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[Eddie-Griffin]

https://gameinfinitus.com/news/the-witcher-3-1-million-copies-japan/

The Witcher 3 has sold more than one million copies in Japan which is a record for a western RPG. The game is published by Spike Chunsoft in Japan.

The Witcher 3 launched back in Japan with a debut week sales of under 70K copies. It was a good enough result for a Western RPG since there are not many games that can claim this figure in Japan. It had strong legs and while it received multiple releases across the lifetime of its sale there, the cumulative sales have now reached more than 1 million copies.

The official account also shared a fan-made artwork in celebration of this sales milestone while confirming the number of copies sold for the game.

https://twitter.com/CDPRJP

Translates to via Bing,
The total number of the domestic sale of the open world RPG "Witcher 3 Wild Hunt" has exceeded 1 million! Thanks to everyone who played this game and supported us for a long time. Thank you! Please look forward to the new generation console version that will be released on December 14th. #witcher

Commemorative illustration by
@terra_da_k

With over 1 million units sold in Japan, The Witcher 3 has become the best selling Wprg in the country, likely the Switch released helped it cross the finish line there. With FALLOUT 4 a far distant second.

 

[nial]

gg spike chunsoft

 

[SmokedMeat]

Glad to hear it did so well in Japan.

 

[Mozzarella]

Witcher 3 anime soon?

 

[Silver Wattle]

It took many releases but it got there, huge achievement and well deserved.

 

[Buggy Loop]

With PC they can mod it to anime

 

[Krappadizzle]

 

[Crispy Gamer]

One of the best games ever well deserved

 

[Ghost of Caelid]

None of the Dark souls hasn’t crossed a mill in Japan? Or Skyrim?

 

[Agent_Nobody]

None of the Dark souls hasn’t crossed a mill in Japan? Or Skyrim?

Dark Souls…really?

 

[Ghost of Caelid]

Dark Souls…really?

It’s a game made by a Japanese studio so I wasn’t sure if that helped its numbers in Japan.

 

[LazyParrot]

What's a WRPG anyway? I've seen people say it's any RPG made by a Western developer, while others say it requires specific features, particularly the ability to create and customize your own character. Amusingly enough that would disqualify any of the Witcher games.

 

[gaming_again]

In always surprised that WRPGs don’t do better over there. European medieval aesthetics are extremely popular.

 

[Go_Ly_Dow]

In always surprised that WRPGs don’t do better over there. European medieval aesthetics are extremely popular.

Would guess it comes down to the combat systems in a lot of WRPGs. That and many declined in quality PS4 era.

 

[Skifi28]

In always surprised that WRPGs don’t do better over there. European medieval aesthetics are extremely popular.

I was looking through some videos and the Japanese dub is very high quality with well-known voice actors over there. I imagine stuff like this really helps with sales, perhaps even more than the game's quality.

 

[Pasta la Vista]

Thought Skyrim would have sold more there. Hmm, weird.

 

[gaming_again]

I was looking through some videos and the Japanese dub is very high quality with well-known voice actors over there. I imagine stuff like this really helps with sales, perhaps even more than the game's quality.

Good to know. I did wonder how other languages fared because the English voice acting has to be the best in any videogame ever.

Also I wonder how regional it is abroad. For example, half the peasants have an English Birmingham accent, which has to be a first. I worked with a Brummie who was so pleased about this.

 

[winjer]

Impressive result.

 

[Lethal01]

None of the Dark souls hasn’t crossed a mill in Japan? Or Skyrim?

Darksouls is a JRPG not a WRPG

 

[MysticalChaos]

Nice! Glad they localized the voiceovers to Japanese!

 

[Sw0pDiller]

Oh man I played it a couple of years ago and the gameplay was just awefull. Tried it again with the next gen patch on PS5 and while it held my attention longer (cuz I am reading the books and the lore is more interesting for me) the gameplay is just something a can't handle. Fighting, horse riding, walking and that camera. Is all really cumbersome. Plus the facial animations are horrible. Stopped the game, uninstalled and starting with re3.

 

[Sentenza]

Darksouls is a JRPG

No, it's not.
But the point is that Dark Souls is a domestic title for the Japanese market, so the comparison is irrelevant.

 

[gaming_again]

Oh man I played it a couple of years ago and the gameplay was just awefull. Tried it again with the next gen patch on PS5 and while it held my attention longer (cuz I am reading the books and the lore is more interesting for me) the gameplay is just something a can't handle. Fighting, horse riding, walking and that camera. Is all really cumbersome. Plus the facial animations are horrible. Stopped the game, uninstalled and starting with re3.

As somebody who believes that gameplay > all I believe the game’s atmosphere, world building, writing and characters are so good as to make all of your issues irrelevant.

It’s my favourite game of all time and I can’t stand AAA walking and talking simulators.

It’s THAT GOOD.

Also, if it had Dark Souks combat, which is something I hear often, it’s just be way too long.

 

[LazyParrot]

In always surprised that WRPGs don’t do better over there. European medieval aesthetics are extremely popular.

Japan has its own weebified version of the medieval setting that is fairly popular (largely based on the tropes established by the Dragon Quest games), but even there the structure, writing, characters, and conventions largely remain unmistakably Japanese. For many Japanese that's as far as they're willing to move outside of their comfort zone.

