Kingdom Hearts 3 Japan Sales Make it the Best-Selling 2019 Game

For several months, Kingdom Hearts III stood atop the sales charts in the US. Shortly after its own launch, Mortal Kombat 11 took the Square Enix title’s place. Recently, The Division 2 was revealed to have overtaken them both, becoming the US’ highest-selling game in 2019, thus far. But Kingdom Hearts III still reigns supreme in Japan. It’s beat out the competition by a pretty good margin too.

According to sales data collected by Famitsu between December 31, 2018 and June 30, 2019, Kingdom Hearts III has sold approximately 838,927 copies in Japan. This puts it in a decent lead versus the country’s second biggest-selling title game for the year, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (779,845), which launched in late 2018 and has a lifetime sales total of over three million units. As far as new releases in 2019 are concerned, New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe trails behind the latest Kingdom Hearts entry with 643,426 copies moved so far.

The top 10 best-selling game in Japan for 2019 as of June 30th are listed below. Lifetime sales are included after the 2019 sales numbers for titles that launched before the start of this year.

Kingdom Hearts III – 838,927 / NEW
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 779,845 / 3,140,500
New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 643,426 / NEW
Resident Evil 2 – 393,688 / NEW
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 318,492 / 2,348,789
Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! / Let’s Go, Eevee! – 312,278 / 1,565,955
Minecraft – 305,640 / 830,685
Super Mario Party – 284,170 / 1,049,023
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice – 260,223 / NEW
Splatoon 2 – 224,791 / 3,099,211

It’s interesting to note that only four games released in 2019 appear on the list. Additionally interesting is that six of the 10 best-selling titles in Japan are exclusive to the Nintendo Switch. This doesn’t seem to be too much of a surprise, however. After all, as of May 2019, the Nintendo hybrid platform had outsold both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in Japan. During the week of April 29th, Nintendo Switch’s lifetime sales of 8,125,637 units eclipsed those of the PlayStation 4, which then stood at around 8,077,757.

[Source: Famitsu via GamingBolt]