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Famitsu’s figures for the first six months of the year are here. It’s been a great period for Switch in hardware and software, but PlayStation still dominates the region and continues to grow as well.
HARDWARE
Japan is one region we get accurate hardware sales figures from. The console hardware market was stable in terms of value year-on-year, although units sold was only 89.1 per cent of the same period. Remembering that the Switch launched half-way through last year’s H1 period.
In unit terms Switch was up by 9.9 per cent, selling 1.12m units over the six month period, up from 1.02m units last year during the three month launch window. Other portable systems took a huge hit, presumably as a result of Switch’s entry into the market. Combined sales of 3DS SKUs were just 43 per cent of last year, while the Vita sold just under half of its 2017 H1 total.
God news for PlayStation, with hardware sales up 20 per cent from last year. The company sold 720,840 PS4s and 223,939 PS4 Pro consoles, with the standard console outselling its bigger brother by 3.2-to-1. Xbox sales doubled off the back of the Xbox One X launch, but with less than 10,000 in total, it’s still a very small part of the market.
SOFTWARE
The Switch market continues to grow rapidly. Speaking in terms of value Switch software sales rose by 162 per cent to hit ¥25,323m (£172m) a figure that is starting to look significant when placed next to the PS4s ¥43,209m (£293m). That was a 62.8 per cent rise for Sony, though, showing that Nintendo isn’t crashing the PlayStation party, this is instead genuine growth in the sector.
By value the software market as a whole was up by 11.4 per cent from H1 2017.
The six months were unsurprisingly dominated by Monster Hunter: World, which is approaching 2m copies sold to date in Japan alone. Splatoon 2 leads a mass of Nintendo-published titles with seven in the Top 10 plus Pokemon Sun and Moon from The Pokemon Company as well.
After what looked like a slow start, Nintendo’s Labo Variety Kit reached No.11 in the charts, selling 174,792 copies since its release in April, and paving the way for future games in the series.
