Japan Sales Charts: PS5 Continues to Tank in Japan Following Price Increase

That may have been a bit of an oopsie

This is Japan flicking two fingers at the once-Japanese company.

Well done Fony, you've handed your supposed homeland 100% over to Nintendo.

It's Nintendo land there now. I don't think sony sees it's as a big market for them anymore. They prefer handheld gaming, until Sony releases a handheld there i don't expect big numbers anymore.

@sanderson72 it's Nintendo homeland as well. They prefer handheld gaming

@Medic_alert Strong doubt. Sony really screwed up on this one. Switch is king over there.

@Americansamurai1 Yes, that what I mean. American Fony's greed has just alienated the user base. They're on course to become as popular as Microsoft in the region.
With no PSP/Vita successor, they might as well call it quits.

Astro bot is “holding steady” but it originally barely sold anything so it’s not that meaningful.

Understand inflation but sony needs to aleast price to a break even point. They dont seem like they want to lose a cent on a sold machine and instead want to profit on hardware now. Switch still like $200-$300 and is their preferred handheld

Meanwhile Phil tells us xbox has never had so many sales at TGS as it sells 600 units.
Theres different levels of struggling clearly, and 6 million sales in the territory is hardly a failure.
Japan are very much a handheld nation, so switch would always reign supreme. You seen the size of their living space? A Series X or PS5 will take up 25% of their free space! 🤣

This is how it happened.
This is how PlayStation in Japan died.

Nintendo has fully taken over Japan.

Honestly I fail to see how that is bad in any shape or form, Sony has never managed to outsell a good Nintendo console for long. Managing to move the same amount of units as a $200 hardware despite being almost double the price is quite the feat.

Wanna see a tanked console? Xbox series all time sales is still less than Switch on a good month. The nintendo behemoth is capable of outselling the green team on a 10:1 basis constantly.

@sanderson72 all companies are greedy. Even Nintendo, they haven't permanently dropped the price of the switch it's still 300, even looking at their first party games they don't permanently drop this priced the switch two is probably going to be 400+ and their games will be 70. Prices are only going to increase with the high inflation.

Could be the price hike or could be that some who were gonna get a PS5 in Japan around this time have decided to wait for the PS5 Pro instead. Hazard a guess it's both these reasons why PS5 sales are not the usual numbers?

They did sell 6 million units over there already. Didnt the PS4 sell like 9 or 10 million in lifetime sales in Japan.

People here are always so quick to jump to conclusions. It is possible that from now on they stop growing and keep getting fewer sales. But people here seem certain of it. As if sales dont fluctuate because of other reasons

This is more of a trend it seems than spelling the death of Sony in Japan. Japanese gamers tend to much more prefer handheld gaming (adding fuel to the rumors of a possible handheld PS6). PS4 also didn't exactly light the country on fire selling about 10 million lifetime units in Japan. The PS5 is already at 6+million.

Japan gives a hard pass on anything that isn't mobile.

Playstation is a global brand now, they're more interested in the American market, and are far too comfy in Europe, and are trying to make ground in China and Korea with their hero projects.

Japan loves portables, and going to arcades. There's people who basically live in those arcades only playing one game, some games have IC cards to save progress and others have playing cards - it's like yugioh and a video game in one.. mental.

What else did Sony expect?

@Shad361 Not really, Astro Bot was the 2nd best-selling game in the US and UK when it came out.

Just wait until Monster Hunter Wilds and Persona 6 launch, PS5 sales should increase then.... If only for a few weeks.

Other than that though Japan is fully fixated on Nintendo and handheld/mobile gaming, so the Switch ticks both boxes and is why it's so popular and why Nintendo can't ever risk going back to a TV console only device.

@Shad361 You seem to have some sort of Grudge against Astro 😅

I wish Astro took off a little more there than it has.

@UltimateOtaku91 Persona 6 will 100% launch on Switch 2 day one.
I’d bet anything on it.

@Milt like almost every new release with any type of buzz? It’s not hard for new games to get on that list…lasting is the hard part.When old GTA can top the uk charts that’s not good sign,that means the industry is weak.

@Shad361 The only thing not meaningful here is you and your silly ignorant comment. Astro Bot, like others have mentioned above me, has sold quite well in most of the world.
But go ahead and try to deny it. I'm sure SOMEONE will eventually fall for it... lmfao

Also, the game industry is quite weak, I have to agree with that... but mostly in the UK. These people still eat up GTA V as if it's yesterday's leftovers (which is actually kinda accurate if you think about it), but in most other countries, the game still sold really well.

@Keyblade-Dan I don’t have anything against the game, but the way some people are acting you would swear this game is carrying PlayStation

@Maubari lol don’t see how it’s ignorant when I can actually defend my position…you just don’t like the result.

“Sold quite well” where’s the raw numbers to show that? Sony hasn’t said a peep and this is exactly what people said about rebirth. It turned a profit but it’s not a smash hit.

Don't blame them. I didn't renew ps+ when it ran out. Haven't had it since.

Unless Sony lowers the price of the base console or releases a native handheld, I don't see PlayStation's presence increasing in Japan. They have to do something dramatic over there if they have any hope of winning back their home turf from Nintendo.

