Japanese Sales Charts: PS Vita and Persona 4 Dancing All Night Take a Tumble

Can we all just appreciate how terrible this week was for sales across the entire board? Once you get past the three heavy hitters from Nintendo, nothing even tries to make a mark on the charts.

"Xbox One – 235"

My goodness MS might as well pull the plug in Japan.

@AceSpadeS
It's the same thing every week, p*ss poor numbers but if a PlayStation system has slightly less horrifying numbers the fanboys throw a party. If Nintendo has slightly less terrible sales the comment section on NLife is filled with stuff like 'Nintendomination.' Unfortunately, looking at this from the non-fanboy perspective and just as a gamer, there's nothing to be happy about here. All this serves as each week is a reminder what a pitiful state 'traditional' gaming is in over in Japan.

The only people who should pat themselves on the back are the ones who made The Witcher 3 and who were involved in bringing it over to Japan because it seems to be having far more success over there than myself, and probably many others, expected.

@Gamer83

Handhelds are really big in Japan right? And the best-selling handheld moved just under 20,000 units (technically it moved a lot more than that if you count the entire 3DS family, but still). Looking at the PS4 and Wii U numbers, both of them are teeter tottering around 50% of the highest selling handheld from week to week.

All things considered that's not as dismal for home consoles as people make it sound sometimes.

@JaxonH
I'd have to look more into it but it seems to me numbers for this point in the gen vs. where they were at the same time last gen are significantly down. PS4 and Wii U get a spike here or there from a big release but then it's right back to the 10K to 12K a week and in comparison to the other markets, that's pretty damn low when you get to the monthly total. There's also the fact Sony has been talking about what it has to do to improve slow Japanese sales.
I tend to be more negative than most, but I think even the most positive person in the world would have to admit these numbers don't paint the brightest future for the Japanese market.

@JaxonH Yeah, exactly. Also the PS4 has quite a few things coming along that will boost sales, the kind of things I feel like a lot of Japanese gamers are waiting for because there might be at least one or two price drops between now and then. You can guarantee that FFXV is going to shift a lot of PS4s (it may as well be a PS4 exclusive in Japan given the abortion that is the Xbone over there).

Sony are in a weird position at the moment since many of the things that would really boost the PS4, like Persona 5, are also coming out on PS3. Same goes for Tales of Zestiria and Tales of Berseria. They could NOT release those games on PS3 and presumably dramatically boost PS4 sales, but then unless literally millions of people rush out in Japan to buy a PS4, the games themselves won't be able to sell that much to the much smaller install base.

It's going slowly, but I do at least feel like its inevitable. The aforementioned FFXV, the eventual next DQ, the next DQH, more and more JRPGs as time goes on, Street Fighter V, FFVII Remake, The Last Guardian, Shenmue III... Eventually, but not in the immediate future at all.