Following the reveal of the top-twenty sales chart on Wednesday, Media Create released its weekly analysis, providing deeper look at the situation of the Japanese market last week.
Last week marked the beginning of the Obon shopping period, that is normally particularly strong for gaming sales. This year there have been several elements that made it much bigger than last year.
Total software sales were 657,000, which is much higher than the 443.000 units sold in the same period last year. Main drivers were Dragon Quest XI and Splatoon 2, while the appeal of the Obon Holiday to casual users also pushed catalogue titles like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which had a 125.41% spike compared to the previous week.
The Snack World Trejarers also had a strong debut, and compared favorably with the latest 3DS new IP launched by Level-5. Its 97, 534 units sold were much higher than the debut sales of Yo-Kai Watch, that launched with 54,000 copies in 2013. Considering the success of the Yo-Kai Watch series after that, it’s certainly promising. Media Create describes it a “smooth start.”
Moving on to the hardware front, total sales were 181,000, wich is a whopping 273.01% of sales in the same period year-on-year. The drivers of this increase were the Nintendo Switch, the New 2DS XL, and even PS4, which doubled sales year-on-year.
If you want to compare, you can also read last week’s analysis.