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Japanese retailer express disappointment over low PS5 games sales due to lack of PS5 owners

"most of us is not going to play their "favorite" games in Japan."


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Yeah, sure.
 
I'm not talking about a single game and I'm not talking about PS5 only. I'm talking about Playstation charts and digital sales in total and Nintendo digital sales in total. Crossgen PS4/PS5 games aren't charting on media creates physical charts and there are games without a physical release which skew them too.

Source for percentages

71% PS (74% last year) >50% prior to covid
47% Switch ( 55% last year) 22% prior to covid.

Bonus article showing how historically physical sales have dominated on switch and digital has lagged behind on Nintendo systems
Why are you talking about global numbers in a Japan thread? The matter of fact is, digital is still small in Japan.
 
I live in Japan and a lot of people I know here gave up for the moment to get a PS5 (me included) because it is nearly impossible to get one. Scalpers here are everywhere, they even sometimes stay in a store all day long to see if stock is coming or not. Many stores use lottery systems, but the chance of winning is tiny, because sclapers have ways to enter the same lottery multiple times. There are stores where you can buy one (if the have stock which is also rare) if you get a credit card from this store. But yeah, I am not so crazy to make an additional credit card just for that.

The sad thing is many of these PS5s which the scalpers buy don't stay in Japan, but are sold and shipped to China, since the profit is better there. So no wonder at this point that software sales are disappointing, but its not possible to say at this point what kind of role the PS5 will play here in the future. We have to wait and see until stock catches up to demand to make a prediction, but this still seems far in the future.
 

Ozriel

M$FT
Except it's exactly the opposite ? No PS5 available VS every 360 available because nobody want one. (PS : The PS5 games on the pictures aren't real games it's like plastic place holders)

You’re reading an article where in the OP the retailer is decrying the low retail sales of PS5 games in Japan, and you’re insisting that software is sold out?
Why?


PS5 is ahead PS4 in terms of user base at same period so maybe the Retailer is feeling the lack of PS5 users because they migrated to a more digital oriented purchases.

Even a generous Digital split of 50% would still imply a poor attach rate of PS5 software in Japan.

I think it’s clear the JP market has largely moved on to Switch and mobile.
 

Kerotan

Member
Of course.
In Poland, local media markt stores don't even have ps5 games at all locally... since I must be the only one in my city with the ps5 lol
Yeah ps5's are not going to poorer countries like Poland and in Japan stock is bought by scalpers and sold abroad.
 

Kerotan

Member
I live in Japan and a lot of people I know here gave up for the moment to get a PS5 (me included) because it is nearly impossible to get one. Scalpers here are everywhere, they even sometimes stay in a store all day long to see if stock is coming or not. Many stores use lottery systems, but the chance of winning is tiny, because sclapers have ways to enter the same lottery multiple times. There are stores where you can buy one (if the have stock which is also rare) if you get a credit card from this store. But yeah, I am not so crazy to make an additional credit card just for that.

The sad thing is many of these PS5s which the scalpers buy don't stay in Japan, but are sold and shipped to China, since the profit is better there. So no wonder at this point that software sales are disappointing, but its not possible to say at this point what kind of role the PS5 will play here in the future. We have to wait and see until stock catches up to demand to make a prediction, but this still seems far in the future.
I thought Japanese were an Honourable people. No honor in scalping.
 

Three

Member
Why are you talking about global numbers in a Japan thread? The matter of fact is, digital is still small in Japan.
Because we were talking about the PlayStation digital charts. Can you actually show some platform data that proves Japan is an outlier when it comes to digital adoption and not a result of being Nintendo land? I'd like to see it.
 
I thought Japanese were an Honourable people. No honor in scalping.
Young people in Japan give a crap about honor as long as it means profit. It’s not different than anywhere else in the world. Additionally a lot of scalpers here in Japan are immigrants.

I follow a chat where people who search a PS5 share information and a lot of them blame the Chinese.
 
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I live in Japan and a lot of people I know here gave up for the moment to get a PS5 (me included) because it is nearly impossible to get one. Scalpers here are everywhere, they even sometimes stay in a store all day long to see if stock is coming or not. Many stores use lottery systems, but the chance of winning is tiny, because sclapers have ways to enter the same lottery multiple times. There are stores where you can buy one (if the have stock which is also rare) if you get a credit card from this store. But yeah, I am not so crazy to make an additional credit card just for that.

