PS5 Still King of the Japanese Charts Despite Having No Games in Top Ten

It's amazing what can happen when it's in stock, I still remember that one week where many were getting giddy over the Xbox outselling an out of stock PS5, yet here we are with the PS5 selling 50% of the X's lifetime sales in one week

PlayStation 5 sold over half of the entire lifetime sales figures of Series X in one week. That’s got to sting!

Series S did well, buying before prices go up??

Big in Japan… big in Japa-a-a-an 🎵

@stvevan Surprised to see the series S sell that muc as well, most likely people getting in there before the price raise combined with shops running promotions to move stock as it will be selling less units at the higher price.

I need to watch a documentary about the 70 people who bought a 2DS the first week of February in 2023.

@UltimateOtaku91 doing 5% of lifetime sales in a week.

weirdest thing being, ps5 is selling the disc version, whereas the S is disc less.

Software sales figures mean so little unless digital is included. Its quite clear that people buying ps5s will be buying software for it, and that these sales are digital.
I heard plenty of new playstation owners in japan were buying it to play fortnight - apparently thats now a thing in japan 😂

Certainly curious, as though it’s in preparation for releases like FF and other big names this year on PS5? I’m not even sure what else is releasing this year that would pull Japanese consumers in to buy a system. Are they all digital purchases? It’s interesting.

I could see Switch doing spikes the next couple of weeks after yesterday’s Direct (which was super), but it otherwise might be PS5’s time to rise there. And for what it’s worth, good for the Series S!

@stvevan Not weird, just obviously different markets. The S market is clearly attracted to the tiny, white, cheap machine that doesn't really have a competitor, probably the kind that would have bought PS4 Super Slim if it existed, the PS5 market is the more "traditional" power console market. Even if they don't buy games for it....

Still it's so weird to see PS5 sales spike like this without a game charting as part of it. I'm still wondering how much if it is people buying consoles and digital games not shown here (much rarer for Japan), how much of it is F2P and/or Plus sub based sales indicating a shift in spending to services, subscriptions, etc. And how much is....some weird reason consoles are moving without software (export?)

Wish they'd make some fun Japanese games to play on it. Had my fill of moody murder-fests for now.

Wonder how long this is going to last. There are probably a lot of people who are rushing to buy one now that they have the chance to in case it's out of stock again soon.

@NEStalgia but the digital ps5 isnt less powerful like the XSS. so why spend the extra if not using the drive? As its no longer the case of getting whats available.

also shows Japan arent getting the 'bundle' ps5s, else software would be in top10.

@stvevan True, but in least in prior generations Japan was much less converted to digital than most other places, they still had a strong physical media culture. Could be different now, but I assume that's probably the main difference here. Though without a lot of physical game sales, it's certainly a puzzle. Or they're only shipping the disc model there in volume so supply is still the issue?

Really good spotting about the lack of bundle sales though! You're right, that would have shot a game onto that chart so the hardware sales are mostly bundle-less. In the US at least, you mostly still can't find one not bundled, and I assume it's similar in the UK.

@Sequel And sadly FFXVI looks like it's also a moody murder fest now! Though...the last time FF wasn't moody was like FF4...

@NEStalgia we can't escape!

@NEStalgia There is a lot evidence that Japan is not a physical dominated as a lot of people have been reporting previously

Sony revealed a slide in an investor meeting last year about digital only and physical only customer breakdown by 4 regions USA/Europe/Japan/Non-Japan Asian and Japanese customers didn’t differ significantly from other markets, I believe they had more digital only customers than Europe but slightly behind the other 2 territories with USA first.

For context the worldwide digital rate for “Full Game Software” on PS formats was 66% last Financial year with it on track for a slight increase this year(Q1 of the current financial year was as high as 79%)

Additionally Japan is probably the only territory in the world where the Series S outsells the Series X. Yes, it’s known that Japanese people greatly prefer small things(no jokes now) but it’s still shocking that they’d suddenly ditch their physical discs so easily for such a small advantage when they apparently don’t like Digital games(also do you know what’s really tiny? Digital games!)

Lol @ Xbox X sales

@NEStalgia my final guess, are they buying ready for VR? now i have 0 idea if its something Japanese gamers go for, just throwing it out there.

@stvevan probably prebuying for the upcoming capcom, square enix and bandai namco games.

Monster Hunter Rise, Resident Evil 4, Street Fighter VI, Octopath Traveller II, Final Fantasy VII and XVI and Tekken 8.

And Howarts Legacy probably. From what I heard Harry Potter is a pretty well known franchise in Asia.

I'm assuming most of the people are still playing PS4 games on their PS5 or using PS Collections till new exclusives come out

@stvevan psvr2 was the number one selling item in the video games category on amazon Japan last week! Was by invite only but shows the interest is there.

@stvevan @Serialsid Yeah, I was wondering if VR prep was part of it. Japan seems like the kind of place that would have more interest in VR than a lot of the West where it kind of gets ignored. I can't believe it's on Amazon in Japan but direct-only everywhere else, but that's seriously impressive if VR is doing that well in Japan.

@ChrisDeku Do we know how Sony breaks down "full game software" though? I.E. if a lot of smaller games that don't have physical versions make up a lot of that, if PS5 upgrades are included, etc it might not paint the picture it seems to.

Probably scalpers...

They make great technology but have terrible taste in games. Same with anime, looks amazing, terrible storytelling.

@KaijuKaiser @NEStalgia @eltomo I'm seriously starting to wonder what the real story is with these PS5 sales. They sell almost 100k consoles, but not a single game enters the top ten. It's not like you have to sell a ton of units to enter the top ten.

@Ralizah Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of good theories. "It's all in prep for VR the #1 seller in games on amazon.jp", "it's all people playing PS4 games they already own", "It's all digital sales now", "it's all about Fortnite."

I'm sure all of it plays into it, but I don't know, even if that's all true, why would PS5 suddenly defy all other hardware sales trends in the country? Suddenly 100k people in Japan decided they wanted a better framerate on DQXI and are geared up for VR2 but didn't buy any games to go with either? Even most of the major games don't have free upgrades on PS5, so that would still show in sales. Even P5 would be a whole new purchase.

I'd love to see if Plus Extra/Premium suddenly skyrocketed to go with it, I mean I could see Japan going all in for a subscription back catalog. But.....how many PS5 games are even on there? Most of it is PS4 games.

It could all be legit digital game sales and back catalog stuff but it still all seems strange.

I'm still wondering if there's an export business going on, or if someone figured out PS5s are great for crypto or something.

@Saitama117

Not all anime has bad story telling.

Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket had shockingly good story telling for a late 80s OVA.

Compared to other Gundam series (which tend to be strong on their political commentary, but absolute trash story telling) it seemed like it could have been written in the west.

@OrtadragoonX Attack on Titan is the best storytelling I've ever seen come out of Japan and even then it has plenty of weak points.

@NEStalgia seen some stuff recently with your last theory.

Apparently the Chinese are buying them to resell in China, something about the PS5 in China being region locked makes the Japanese one more valuable.

@eltomo Aha! I has this hunch that something like that might be going on!