PS5 Games Are Still Selling Poorly at Retail in Japan

I can't really say I'm surprised honestly

After the Nintendo Direct especially I expect Switch to probably wipe the floor with Microsoft and Sony for another few months in light of stuff like Metroid Dread and Shin Megami Tensei V

whats most shocking about this is why they continue to report only retail physical sales figures. If you dont include digital your missing a big part of the picture

Vita 2 would help!

I mean the game is just expansive as hell. Even if it's a good game many people won't be willing to spend that much money on a game

@nessisonett Oh please if anyone even tried to suggest Sony get back into handheld gaming they'd probably just be like "well you all have phones and Nintendo Switches right? You don't need us"

@get2sammyb The question is how many hardware units are the digital only model. That'll tell us how many maximum physical copies they could sell to each owner of a disc based system assuming every system sold is actually in use and everyone bought a copy of the game.

I am not surprised actually. How many people own PS5 there? So 14k isnt a bad number honestly. In 2 to 3 years we'll see decent numbers there. Lets not forget that japanese generally transition slower when it comes to consoles, plus that price hike on PS5 games. I mean most of my friends (Not Japan) play 99% PS4 games on their PS5.

@Texan_Survivor "Especially when Sony prefers to prioritize Europe and USA."

Yeah I'm not sure if Sony prioritizes Europe considering the PS5 launched there one week later compared to US, Japan etc

Maybe that's because playstation is more like western console now compared to nintendo. Also there's portables vs home console, people just rarely play home console anymore in there.

I’d not be surprised if those Japanese consoles weren’t, as you say, bought up to be sold elsewhere. I don’t see Japanese gamers staying with PlayStation when Nintendo releases the games they want, and uncensored. Plus in a portable format. Sony might still want games made by Japanese devs, but largely for the western market, and they also ban others

@RubyCarbuncle oh boy. Try telling Xbox fanboys that. 😅

Wow, that's a huge yikes.

@john_c I think the point they were trying to make is, if you extrapolate the data, you can make an educated guess what the digital plus physical is, and it’s still not great.

Aren’t they big into micro living in Japan (micro apartments)? Maybe they do want a PS5 but buying one means making a choice between having a PS5 in your apartment or being able to get into it yourself 🤪 It will probably take off when the slim comes out.

thats why sony should focus more where they are more than welcome
put those ps5 units on north america and europe where your products sells 😄

How many consoles have been sold over there so far?

@AgentGuapo No you can't. The split between physical and digital is growing year by year in favour of digital.

The latest split in the UK is 85% in favour. You cannot judge a game's success based on physical data alone as the split for any particular game could be 99/1 or 80/20 or 75/25 or 50/50.

It is not difficult to wait for all the data is available to make an informed comment rather than speculation. Speculation is bad journalism.

Isn't it a known fact that retail software sales constitute especially large proportion for Nintendo? Given that the comparison is meaningless.

Japan will be 10% - 7% of the PS5 install base just like PS4.

Most will not make a PS5 game counting on Japan sales. Including Sony. It is a side note for most publishers.

Same way Microsoft made Game Pass and bought Bethesda thinking about the West. What XBOX subscriptions they get in Japan is irreleavant.

@john_c What part of this is speculation? Literally says "at retail" in the title. PS5 games are selling poorly, at retail, in Japan — this is fact and this is what the article reports.

At this point, best Sony can hope for is for Japan to prop up the sales in the rest of the world. No way Sony will achieve their sales targets for PS5 unfortunately (exceeding PS4 sales). PS4 launched at a time Nintendo was drowning with the Wii U, and Xbox had lost the plot. They have MUCH stronger competition this time around from all corners.

But Japan should continue to be an important market to Playstation. If they forget their roots, they will lose their identity. And they also need to remember that the company is bigger than just playstation - so they dont want to risk losing their whole home market by making bad decisions when it comes to Playstation

Japan isn't really gonna happen until FFXVI and DQXII.

