PS4 Sales slump in Japan

It’s not an understatement to say the PlayStation 4 has had a slow start in Japan. Released earlier this year on February 22, the system has shifted a paltry 620,000 units - a far cry from it’s success in the West. During the week of June 23-29 it moved only 8,095 units - a sliver more than the aging PlayStation 3 which handled 7,480 units according to this weeks Media Create figures.

As a point of reference, the Wii U moved 10,000 units in its home territory (1.8m lifetime) and the 3DS led sales with 27,800 across its variants (15.7m lifetime). It’s likely that the home console business in Japan has shrunk because of the ubiquitous mobile phone and the prevalence of handheld gaming systems in Japan’s commuting culture.

The slow uptake on of the PlayStation 4 is hardly surprising; this weeks release of Watch Dogs (63,539 units on PS4 vs 31,028 on PS3) notwithstanding, there’s been a notable dearth of software for the system, the online storefront having remained almost unchanged for weeks save for the inclusion of a port of the PS3/Vita game Akiba’s Trip 2.

Last week, Sega announced a new entry into the popular Yakuza (Ryuu ga Gotoku) series would be coming to both the PS3 and PS4, a decision likely influenced by the relative sizes of the PS3/PS4 userbase. This is in stark contrast to how Sega immediately jumped from the PS2 to the PS3 with a stop-gap Yakuza game.

In the West however, the PlayStation 4 appears to have been selling well, with the PlayStation 4 having long cleared the 7m units sold mark back in April - perhaps an indication that Sony was right to release the system in the West before its homeland. Earlier this year Nikkei Business Daily found that Sony was actually leading global hardware sales (across all its systems) for the first time in 8 years.

The PlayStation 4’s closest competitor, the Xbox One, will be released in Japan later this year on September 4, though traditionally Microsoft has found the territory a difficult one to break into, with many in the region displaying apathy towards the Redmond giant’s consoles in the past. Whether it’s a case of third time lucky for Microsoft remains to be seen, though if we were you we wouldn’t hold our breath.

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Shehzaan Abdulla

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Shehzaan grew up playing SEGA consoles and has a soft spot for retro games seeing as he was playing the Master System his parents bought him when all his friends had Playstations (this was also around the same time he realized he was probably adopted).