The sad thing is many of these PS5s which the scalpers buy don't stay in Japan, but are sold and shipped to China, since the profit is better there. So no wonder at this point that software sales are disappointing, but its not possible to say at this point what kind of role the PS5 will play here in the future. We have to wait and see until stock catches up to demand to make a prediction, but this still seems far in the future.
Same with me. I did the "9:00 am Friday Morning Amazon Japan Twitter Notification Tap Dance" and the "Rakuten Books Soft Shoe Shuffle" every week for more than 9 months and just gave up. I enter all the lotteries but still nothing. Scalpers suck. What they do isn't exactly illegal per se but they sure do suck giant sweaty sumo balls.
 
Because we were talking about the PlayStation digital charts. Can you actually show some platform data that proves Japan is an outlier when it comes to digital adoption and not a result of being Nintendo land? I'd like to see it.
As I said, the Media Create guy leaks some numbers every now and then. Last time was for Resi Evil 8 (PS5), it was around 20% digital. There are no official digital numbers afaik.

The funny thing is, even if we assumed a 70% digital ratio, which for Japan would be beyond unprecedented, the sales numbers would still be kinda shit.
 

xrnzaaas

Gold Member
this pic.......
flFaei2.jpg

REMINDS ME OF THIS.................
xboxjapan.jpg

not good for sony at all
There's a difference here. People in Japan didn't want to buy Microsoft consoles. I'm pretty sure a lot of them want to buy a PS5, but they can't. And of course Sony's prioritites have changed and pleasing Japan isn't important to them anymore.
 

Three

Member
As I said, the Media Create guy leaks some numbers every now and then. Last time was for Resi Evil 8 (PS5), it was around 20% digital. There are no official digital numbers afaik.

The funny thing is, even if we assumed a 70% digital ratio, which for Japan would be beyond unprecedented, the sales numbers would still be kinda shit.

PS5 may have high physical sales even in the west considering current pricing but that one game tells you nothing. We have no public data for that game anywhere else either. What was it in the UK for example considering the constant shouts about digital in those threads.

Yes hence the "no fools making excuses here" and "digital will not save the PS5 in japan". Home consoles are on the decline there and have been for years.
 
This reasoning never makes sense since mobile gaming is huge in North America and Europe too, and PlayStation is doing great there.
If you have to look at what tops the charts in the West to Japan. Japan has fallen for mobile gaming since PS3 era and no matter what people try and say, the Switch is a mobile system
It's not a dig at Japan or the Switch is just the way it is over there IMO Long gone are the days when Square wouldn't need to look to the West and could sell millions of games on just one console in Japan alone

It's sad really because Japan used to be the powerhouse for AAA console gaming, but Mobile has killed that a bit in Japan.
 

jm89

Member
UK market alone is probably more beneficial to sony then Japan. We have zombies here who only play cod, FIFA and fortnite and they are making bank of these people.
 

rolandss

Member
That and no games worth playing. I've had mine for nearly a year (since Feb this year) and the only PS5 title I own on it is Deathloop, which didn't hook me after the first 10 minutes and I haven't touched. The rest of the games I've been playing on it are PS4 titles.

Until good games release its a glorified PS4.
 

Woopah

Member
How do we get that data from the charts? Digital will not save the PS5 in Japan but Japan hasn't been behind anywhere else in adopting digital as far as I know. It's around ~70% digital on PS.
What skews it is that Nintendo absolutely dominates japan and Nintendo have a lower digital percentage than PS or xbox.
Nintendo went above 50% last year but fell back down to 42% Digital this year. They were at 22% before covid.
We can't get exact data , but a big sign was the April 2021 digital charts. Returnal topped that charts with just one day of sales and that's a game that sold 6.573 in its first three days. Even if we be super generous and say that all those physical sales came on day 1 and its digital split was 70%, that still means that no other PS5 game sold more than 9,200 digital copies during the whole month.
disagree, you forget what happened to wii u? the games did not save them lol
I didn't forget, the Wii U situation supports my argument. The platform had very lacklustre first party support for quite a while and third party support dried up almost immediately. Meanwhile Switch has very strong first party support from the beginning and ,while third party support started off bad, its been growing and growing each year. The huge gulf in line up quality is one of the reasons that Switch is doing much much better than the Wii U (though of course Wii U had other problems too).
If you have to look at what tops the charts in the West to Japan. Japan has fallen for mobile gaming since PS3 era and no matter what people try and say, the Switch is a mobile system
It's not a dig at Japan or the Switch is just the way it is over there IMO Long gone are the days when Square wouldn't need to look to the West and could sell millions of games on just one console in Japan alone

It's sad really because Japan used to be the powerhouse for AAA console gaming, but Mobile has killed that a bit in Japan.
Switch is a hybrid system. Maybe its just semantics but when people say mobile I think of smartphones, not portable or hybrid consoles.

