It finally happened: I saw a PlayStation 5 on the store shelves in Tokyo.
In fact, now that the console is finally in more plentiful supply, PS5 hardware managed to cross the 3 million sales mark in Japan this month – accounting for just under 10% of the total 32 million units sold worldwide since launch.
The PS5 launch was rocky everywhere around the world, but here in Japan, it felt egregiously so. For the first two years following the console’s November 2020 launch, I never saw one in the wild. Like, literally never. When stock was available, most chain stores restricted sales to those with a loyalty card, and with prior purchases on record, and other insanely strict measures – before then placing you in a lottery for the chance to maybe be able to buy one.
As someone who’s good at losing lotteries, I had no chance of buying one myself.
Stock sold out everywhere instantly every time, of course. Does that mean demand was extreme, or supplies were low? Or both? Well, with total weekly sales hovering around the 15,000-20,000-units mark for much of 2021 and 2022, and many gamers complaining that they couldn’t get hold of one, it seemed pretty clear that Japan was getting a disproportionately small slice of the global PS5 stock. This for a country of some 130 million people, one of the top three gaming markets in the world, and the birthplace of PlayStation – a lot of fans here felt forgotten by Sony.
The scarcity of PS5s became something of a meme here, even finding its way into wider popular culture. For example, idol pop group Dempagumi Inc referenced the shortages in their song Mikata Sezu ni ha Irarenai, with a desperate lyric that translates as “Life is helpless without friends – even the PS5 is all sold out”. And when the price of the console went up last summer by 5,500 yen (around $42), Twitter was awash with “as if we could buy it anyway” type bitter comments.
Times were rough indeed. But not necessarily a huge surprise. PlayStation watchers in Japan might have seen this coming, as Japan has become less and less of a priority market for PlayStation.
In February 2014, the PlayStation 4 finally launched in Japan – around three months later than it did in the United States. It took a couple of years for sales to really take off here. While the PS2 sold over 20 million units in Japan and the PS3 just about crossed the 10 million line, PS4 fell just short of 10 million units – a generation-by-generation decline. It began to become clear that the United States and Europe were much, much stronger markets for PlayStation home consoles. (The handheld PSP and Vita blazed brighter trails in Japan than elsewhere.)
In 2016, the PlayStation business moved its headquarters from Tokyo to San Mateo, California, signalling a shift in SIE’s priorities. In 2021, Japan Studio – the oldest PlayStation studio – was unceremoniously dismantled. Closing Japan Studio underlined Sony’s commitment to AAA Western games like The Last of Us and God of War over the endless variety but middling sales of Japanese games like Gravity Rush and The Last Guardian. PlayStation may be owned by massive Japanese conglomerate corporation Sony, but the heart and soul that drive it are as American as hamburgers, apple pie and revolting chocolate bars.
(For full disclosure, I worked at Japan Studio for a period myself as Community Manager, and I loved pretty much every game the studio made. Except Knack. Of course.)
Which brings us to today. PlayStation is of course still a beloved gaming brand in Japan, and demand for PS5 has been high. Just… Not as high as it is for Nintendo Switch.
A glance at the multiformat charts in Japan on any given week over the past few years paints a consistent picture: In Japan, Nintendo is king. For example, in the overall software charts for 2022, 18 of the Top 20 were games for the Switch, and nearly all of those were first-party Nintendo games; Elden Ring on PS4 managed to snag 10th place, and Gran Turismo for PS5 was 18th.
Still, now that PS5s are finally on the shelves in Japan, the drought appears to be over, and we can get a better idea of what the demand really is. Since December 2022, sales figures have crept up, peaking in February at around 93,026 units in one week, according to data published by Famitsu (combining the standard PS5 and the discless version). From there it has been a gradual decline but still usually No.1 in the hardware sales charts, with a healthy 64,869 in the most recent week at the time of writing. For comparison, the Switch – which is now in its seventh year – has sold around 60,000 combined units per week in 2023, for a running total of over 28 million in Japan alone.
So, PlayStation 5 is selling well in Japan as supply has caught up with demand, but the Switch has a long, long lead overall.
But now that players in Japan can finally get their hands on a PS5, what games are they buying? Probably not the ones you’d expect. Like PS4 before it, PS5 launched with a paucity of games that appeal to the Japanese market, its lineup largely dominated by Western-made or Western-facing games; but domestic releases and backwards compatibility with PS4 have definitely helped to bridge the gap.
In terms of lifetime sales of physical disc games, Gran Turismo 7 is in pole position as PS5’s biggest seller, with 294,714 physical copies sold on PS5 – this seems to be the closest the PS5 has to a system-selling killer app in Japan. This is followed by Horizon Forbidden West, Elden Ring, Hogwarts Legacy and Resident Evil Village. God of War: Ragnarok, on the other hand, just scrapes in at No.10 with 53,816 physical copies sold on PS5.
SIEJA does not regularly announce figures for digital sales, but it does publish rankings. The top digital games of the past couple of months have included Monster Hunter Rise, Forspoken, One Piece Odyssey, Hogwarts Legacy, Wild Hearts and Like a Dragon: Ishin.
We’re even seeing some PlayStation games in the weekly multiplatform physical charts. In recent weeks we've seen chart spots for Wild Hearts, which appeals to Japan’s Monster Hunter loving audience; Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, which is hot among Soulslike fans; and Hogwarts Legacy, which is enjoying a magical reception in a country where Harry Potter is ragingly popular and where language and cultural barriers have prevented its author’s online comments from damaging the brand.
The multiplatform charts also include the occasional PS4 game, as that older hardware remains in people’s homes – Tales of Symphonia Remastered, Final Fantasy Theatrhythm Final Bar Line, and Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse are all doing well. Then again, in cases where a Switch version is available, as with Theatrhythm and Fatal Frame, the Switch version usually charts higher.
So where does this leave PlayStation 5 in Japan? Now that hardware is more readily available, there’s no doubt that Sony’s console has plenty of potential to do well in Japan. Yes, Nintendo continues to eat Sony’s bento, but 3 million consoles sold is not to be sneezed at, and with the right games, demand is likely to increase.
For example, Insomniac’s Spider-Man games do well here, so the launch of Spider-Man 2 later this year will be interesting to watch, and Final Fantasy – while not as big in Japan as Dragon Quest – is popular enough that FFXVI and FFVII Rebirth will surely encourage sales of PS5 consoles.
And while multiplatform games sell better on Switch when a version is available, PlayStation still usually fares better than PC and Xbox. PS5 will surely be the default platform of choice for multiplatform games that will not be on Switch, such as Resident Evil 4, Street Fighter 6 and Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name.
“But what about PS VR2?!”, I hear you ask. And since you’re asking it so loudly that I can hear it all the way over here in Tokyo, allow me to respond. We’ve yet to see any sales figures in Japan for PS VR2, but... If you thought the $550 price tag seemed harsh in the US, 75,000 yen in Japan is sticker shock of a high order – it’s considerably more than the already high cost of the PS5 (60,000 yen) and PS5 Digital Edition (50,000 yen). Combined with the smaller existing PS5 install base here and once again a lack of killer games for the Japan market, there are certainly plenty of hurdles. But not necessarily insurmountable ones. With the right games and services, there could still be hope.
It’s been wild to see PlayStation lose so much ground in Japan to Nintendo over the years, and indeed the rise of mobile gaming – which in Japan is a market as large as all of the console and PC gaming market combined – makes matters all the starker. The PC gaming market is growing fast here, partly thanks to the scarcity of new-gen hardware, and even Xbox appears to be doing better this generation.