It's silly to expect Ratchet to sell big there.

@john_c extrapolation is not speculation. But whatever. Not going to pick an argument with people online.

@nessisonett I don't think it would after the way Sony pulled the plug on the Vita. They burned that bridge.

@ShogunRok Digital sales figures should be included and if not available the facts are at best misleading at worst useless

Honestly, this is the bed Sony's made for themselves as far as I'm concerned. Despite what they say, they've clearly made an active decision to leave Japan behind, as primarily evidenced by their shuttering of Japan Studio specifically because they wanted to make games that would have primarily targeted Japanese audiences. It shouldn't be surprising that what Sony produces now doesn't really appeal to Japan. Hell, the last exclusive they had that sold well in Japan was Ghost of Tsushima, a game that was actually centered around Japanese history, go freaking figure.

Beyond that, they've absolutely surrendered their home country to Nintendo.

@fR_eeBritney not really. I mean I’m sure it’s a reason but Nintendo has dominated there for a while. It’s hard for anyone to squeeze into the Japanese market against Nintendo.

Nothing sells in Japan but mobile gaming. There's really nothing Sony can do. Even the Ps4 games Sony made geared towards Japan didn't sell so stop with the dumb Sony left Japan nonsense. Japan doesn't console game anymore. Even Nintendo's Wii U failed miserably in Japan because it wasn't mobile. Japanese developers are still great, but the country just doesn't traditionally game anymore. It's sad, the Ps1/Ps2 generations were the best in gaming and it was mostly because of Japan and its great variety of games.

@ShogunRok: the better part of the article and most interesting angle is whether the units are going to scalpers. There is another interesting article to be had on the way that the physical market is diminishing.

The first week sales of the 2016 game (from this site) was listed as being 27,534 for a system with a higher install base (not sure if that is just physical or both) so 14,663 is not that bad in comparison when you add the lower install base as context. If the game was a cross-gen title would it have matched the previous game?

The article is written to infer game sales are bad but the above paragraph surely shows that this may not be as bad as the inference.

The last time i checked ps5 has sold 40k units in Japan, 14k units is almost 50% of the users and that's actually a big number for an exclusive thinking that exclusives only sell 20% or less so ... come on Sammy boy if you are going to keep writing misleading titles/articles about how sony and ms are doing you can do it better 😂😂😂

Release more decent games then. Not one game of the year candidate has been released since launch and I’d have expected several

Honestly they have themselves to blame rising the price in times of crisis and also now a lot of people know that Sony drop their prices in a matter of months so only if you want to play it day one there’s no point to buy it and the scarcity of the console which most of them are probably sitting in warehouses of scalpers

@Xenomorph_79 Somehow you managed to focus on the one thing that can't possibly be behind decreased sales in Japan. There has never been a correlation between Western game prices and game prices in Japan. Even niche games often release at ¥8,000 and up in Japan going back at least to the PS2 era.

"... but there's nothing they can ever do to compete against Nintendo at this point"

@get2sammyb Ever think you would mutter that phrase?

@get2sammyb @Xenomorph_79 don't worry guys, Ratchet is significantly cheaper in Japan than UK. The price is actually 8690 yen (unless you're saying physical is way cheaper in Japan), which is only about 56 quid, compared to the UK store charging 70 quid.

Well, maybe there’s hope for digital sales? But yeah, things have changed for Sony in Japan.

@dudeAmarillo
The PS5 has actually sold 819k units in Japan - of which 684k are the disk-based version. So, 14k sales is nowhere near to the 50% attach rate that you suggested. Of course, there will be digital sales to add to this figure.

Japan is a weird market these days. It does seem like they only care about Nintendo as of recently. Or maybe mobile is what they care about and the Switch is perfect to fit that need.

@get2sammyb I’ll be choosing the disc model myself when the time comes to upgrade.

