The latest rankings drawn up by Famitsu paint a Japanese market almost completely dominated by Nintendo Switch and its software. New releases or catalog titles, it doesn’t make much difference: hybrid games are everywhere, and in the week between 5 and 11 July they occupied 18 positions in the Top 20.
Japanese video game ranking | 5-11 July
The first and second positions were claimed by two firsts, Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin with 137,000 units sold and eBaseball Pro Baseball Spirits 2021: Grand Slam with 106 copies placed. Recent releases follow such as Mario Golf Super Rush (17,000 copies) and Game Builder Garage (14,000 copies), and another slew of Nintendo Switch games interrupted by Samurai Warriors 5 for PS4 in eighteenth position (4,000 copies).
Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin (Capcom, 07/09/21) – 137,676 (New)
eBaseball Pro Baseball Spirits 2021: Grand Slam (Konami, 07/08/21) – 106,597 (New)
Mario Golf: Super Rush (Nintendo, 06/25/21) – 17,333 (129,448)
Game Builder Garage (Nintendo, 06/11/21) – 14,105 (157,753)
Ring Fit Adventure (Nintendo, 10/18/19) – 12,847 (2,681,938)
Minecraft (Microsoft, 06/21/18) – 12,348 (2,044,991)
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Nintendo, 04/28/17) – 10,614 (3,909,308)
Momotaro Dentetsu: Showa, Heisei, Reiwa mo Teiban! (Konami, 11/19/20) – 9,298 (2,261,196)
Myitopia (Nintendo, 05/21/21) – 8,272 (187,505)
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Nintendo, 12/07/18) – 7,434 (4,333,576)
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury (Nintendo, 02/12/21) – 6,933 (805,364)
Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Nintendo, 03/20/20) – 6,208 (6,819,664)
Monster Hunter Rise (Capcom, 03/26/21) – 5,524 (2,285,466)
Samurai Warriors 5 (Koei Tecmo, 06/24/21) – 5,324 (55,570)
Super Mario Party (Nintendo, 10/05/18) – 5,237 (1,929,324)
Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics (Nintendo, 06/05/20) – 4,582 (743,542)
Pokemon Sword / Shield (The Pokemon Company, 11/15/19) – 4,533 (4,080,005)
Samurai Warriors 5 (Koei Tecmo, 06/24/21) – 4,409 (70,376)
Splatoon 2 (Nintendo, 07/21/17) – 4,304 (3,896,920)
Scarlet Nexus (Bandai Namco, 06/24/21) – 3,581 (29,546)
Japanese console ranking | 5-11 July
The balance in the hardware field remains unchanged, where Nintendo Switch continues to dominate both with its classic version and with its portable Lite iteration. The two models of PlayStation 5 and PS4 follow, which with less than 1,000 units now seems to have started on the avenue of sunset. Xbox sales are very low, as is customary in Japan.
Switch – 52,867 (16,547,989)
Switch Lite – 16,416 (3,947,619)
PlayStation 5 – 12,271 (744,377)
PlayStation 5 Digital Edition – 2,133 (144,964)
PlayStation 4 – 678 (7,797,187)
New 2DS LL (including 2DS) – 628 (1,167,979)
Xbox Series X – 579 (45,293)
Xbox Series S – 487 (15,867)
It will be interesting to discover the impact that the new Nintendo Switch OLED will have on the market, out on 8 October this year.