When we look a what games sell well in Japan, we see games that also sell well everywhere else. If the success of Animal Crossing, Smash Bros, Final Fantasy, Ring Fit, Mario + spinoffs, Zelda, Pokémon and Ghost of Tsushima mean "Japan has gone mobile" than every other country has as well. The only game on Japan's charts that didn't do well in the West is Momotaro Dentetsu, everything else is a global hit.

PlayStation is able to succeed alongside Switch in North America and Europe. Its issue in Japan is that PlayStation follows a largely third party strategy and Japanese third parties simply haven't been as good at putting out regular big hits as Western ones. In the West PlayStation has Assassins' Creed, COD and EA sports games coming out almost every year to drive hardware sales, Japanese third parties haven't been able to put out that kind of output since the HD era started, which is why the lower dev costs/time of portable platforms was so attractive for them. It was a lot easier for them to put out multiple FF/DQ/MH games on DS and PSP than it was on PS3.

It wasn't portable gaming that killed console gaming. It was portable games that saved that from the HD era.
 
I live in Japan and a lot of people I know here gave up for the moment to get a PS5 (me included) because it is nearly impossible to get one. Scalpers here are everywhere, they even sometimes stay in a store all day long to see if stock is coming or not. Many stores use lottery systems, but the chance of winning is tiny, because sclapers have ways to enter the same lottery multiple times. There are stores where you can buy one (if the have stock which is also rare) if you get a credit card from this store. But yeah, I am not so crazy to make an additional credit card just for that.

The sad thing is many of these PS5s which the scalpers buy don't stay in Japan, but are sold and shipped to China, since the profit is better there. So no wonder at this point that software sales are disappointing, but its not possible to say at this point what kind of role the PS5 will play here in the future. We have to wait and see until stock catches up to demand to make a prediction, but this still seems far in the future.
PlayStation sales have been declining since the height of PS2. So no I don't think PS5 will reverse trends.
And more importantly neither does Sony.
 

Three

Member
We can't get exact data , but a big sign was the April 2021 digital charts. Returnal topped that charts with just one day of sales and that's a game that sold 6.573 in its first three days. Even if we be super generous and say that all those physical sales came on day 1 and its digital split was 70%, that still means that no other PS5 game sold more than 9,200 digital copies during the whole month.
Yeah I agree game sales of PS5 only games like Returnal are going to be low to begin with. You are talking about a 1M install base in Japan. If we take the global attach rate for when the sales numbers of the game was announced you would have around 0.056. Apply that to Japans 1M PS5s and you get around only 56,000 copies sold in Japan up until July. So not that much to begin with anyway.

This logic of using the top selling digital game to show digital isn't taking off in Japan doesn't seem to make sense to me though. Returnal didn't top the chart in April. It was 4th. Unless you have some source for a Japan specific PSN chart where it reached the top in digital sales for that month in just one day. In which case how do you then use that to disprove that digital sales were not hindering retail sales for that game, because it topped the digital charts? 6,573 in 3 days is physical only, correct?

P.S. I see that Bernd Lauert disappeared when asked for a source himself.
 
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Woopah

Member
Yeah I agree game sales of PS5 only games like Returnal are going to be low to begin with. You are talking about a 1M install base in Japan. If we take the global attach rate for when the sales numbers of the game was announced you would have around 0.056. Apply that to Japans 1M PS5s and you get around only 56,000 copies sold in Japan up until July. So not that much to begin with anyway.

This logic of using the top selling digital game to show digital isn't taking off in Japan doesn't seem to make sense to me though. Returnal didn't top the chart in April. It was 4th. Unless you have some source for a Japan specific PSN chart where it reached the top in digital sales for that month in just one day. In which case how do you then use that to disprove that digital sales were not hindering retail sales for that game, because it topped the digital charts? 6,573 in 3 days is physical only, correct?

P.S. I see that Bernd Lauert disappeared when asked for a source himself.
I have no issue with providing sources: Returnal was 4th in Europe but 1st for Japan: https://blog.ja.playstation.com/2021/05/11/20210511-downloadranking/?emcid=or-pl-407920

My argument was that PS5 digital sales can't be that high if 9,000 is enough to top a monthly chart. It shows that the issue with PS5 in Japan is low total software sales, not just low retail software sales.
 

