Kingdom Hearts III and Resident Evil 2 Make a Splash in Their First Week in Japan

January 25, 2019 saw the release of two heavily anticipated games in Japan: Kingdom Hearts III and Resident Evil 2. It’s not often we see multiple AAA games release on the same day, though it does seem to be happening with increasing frequency, so it’s always interesting to see which game comes out on top. It’s not exactly a surprising result, but Kingdom Hearts III was the best-selling game in Japan for the week ending January 27, 2019. However, Resident Evil 2 was no slouch, either, nabbing a close second place.

We already knew Resident Evil 2 has been performing very well worldwide, and Kingdom Hearts III definitely seems to be on a similar track (though it should be noted it only just launched worldwide on January 29th). It certainly seems that January is not the dead zone it once was for games.

Here is the Media Create Sales chart for the week ending January 27, 2019:

1. [PS4] Kingdom Hearts III – 610,077 (NEW)
2. [PS4] Resident Evil 2 – 252, 848
3. [NSW] New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 57,725 (312,869)
4. [NSW] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 38,478 (2,764,751)
5. [PS4] Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown – 25,499 (277,878)
6. [NSW] Super Mario Party – 11,958 (983,903)
7. [NSW] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 10,860 (2,096,812)
8. [NSW] Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! / Let’s Go, Eevee! – 9,334 (1,436,633)
9. [NSW] Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition – 8,588 (582,039)
10. [NSW] Splatoon 2 – 7,329 (2,910,678)
11. [NSW] Dragon Quest Builders 2 – 7,117 (217,610)
12. [NSW] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 6,578 (1,279,601)
13. [PS4] Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5 HD Remix – 6,097 (229,283)
14. [PS4] Dragon Quest Builders 2 – 5,275 (211,667)
15. [PS4] Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition – 5,039 (53,994)
16. [PS4] Yakuza 4 -4,393 (22,833)
17. [NSW] Fitness Boxing – 4,130 (19,719)
18. [PS4] PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds – (3,408)
19. [PS4] Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 – 3,261 (527,400)
20. [PS4] Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Hou – 2,868 (NEW)

The strength of the new titles pushed PlayStation 4 sales up quite a bit, though they still were no match for the power of the Nintendo Switch. Here are hardware sales for the week, followed by the previous week’s sales:

1. Nintendo Switch – 52,429 (71,139)
2. PlayStation 4 Pro – 33,032 (6,958)
3. PlayStation 4 – 19,612 (9,505)
4. New Nintendo 2DS LL – 3,781 (3,767)
5. PlayStation Vita – 1,701 (1,755)
6. New Nintendo 3DS LL – 972 (1,514)
7. Nintendo 2DS – 179 (158)
8. Xbox One X – 82 (94)
9. Xbox One – 11 (24)

[Source: Gematsu]