I’ve just bought a ‘like new’ copy of Mass Effect Andromeda on eBay for £5. It’s currently £34.99 on the Playstation Store… just one example of how an all-digital future is not in any way good for the consumer.

Sorry, slightly off-topic 😀

Considering that Sony is going back into the mobile gaming market, it will be interesting to see how Sony's decision pays off in Japan if mobile gaming is Japan's future. I'm not ignoring Nintendo's dominance though.

@Xenomorph_79 Price not an issue, if you can use Google. It could be that its sold better digitally in Japan

The ratchet and clank on ps4 opened at about 27k and there were more than 2 million ps4s out there then, than there are ps5s there now. The actual hardware is selling better than 4 is week by week. Japan has always been nintyland even when ps was doing great there, and ratchet & clank has never been huge in japan. Ps support there has definitely fallen but still not as dire as you guys kinda make it seem

Guilty gear strive has the most successful launch in the series despite japanese sales lol. Yea i don't see why they should care about a country that clearly doesn't care about their games. As a PS owner, I'd be more "worried" about whether japanese devs would still support PS, but considering games like Ace Attorney, Rune Factory, Neo Twewy, Fatal Frame, etc were just announced for the platform (which wouldve been exclusive to Ninty some years ago) in the span of some months. I'm not worried at all

@thetraditional I DualSense in a handheld is a cool thought but it’d impact the battery too much.

Remember why the Game Boy killed the Game Gear. The Game Gear was technically better than a NES but it’s short battery life killed it.

Batteries and mobile hardware optimization has come a long way but battery life is key. I hope Sony does re-enter mobile gaming cuz I need something for work trips and the Switch is the only option (f**k “games” on my phone).

Japan is a lost cause for Sony now.

Dismantling the Japanese dev studios was the most recent faux pas by Ryan and his minions but ever since they shot the Vita, abandoning it to just indies, it's been downhill for Japan ever since.

Without handheld gaming, the once-Japanese company has nothing to offer. The PSP was revived by the (ever popular in Japan) Monster Hunter franchise arriving on the handheld but that's on the Switch now and Nintendo just get stronger in their home country.

Ohh c'mon guys, this article... It's like to write that Bugatti Veyron spare parts are selling poorly in Bangladesh...

As others have said, Sony haven't done that great in Japan for years. This whole narrative that it's just happening now is stupid.
R&C 2016 27k sales on a 4 million ps4 install base.
New R&C 14k on a 684k (disc version) ps5 install base.
If anything that's better, and probably more have bought it digitally.

Sony will do fine in Japan, probably the same as the ps4. Japan is the land of the handheld(the 2016 chart was nearly all 3ds). They just prioritise the west now, and from the sales data, I don't blame them.

I personally don't think that Japan has lost interest in Sony or the PlayStation consoles to the degree that some people have expressed. I think that there are many different factors to consider; not just one or two factors that determine everything. I do think that the Nintendo Switch has dominated the Japanese market, but I don't think that means the PS5 is all of a sudden a "failure" in Japan. Even if the PS5 only sells as well as the PS4 did, that's a big accomplishment in the Japanese market for a home console. Of course the portable market is much bigger; there's no denying that at this current point in time. But there's still a market for PlayStation consoles in Japan. It may not be as big as handhelds, but it's still there. I don't think it's very accurate to assume that everybody (or even the vast majority of people) in a particular market region of the world has the same exact interests and amount of time/money, because really everyone has their own unique situations. Even in the United States and countries within Europe there' s so many different tastes and individual markets to take into account. I think it's fair to say that Japan also has different people with different tastes and interests. The PlayStation audience does exist there, and it's okay that it's not as big as Nintendo's market. I also agree with the people who have pointed out that digital sales haven't been taken into account here. I think that's a huge point, because even if there's a lot of people who prefer buying games physically, the very fact that digital sales aren't even a part of this data leaves out anyone who bought the games digitally. And although we can't tell for certain if there's that many people buying digital games on PlayStation in Japan based on this data, I don't think that's any reason to rule out the possibility that there are. Until we see both physical and digital sales taken into account, I think based on this data, we are missing a big piece of the puzzle. Plus, I personally bought the PS5 with the disc drive and I don't even purchase many physical games anymore. The reason I chose the model with the disc drive isn't because I only play physical games. It's because I have other uses for it, such as Blu-ray Discs of movies that aren't available to stream, or PS4 backwards compatible games that I already own physically. I think a lot of people have similar reasons for purchasing the model with the disc drive, because for them it may just feel a little more comfortable to have options, even if they primarily buy games digitally.