Three

Member
I have no issue with providing sources: Returnal was 4th in Europe but 1st for Japan: https://blog.ja.playstation.com/2021/05/11/20210511-downloadranking/?emcid=or-pl-407920

My argument was that PS5 digital sales can't be that high if 9,000 is enough to top a monthly chart. It shows that the issue with PS5 in Japan is low total software sales, not just low retail software sales.
I was referring to someone else I named unless you're an alt 😄.

Your calculation doesn't make sense to me though. If you assume that all 6,573 accounted for 1 day of sales like you said and it was 30% physical you would have 15,337 sales digitally not 9,000. April was also almost baron of any PS4/PS5 titles charting on the Japan charts. It wouldn’t be difficult to chart on a PS5 only digital chart with 15,337 sales for the month of April.
 
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Woopah

Member
I was referring to someone else I named unless you're an alt 😄.

Your calculation doesn't make sense to me though. If you assume that all 6,573 accounted for 1 day of sales like you said and it was 30% physical you would have 15,337 sales digitally not 9,000. April was also almost baron of any PS4/PS5 titles charting on the Japan charts. It wouldn’t be difficult to chart on a PS5 only chart with 15,337 sales for the month of April.
You asked if I had a source and then said someone else disappearing when asked for a source, so I thought you were implying that I was going to disappear. Apologies if I misread that.

And yes my maths was off and I have no idea how I did that! My overall point is that April being baron of any PS4/PS5 titles charting was due to the type of games released, not the fact that everything was digital.
 

Three

Member
You asked if I had a source and then said someone else disappearing when asked for a source, so I thought you were implying that I was going to disappear. Apologies if I misread that.

And yes my maths was off and I have no idea how I did that! My overall point is that April being baron of any PS4/PS5 titles charting was due to the type of games released, not the fact that everything was digital.
Oh, no, wasn't trying to imply that. I was referring to the fact that he kept asking me for sources then bolted when I asked for one.
 

lh032

I cry about Xbox and hate PlayStation.
We can't get exact data , but a big sign was the April 2021 digital charts. Returnal topped that charts with just one day of sales and that's a game that sold 6.573 in its first three days. Even if we be super generous and say that all those physical sales came on day 1 and its digital split was 70%, that still means that no other PS5 game sold more than 9,200 digital copies during the whole month.

I didn't forget, the Wii U situation supports my argument. The platform had very lacklustre first party support for quite a while and third party support dried up almost immediately. Meanwhile Switch has very strong first party support from the beginning and ,while third party support started off bad, its been growing and growing each year. The huge gulf in line up quality is one of the reasons that Switch is doing much much better than the Wii U (though of course Wii U had other problems too).

Switch is a hybrid system. Maybe its just semantics but when people say mobile I think of smartphones, not portable or hybrid consoles.

When we look a what games sell well in Japan, we see games that also sell well everywhere else. If the success of Animal Crossing, Smash Bros, Final Fantasy, Ring Fit, Mario + spinoffs, Zelda, Pokémon and Ghost of Tsushima mean "Japan has gone mobile" than every other country has as well. The only game on Japan's charts that didn't do well in the West is Momotaro Dentetsu, everything else is a global hit.

PlayStation is able to succeed alongside Switch in North America and Europe. Its issue in Japan is that PlayStation follows a largely third party strategy and Japanese third parties simply haven't been as good at putting out regular big hits as Western ones. In the West PlayStation has Assassins' Creed, COD and EA sports games coming out almost every year to drive hardware sales, Japanese third parties haven't been able to put out that kind of output since the HD era started, which is why the lower dev costs/time of portable platforms was so attractive for them. It was a lot easier for them to put out multiple FF/DQ/MH games on DS and PSP than it was on PS3.

It wasn't portable gaming that killed console gaming. It was portable games that saved that from the HD era.
You said its "It's a hit because of games much more than portability. "

And then you said "The platform had very lacklustre first party support for quite a while and third party support dried up almost immediately. Meanwhile Switch has very strong first party support from the beginning and ,while third party support started off bad, its been growing and growing each year."

Yes, because of portability, thats why Switch is a success.

Let me summarize for you.

Wii U = bad hardware > smaller userbase > less support from devs > less sales
Switch = good hardware > bigger userbase > more support from devs > more sales

Portability contributes alot on Switch game sales.
 
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Woopah

Member
You said its "It's a hit because of games much more than portability. "

And then you said "The platform had very lacklustre first party support for quite a while and third party support dried up almost immediately. Meanwhile Switch has very strong first party support from the beginning and ,while third party support started off bad, its been growing and growing each year."

Yes, because of portability, thats why Switch is a success.

Let me summarize for you.

