There’s Not a Single PS5, PS4 Game in the Japanese Sales Charts

For the first time since the late 1980s, the Japanese sales charts are dominated by a single console. The latest Famitsu results, which track physical software sales from 2nd August through 8th August, are completely occupied by Nintendo Switch titles. To clarify: every game, from 1st position to 30th position, belongs to the House of Mario’s hybrid hardware.

There were times during the 90s where Nintendo completely conquered the charts, but software was divided between the Famicom, Super Famicom, and Game Boy – this is the first time every single game has belonged to a single piece of hardware. Of course, from the perspective of a PlayStation website, this shows how poorly Sony’s games are selling in the company’s home nation.

Now there are, of course, caveats: the data only takes into account physical software sales, and we know that PlayStation has been skewing more towards digital of late – although uptake in Japan has been marginally slower than in Western territories. It’s also worth remembering that the PS5 is still out of stock, and PS4 hardware supply has abruptly tailed off.

Nevertheless, this is eye-opening stuff. The PS5 did manage to sell another 13.5k units for the week, which is a decent number considering the supply constraints. But its attach rate is extremely poor in the region, at least in terms of physical software sales anyway. Obviously the next-gen console is performing well globally, but it looks like Japan is increasingly becoming a lost cause for the company.