. The sense of space is amazing, getting “out” of a claustrophobic environment would be a godsend, but maybe they don’t even have a spare 1m2 to play anything that could require standing and pointing.
Sony did have a great Feb

That's predictable for Japan, due to software being tied to hardware sales, that's why the hardware selling without software in Feb was so weird. Hogwarts was the obvious sales driver.

Though that's....pretty cheap to go for "PS5 on top" when you mean the disc SKU topped the SWOLED SKU, but the Switch platform still outsold the PS5 platform total.

So PS5 sold about 40K over their two SKUs, and Switch sold about 50K over their three SKUs. Umm, Nintendo seems to be winning this week, with a console that’s seven years old. And dominating software sales…

If you want to push the narrative that PS5 is ‘winning’, then maybe choose a different market than Japan. Or choose a different headline

@sentiententity Japan hasn't been into full sized consoles for a long time. PS1/2 was an anomaly. As soon as handhelds, even PSP could run basically the same type of games only consoles could run before, that's where the market went.

Really even handheld is dying there, associated mostly with kids and Nintendo-owned IP, for adults it's all mobile, all the time.

When you look at the Switch hybrid idea, most see it as "Nintendo saw a market for a dockable console" but the reality is the way they came about that was by thinking how to appeal to both Japan's preference for handhelds and the West's preference for consoles with one platform. In that light, it's miraculous the PS5 is selling as well as it is. By rights, it shouldn't be.

@KaijuKaiser
Yes, I’m the same, mostly play sitting.
To be fair, it’s hard to judge whether it’s a space thing, or portable thing, when it comes to Japanese tastes. I love their games, but so many have been self censored, or mutilated or banned by Sony, that it was inevitable Sony would lose the market to a much more liberal Nintendo (well, I hear that’s changing and they are starting to enforced censorship too, but are still more allowing than Sony). Mobile games meanwhile is much more of a Wild West situation outside of Apple.

Octopath traveler 2 still present in the top 10 is great even though it’s on Nintendo Switch.

Those software sales… yikes, Nintendo…

And total switch units 48,985. Vs 40,381

@sentiententity I think it has a lot to do with the broader adoption of public transportation, people are a lot more likely to have time to kill with mobile entertainment, and it’s just convenient if you can dock that thing once you get home to play on a bigger screen.

I remember when I used to check in on monthly japanese game sales religiously during the 3ds vs Vita days. I backed the losing side but squabbling over nothing was honestly kind of fun. I guess it's the gamer's equivalent to arguing over sports teams.

It'll be interesting to see if this is a reflection of some sort of dip in hardware availability (PS5 has been selling extremely well in the territory for weeks now) or if the demand is just sort of naturally dropping off.

Nintendo Switch will be on Top in April due to the Film. And in May for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I own both the PS5 and a Nintendo Switch OLED and they are BOTH Incredible.

I'm going to start needing a magnifying glass to see the series S sales.

1,006 according to the sales data

@NintendoEternity Mario movie should give the games a big boost in sales, similar to The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part II after the HBO show started airing. TOTK is out in May too, easily Nintendo's biggest release of 2023 so I expect Switch sales will go up again then. I think the demand for PS5 has been met for now though, these last few weeks people can get them. I'm not expecting massive sales for the PS5 to happen again until June when Final Fantasy XVI releases. Will easily be the biggest release for the console unless a new Monster Hunter game somehow misses Switch

Especially, we can buy Standard model at online shop.
https://www.yodobashi.com/category/140007/140008/500000144001/500000144015/