That is why they are bringing games to mobile. Get them where they live.

@TheFrenchiestFry

I doubt they ever will, but I still wish they did.

Sadly, they'd just self sabotage themselves again somehow. The Vita failed mostly because of Sony.

Has Ratchet and Clank ever sold really well in Japan?

The problem is that a lot of Sony's big exclusives don't really resonate with the Japanese market, whereas Nintendo is still firmly a Japanese gaming brand and is more in touch with what people want to play over there.

Also, I do think a lot of those million PS5 sales are probably being snatched by re-sellers.

Good.
Let them do bad in thier own backyard and make them cut the price.

The Japanese like Japanese games.

Sony has shifted it’s business model to produce more western titles, less Japanese developed games.

Playstation 5 currently has very little Japan centric games.

Playstation 5 currently has very few new games.

You can see why PS5 isn’t doing so great in Japan, the question is do they have much coming to change this in the next 12 months?

@themightyant You're absolutely right - the PSP sold massively in Japan, mainly because of Monster Hunter, and the Vita sold quite well too until Sony decided to stab it in the back, shoot it between its two thumb sticks and remove any parental care. Even then, it still sold quite well.
However, in the face of no portable Playstation, @RubyCarbuncle's point is valid - they care about portable gaming and Sony handed Nintendo the win on that one.

So what is selling well in retail in Japan? Mainly Switch games? I'm curious how is xbox compared to PS5 over there. I don't think the higher game prices affects xbox because that just makes their gamepass option even more attractive. I think mobile is also pretty big over there since they made a mobile-only Nier game.

They don’t find western games appealing enough and I don’t blame them. What Sony should do is buy Capcom, Team Ninja, and Square Enix and they’ll come crawling back to PlayStation.

I lived in Japan in the 90s and kept an apartment their through most of the 00's and still spend a lot of time visiting friends and family. Sony totally designed PS5 for western markets with its big, bold and loud design. In Japan many house holds will bring out a device like the PS5 and pack it away once finished playing. This is not conducive for high game sales. I'm sure plenty live in child's rooms where they would stay connected but few living rooms will leave the PS5 out on display.

Let's not forget, we're in the middle of a pandemic. Japan doesn't have a great vaccination rate, so the way people are protecting themselves is isolation - they're clamouring for the Olympics to be cancelled. Who's going to go to retail outlets? Would you want to get deliveries, even?

Wait, getting to No.3 in the charts is poorly now?

This are only physical sales you f…But Japan is buying atm their games mostly Digitally. Over 80%. ESP thanks to covid. The games sell pretty good for the amount of playstations available there. The system sells 10x stronger than Xbox and Xbox is even weaker in the USA. So stop believing everything you read and where people ignore math and logic. Every generation start the same discussion and you never learn a damn thing.

You think game sells may have anything to do with PS5 games costing $75.00 with tax and Asians being not as dumb as Americans?

East Asia as a whole unfortunately has been swamped by mobile gaming and that's why the Switch is doing so much better. I basically have to pretty much re-educate my boyfriend away from it.

@Xenomorph_79 Guest you can't use Google

@marty8370 Guess you can't proofread a five word snarky reply delivered weeks late. 😏