Wii U = bad hardware > smaller userbase > less support from devs > less sales
Switch = good hardware > bigger userbase > more support from devs > more sales

Portability contributes alot on Switch game sales.
But it's stronger first party support is not due to portability. It's strong first party support is it having BOTW, Arms, Mario Kart 8, Splatoon 2 and Mario Odyssey in the first 8 months. .

Hardware is important yes but software is even more so. Switch has sold more than the 3DS and Vita combined. Is it more portable than them? No. Does it have a better software library? Yes.
 
It feels like it’s true though, they do seem to sell a lot of them, and yet it’s does still seem like actual players don’t have any.
 
Sony focus on UK/US Saddly

I feel like a lot of Japanese publishers are moving more toward global sales and audience. I think both Sega and Capcom made note of it in their last fiscal report and the brunt of their biggest selling games sold better in the west.

I echo what everyone else has been saying, Japan is going full mobile and outside of streaming or creating mobile software sony and microsoft are not gonna thrive there
 

BadBurger

Is 'That Pure Potato'
2024 is right around the corner.

I don't get it. This was a problem developing prior to the pandemic, though that accelerated it, and now with chip makers racing to meet demands it shouldn't be a major issue in another six or seven months - this should not stretch beyond next year and certainly not into 2024 unless something unforeseen occurs. BBC has a good article from late August that summarized things nicely:

 
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bender

What time is it?
I don't get it. The was a problem developing prior to the pandemic, though that accelerated it, and now with chip makers racing to meet demands it shouldn't be a major issue in another six or seven months. BBC has a good article from late August that summarized things nicely:


COVID shifted demand to mobile since so much of everyone's workforce was moved home. That really screwed up demand planning. This is a little US centric, but I imagine other countries had similar situations. State, Local and Education (SLED) had huge influxes of federal funding. Funding that had an expiration date. With worries about tax revenue shrinking for the foreseeable future, SLED was happy to spend that money on IT spend. I work with one of the major manufacturers and they are north of a sales quarter behind as far as open orders are concerned. Items typically warehoused and shipped in days (monitors, docks, etc.) during normal times now can take 6+ months. Custom build notebook configurations that typically took 2 weeks to ship from order, now take upwards of 20 weeks. Even when things return to normal as far as manufacturing components is concerned, there is a massive backlog that needs to be caught up on. I formally thought we'd see some normalcy in 2023, but I'm less bullish about that now.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
COVID shifted demand to mobile since so much of everyone's workforce was moved home. That really screwed up demand planning. This is a little US centric, but I imagine other countries had similar situations. State, Local and Education (SLED) had huge influxes of federal funding. Funding that had an expiration date. With worries about tax revenue shrinking for the foreseeable future, SLED was happy to spend that money on IT spend. I work with one of the major manufacturers and they are north of a sales quarter behind as far as open orders are concerned. Items typically warehoused and shipped in days (monitors, docks, etc.) during normal times now can take 6+ months. Custom build notebook configurations that typically took 2 weeks to ship from order, now take upwards of 20 weeks. Even when things return to normal as far as manufacturing components is concerned, there is a massive backlog that needs to be caught up on. I formally thought we'd see some normalcy in 2023, but I'm less bullish about that now.
I cant speak for electronics, but for normal shit, shortages came about due to:

1. People hoarding due to fear

2. Some products being naturally used a lot more because people are at home instead of at the office. So consumer brand sales shot up and commercial brands went down

3. People with a lot of time on their hands at home, so they decided to spend time and money on renovations and landscaping

4. Very important factor that a lot of people didn't think about or know. With covid, some manufacturers ramped down at the beginning thinking everything would slow down as people lost their jobs. Made sense. If it looks like slowdowns, why the hell would demand spike UP? Turns out it's the opposite for some products, so it was a double whammy of strong demand and they gimped their production. So they had to ramp back up playing catch up. I don't think anyone thought that car sales and home renovations would be in full force. Youd think people would be scared shitless about losing their job and with many people working from home now, so why would anyone go out and buy a car now?
 
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Woopah

Member
I feel like a lot of Japanese publishers are moving more toward global sales and audience. I think both Sega and Capcom made note of it in their last fiscal report and the brunt of their biggest selling games sold better in the west.

I echo what everyone else has been saying, Japan is going full mobile and outside of streaming or creating mobile software sony and microsoft are not gonna thrive there
I think the key mistake publishers make is to think they have to choose between success in the West or success in the East. The key is to make software with wide appeal that can sell well in both places like Nintendo and Capcom is doing.
 
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