Sony has a lot to smile about when looking at the most recent round of sales data out of Japan. Sadly, there’s still just as much cause for concern as there is celebration.
To succeed in Japan, Sony needs Square Enix RPGs to find a foothold. This week, Final Fantasy Type-0 HD is listed as the top-selling game overall, thanks to games being divided up by system. When you add up the numbers for Battlefield and Resident Evil, both of them outsold Type-0 HD. But it’s a mixed message, and what it ultimately means is still anyone’s guess.
On one hand, Biohazard (Resident Evil) has always been big in Japan, and shooters have steadily been gaining popularity; their good sales figures aren’t surprising. On the other, those things are big, but are they really Final Fantasy big? But wait, this thing has three hands!
On the other other hand, the Final Fantasy game in question has already been played a million Japanese gamers (official hard copy sales at nearly 800,000; then I’m adding 10% for digital and taking a guess that used sales must have done well too. They don’t count on the charts, but that doesn’t mean people didn’t play the game).
Wait, crap, there’s more. That already-played Final Fantasy game comes with a demo of the next Final Fantasy game. But wait! Doesn’t Japan prefer handhelds? But wait! Final Fantasy XIII on PS3 sold a million in its first weekend, back in the day before the brand was kinda ruined. Is five years enough to so rapidly transition between selling a million in a day or two, to selling only five figures in your first week?
For the record, FF Type-0 HD‘s 92,000 copy debut on PS4 is compared with a 472,000 debut on PSP. The PSP had over 18 million Japanese users at the time, while the PS4 currently has not much beyond one million — proportional success for HD. Then again, HD has way fewer games to compete with than the original FFT0 did, and costs less (not counting hardware cost).
See how many wrinkles there are to this? There’s so much to digest, so many “Yeah, but” asterisks on everything that it’s hard to come up with firm conclusions. I’m sure experts the world over will chime in with reasons why their own conjecture is cold hard fact, but sadly, we don’t really know any more now than we did a week ago, as far as Final Fantasy and/or PS4 are concerned.
What we do know is that March and April will be a sort of proving ground for PS4 hardware and software. We’ve seen a steady rise in hardware sales for PS4, and you can expect another in the next round of sales reports, thanks to these games just released today in Japan:
I just remember that Type-0 was also quite outsold compared to other Square Enix ports and remasters such as Final Fantasy X HD and the PSP version of Tactics Ogre (thanks for the comments there, Phelan). This is certainly worth a note, but, like everything else in this article, comes with an asterisk. Final Fantasy Type-0 is only three and a half years old on PSP, having released in the fall of 2011 in Japan.
That’s a lot shorter of a time in between releases than most remasters — or at least, the Square Enix ones. Modern games are getting remasters a lot quicker than they used to, but this gap is a lot shorter than other comparable Square Enix releases. In the future, the PS4 version of Final Fantasy X HD will break that trend.
Got any predictions for numbers of these freshly released games?
Japan PS4 games March 26
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Bloodborne
Dark Souls and Dark Souls II were huge in Japan, both having opening-week sales of more than a quarter-million. But in a country reluctant to move on from PS3, can a PS4 exclusive match those numbers? Now is when we find out for real.
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Disgaea 5
This should offer tactical RPG fans the game that Natural Doctrine failed to deliver.
Disgaea games have a dedicated fanbase with size not to be overlooked, but Disgaea 4 only sold 80,000 copies in its PS3 debut. Can the PS4, with its much smaller install base, do any better? Nippon Ichi has said that Disgaea isn't just for Japan, but you'd better believe that domestic income sure is nice to have for any developer. And happy devs means a happy console maker.
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Senran Kagura: Estival Versus
The thing about this one is that it's also on Vita, and its Vita version is almost guaranteed to outsell the PS4 version. Nonetheless, Sony is hoping both to offer something to the holdouts who don't have a gaming handheld, and to Senran Kagura fans who'd rather see their jiggles on a big screen. It could work. Sony sure hopes it does.
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One Piece Pirate Warriors 3
This game's PS3 version will almost surely outsell its PS4 version. It's simply the pattern so far. Western games have their PS4 versions selling more while Japanese games see their PS3 versions selling better, consistently.
What Sony is probably hoping for with this is to add another incentive into a basketfull. I can't imagine any executives believing that this will singlehandedly move PS4s, but you can kinds get how it could be one factor among many.
PS4 sales lagging behind all other PlayStation consoles as they are, that's a positive Sony will gladly take.