From what I've heard during my time in Japan Western RPGs in particular have a reputation for being somewhat obscure, confusing, complicated and difficult to play. Out of the people I talked to who played games most barely knew any Western RPGs at all (yes, not even Skyrim or the Witcher), and even the ones that did mostly just watched playthroughs on Youtube instead of playing them themselves.

 

[Eddie-Griffin]

In always surprised that WRPGs don’t do better over there. European medieval aesthetics are extremely popular.

Because those medieval aesthetics are fused with Anime, and have domestic cultural stuff included in them. There's also few japanese publishers capable of spending the amount of money to promote a WRPG.

WRPGS have always been popular in some form though, just the issue is reach and distribution, FALLOUT 4 had great gamer reception in Japan but it wasn't something you could run out and get and many didn't learn about it until later.

Wizardry has a cult there with even several japanese devs over the years incuding indies getting the license to make some domestic japanese-only releases of Wizardry new game remakes, or enhanced collections etc.

I think Microsoft missed the mark in Japan by trying to promote mostly JRPGS hard instead of both there with the 360, and Sony kind of followed with that.

So the issue isn't what many people who say automatically there's a lack of interest or it's too confusing, though for some games that is the case (Betrayal at Krondor was downrated by some Japanese reviewer in the 90s out for not having a simply menu stole attack-magic menu where everything is automatic in battles) but that's not the main reason.

If Japanese publishers actually put in effort to push these like Square used to push COD, WRPGS would have at least done much better than they have. I believe the Switch is a big reason why Witcher 3 reached that much as well, and arguably, Spike Chun is the only third-party WRPG distributor in japan that's put an effort in getting the game out there and promoting it.

The next two WRPGS selling individually is FALLOUT 4 and iirc SKYRIM, 400k or less. But franchise wise it's probably Wizardry, than some D&D ports which have a ton of domestic-only games that cumulatively have reached hundreds of thousands. But still a far distance from 1 million.

Considering how much Sony pushed western IP (to varying degress) in Japan on PS4, I'm surprised they didn't try helping to do that with any big WRPG...

 

[DeepEnigma]

None of the Dark souls hasn’t crossed a mill in Japan? Or Skyrim?

Souls is not a WRPG.

 

[Ghost of Caelid]

Darksouls is a JRPG not a WRPG

WRPG and JRPG is a genre not where it was made. Unless you are going to tel me chained echoes is not a jrpg because the creator isn’t Japanese.

 

[GymWolf]

In always surprised that WRPGs don’t do better over there. European medieval aesthetics are extremely popular.

Not enough 3000 years old dragon lolitas i think.

 

[gaming_again]

Not enough 3000 years old dragon lolitas i think.

They need to sort themselves out. I could successfully fap to a good 90% of the female cast in the Witcher, I reckon. Even the peasants have it going on.

 

[GymWolf]

They need to sort themselves out. I could successfully fap to a good 90% of the female cast in the Witcher, I reckon. Even the peasants have it going on.

Does that 90% includes the 3 witches of the woods?

 

[gaming_again]

Does that 90% includes the 3 witches of the woods?

Well they did look like that painting once… I’ve done worse, easily.

 

[Mossybrew]

I wonder what Geralt sounds like in Japanese.

 

[Eddie-Griffin]

In always surprised that WRPGs don’t do better over there. European medieval aesthetics are extremely popular.

There's actually been a lack of Medieval WRPGS recently. Mostly fiction or sci-fi or modern dayish stuff recently.

What's a WRPG anyway?

CRPG, or Computer RPG, as in rpgs that have styles and/or gameplay-mechanical design that you would usually only see on computers and not consoles. CRPG was dropped when more CRPGS came over to consoles, and since the developers from America and Japan rarely changed their formats, it became WRPG vs JRPG especially after including Euro PC devs coming to consoles too. That's the historical continuity of the terms.

Anything else is just people trying to justify a position on their version of the terms, but the Japanese-style stuff goes back tot he early 90s when they were starting to gain small cult followings on consoles overseas. Computer rpgs were generally more varied in gaming diversity, and most Jrpgs played the same back then, so a Computer rpg being on a more powerful platform where considered more sophisticated and many Jrpgs ended up making strealined versions of those games on consoles.

When consoles finally got strong enough the CRPG label was starting to drop around the mid90s.

Thought Skyrim would have sold more there. Hmm, weird.

None of the Dark souls hasn’t crossed a mill in Japan? Or Skyrim?

Excluding VR, Skyrim PS3+360+PS4+SW in Japan sold 387,000 put together.

FALLOUT 4 is actually below that so I got the mixed up before SKYRIM is the distant second, and FALLOUT for is like 227k.

 

[Agent_Nobody]

I wonder what Geralt sounds like in Japanese.

Edit: When you mentioned Geralt‘s JA voice actor I had a morbid curiosity how Ciri’s voice actress sounded expecting a certain amount of cringe inducing fake falseto, but it’s not at all bad (she actually sounds so close to how the English version sounds it almost sounds like the same actress doing both versions), even the kid in this early scene isn’t over done with it and seems slightly better than the English version in that regard with the fake sounding child voices.

(Minor spoilers being early in the game):




Looking at both I have no wonder why they loved it, the dub is near flawless. It wasn’t some half-assed job, lip synch and everything is there, Ghost of Tsushima didn’t even bother with proper lip sync.

 

[Lethal01]

The creator isn’t Japanese.

Chained Echoes is not a Japanese Role Playing Game.
It's just inspired by JRPG's.