Japan’s weekly game sales for the week of May 20 to May 26 were the lowest they’ve been since 1999.
Via Dengeki, here are the top ten selling games at Japanese retail for the week:
10. Team Sonic Racing (Switch) - 3,533 copies
9. Assassin’s Creed III Remastered (PS4) - 3,714
8. Yoshi’s Crafted World (Switch) - 3,728
7. Days Gone (PS4) - 4,333
6. Resident Evil Origins Collection (Switch) - 4,527
5. Splatoon 2 (Switch) - 4,878
4. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Switch) - 5,250
3. New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe (Switch) - 5,433
2. Minecraft (Switch) - 8,717
1. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Switch) - 9,039
As Dengeki points out, the number one game, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, came out over six months ago. The other new games out during this week—Resident Evil Origins Collection, Assassin’s Creed III Remastered and Team Sonic Racing—all sold under 5,000 copies in their first week, which is hardly impressive. (Yet, they still made it into the top ten, showing the current state of retail game sales in Japan.)
Hardware sales were down by 5.3 percent during this week. According to Dengeki and Hachima, not a single game sold over 10,000 copies, making this the worst weekly sales figures in Japan for the past twenty years. Obviously, digital sales are cutting into these retail numbers, and bigger titles later this year should (hopefully) see better numbers.
Should we be worried? Not yet! Kotaku reported earlier this year that the Japanese console game market grew for the first time in 11 years. So maybe next week will be better.