PC is also big in japan, it’s not just nintendo. Console just doesn’t have incentives to justify its price these days. The amount of Playstation/Xbox games on PC nowadays is pretty wild, and they all have their native controller support, so it’s like your PC is your PS5/Xbox & you’re connected to their services when you sign in to your psn or xbl account

I always used to think that software was where a company made its money. Lose on hardware and then have a good proportion of games for an owner to purchase and make the losses back slowly, so increasing the hardware prices and not just dropping the price to get more people to purchase is just so weird. At this rate, Sony should just forget about the Japanese market entirely because once Switch 2 arrives, it will obliterate the PlayStation Sales to date and Sony can be like Xbox in the region and sell 100s a month.. Poor generation for sure.

They get what they deserve.

Astro Bot, on the other hand deserved all the love, but alas.

@Bionic-Spencer arguably worst console and Sony generation ever. Void of new ideas. £825 for a Pro for remastered games. I could go on.

@nomither6 yep

Sony has always been, but now has doubled down in the new economy as more other companies have been doing, the kind of company that would rather sell one widget for a million yen, than a million widgets for 1 yen. PlayStation never operated that way off to the side of Sony corporate, but corporate has sunk their teeth into them wholly now.

But that model doesn't work when you're trying to sell software on the hardware. They still think it's like TVs.

Astro Bot in the sea of Nintendo games and funnily enough, it's the most Nintendo-like games that exists on PS in the last few years.

Actually, PS5 moved 8757 units.

And it is per month. And it is calm before the holiday season storm. And who the ***** wants all those switches!? I'm sure every Japanese person has three switches, one lite and two Oleds by now. Let them wallow in children's games.

The PS5 price hike: How Sony is getting reimbursed for their epic flop, Concord. 🫤

As a financial analyst (though, not for a gigantic international entertainment company like Sony), I think Sony should have just eaten the price increase from the weakness of the yen.They would have made a lot more money from software and services than they are now and, even more importantly, wouldn't cede ground to a competitor, which will cost them exponentially more over time.

As well as the price hike, the fact the pro is imminent may have a little to do with it…just saying.

Won't be long before PS4 is out selling Xbox X/s in Japan, who'd have thunk it hehe

Stand alone consoles are dying. Sony need to get with the program and create an actual portable vs a cheesey wifi home network only system.

Half my family is in Taiwan. Them and friends don’t play on TV console. No time, no space, not the culture, and far too expensive compared to the cost of life. Arcade is however a big thing, handheld in the train as well. Probably the same thing in Japan. So yeah, PlayStation doesn’t feel really connected to Asia sometimes. Not surprised it doesn’t sell well.

@Shad361 "where’s the raw numbers to show that? Sony hasn’t said a peep and this is exactly what people said about rebirth."

Most of the times, if Sony announced sales numbers a couple days after X game released, it means that game sold gangbusters and fastly surpassed their expectations, like GoW Ragnarok or Spidey 2. If Sony not yet say anything about Astro sales, that means it doesn't sold gangbusters in a very short time like GoWR or Spidey 2. But that doesn't mean Astro Bot doesn't sold well.

Example. Sony still hasn't say anything about Helldivers 2 sales numbers, not even an official press release. But turns out it sold 12 million copies in 3 months according to Arrowhead CEO.

Sony also hasn't said a peep about Death Stranding sales numbers, which some people thinks it was a big flop back in 2019. But turns out the game is a big success, sold 5 million copies PS4 & PC combine which is enough to recoup the devs cost + brought profit for Kojima to funded his next games.

Astro just came out like two weeks ago and according to Matt Piscatella and Chris Dring the game sold well in the US and UK, better than other Sony platformers like Ratchet Rift Apart in the same timeframe. iirc, Rift Apart sold 1.1 million copies in just one month after released.

So, we can estimates the numbers more accurately with the next NPD report. But i don't expect Sony gonna show Astro Bot numbers until their next financial report.

They really shouldn't have expected different

@PuppetMaster 5 million for death stranding is mid at best for how much the game was hyped, even if it turned a profit.

Devil May Cry 5 sold like 8 million with far less marketing and budget. Even Street Fighter sold 4 million copies in a little over a year and a half. Honestly AAA games should be reaching close to 10 million lifetime at this point.

And Astrobot might have outsold ratchet,but like 11 million people had a ps5 back then. 60 million have it now and it only sold 20% more with a 6x bigger playerbase

PS4 sold 7.9 million over its entire lifespan in Japan, the PS5 is at 6.1 million 4 years into its run. According to a Famitsu article, 4 years 3 months into PS4 lifecycle (March 2018) 6.4 million had sold in Japan. So overall the difference is extremely minimal.

We will have to wait & see in 4 years of course. But considering Japan's ever increasing shift to handheld & mobile gaming, these numbers are looking fine for Sony's console in my opinion going off the numbers.

Inflation is what it is, it affects everything. No one wants price increases of course but here we are.

@Shad361 You forgot that Dead Stranding is a new IP with experimental gameplay that doesn't aim for mainstream audience. You can say it's "mid" despite the big hype but that doesn't change any fact that it sold well and even get a sequel.

DMC and SF are very popular and long running series. With 11 years gap between DMC 4 and 5 and how SF 5 didn't received that well with SF fans, obviously DMC 5 and SF 6 are gonna sold well. So i'm not sure what's your point mentioning DMC and SF here.

And bigger userbase doesn't always translate to higher sales. Switch for example, it has sold 140+ million units but 1st party games like Metroid Dread only sold 3 million copies, not even 3% of total playerbase.

Still, Astro Bot is selling well and also the highest rating full single player game for this year. It's a great achievement for AA budget platformer without Mario in the box art.

Got to laugh at microsoft sales, that's tanking lol. And Greed from Sony is showing. It's about time the rest of World followed. The prices for pro & the anniversary edition are ridiculous.