Pokémon Shining Pearl takes the shine off the PS5 (in Japan)

The new 9th generation consoles have been released for over a year. However, thanks to the semiconductor crisis, whoever sells more devices is the manufacturer that manages to make more units available in stores. Or the one that has the most attention-grabbing software in the market. Nintendo and its Pokémon Shining Pearl / Brilliant Diamond in Japan say so.

• PS5 interrupts sequence of 33 consecutive Switch wins (USA)
• Densha de GO!! and the strength of Nintendo Switch in Japan


Japanese cover art of Pokémon Shining Pearl (credit: Nintendo)

Before commenting on the software, let’s check the detailed data of the 51st plus 52nd week hardware sales

(which were from Dec 20, 2021

on January 2, 2022) on the archipelago, according to Famitsu.

HARDWARE SALES IN JAPAN (FAMITSU)
Platform	50th week
to 51st +

to the 52nd of 2021

in 2021since launch

Nintendo Switch 176,832 units

393,980 units5,785,053 units

23,125 .427 units

PlayStation 5

8,664 units

72,064 units

1,014,862 units

1,270,012 units

Xbox Series X|S 2,889 units

2,159 units97,757 units129,181 units

PS4 family 61 units68 units

104,078 units

9,394,968 unitsline 3DS

302 units670 units

25,549 units

24,584,457 units

· The OLED version of the Nintendo Switch had only a few weeks of sales in 2021, which explains why it sold only 875,765 units. almost 5.8 million sold in Japan. The Switch Lite sold 2,424,979 units in the Land of the Rising Sun in 2021. Combining both models (3,300,744 units) , we see that the regular Switch was responsible for just under half of sales there, which may point out that the Japanese preferred different versions of the basic one last year. In a distant second place, we have the PlayStation 5: Sony’s new console had great sales in the final two weeks of 2021, averaging 36,000 units, but not even slightly higher than the week of the Japanese release (118k in the 46th week from 2020). Last year (2021) the PS5 basically sold one million consoles in the archipelago, with 152,305 units of the digital version, without an optical disc player. Despite the good numbers for 2021, the PS5’s trend is not to grow much in the archipelago in 2022. According to developer Nihon Falcom in the annual Famitsu Game Whitepaper 2021 document, Nintendo Switch tends to grow less in software sales in 2022 but the PS5 will only take over the software market that was already the PS4. Unless we see some phenomenon like Pokémon Shining Pearl / Brilliant Diamond being released on Sony’s console in 2022. Regarding Xbox One (115 thousand consoles sold in total), Microsoft’s situation in Japan has even improved: the Xbox Series X|S almost reached 100,000 units sold in 2021, 48,785 of which were just the Series X. That’s right, the simpleton Xbox Series S sold the most in 2021, 48,972 units. However, the X has a total installed base of 73,661 consoles in Japan because of 2020 sales. This is quite a feat, although the Xbox 360 fared far better than its successors. Due to the scarcity of chips, the PS4 family sold little more in 2021 than all the new Xbox consoles in Japan. There were 104,078 units and it looks like it is basically being discontinued as the more powerful brother PS4 Pro (died with 1,575,723 units) . Another console that is about to be discontinued in Japan is the Nintendo 3DS, whose New version had already been cut with the release of the Switch. The old warrior has only survived there thanks to the remaining stocks of the 2DS and 2DS LL. Finally, regarding the sale of copies of the games, we have below the Japanese Top 10 of the thirty-third week of the year. Yes, the Famitsu Top 30 is out but listing the top ten positions is enough for the focus of this text. In square brackets is the platform; in parentheses at the end, the cumulative sales of the title since the Japanese release. Ranking of the best selling games in Japan in the 51st and 52nd week of 2021 (20 of December 2021 to January 2, 2022, Famitsu) Pokémon Shining Pearl / Brilliant Diamond (The Pokémon Company, 19/11/21) — 231.275 (2.393.972); Mario Party Superstars (Nintendo, 29/10/21) — 206.145 (725.701); Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Nintendo, 28/04/17) — 104.540 (4.323.883); Big Brain Academy: Brain vs. Brain (Nintendo, 03/12/21) — 89.970 (191.786); Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Nintendo, 07/12/18) — 83.491 (4.662.764); Momotarō Dentetsu: Showa. Heisei. Reiwa mo Teiban! (Konami, 19/11/20) — 78.350 (2.542.546); Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Nintendo, 20/03/20) — 78.311 (7.116.432); Minecraft (Microsoft, 21/06/18) — 74.644 (2.440.427); Ring Fit Adventure (Nintendo, 18/10/19) — 46.111 (3.016.499); Pokémon Shield / Sword (The Pokémon Company, 11/15/19) — 35,411 (4,277,522). Within six weeks of sales, Pokémon Shining Pearl / Brilliant Diamond basically leaned on what the Momotarō Dentetsu: Showa. Heisei. Reiwa mo Teiban! took over a year to sell. It is interesting to note the strength of Animal Crossing: New Horizons in Japan, with more than 7 million copies sold. When Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is in the Top 5 weekly sales, we can even speculate that it was basically the first game of a quarter of the new owners of any Japanese Switch. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate could share this same situation of initial console purchase in Japan, although on a slightly smaller scale than that of MK8D. It is possible that Pokémon Shining Pearl / Brilliant Diamond reach the total sales of Pokémon Shield / Sword? Keeping pace, likely. Another game about to hit the goal of 4 million copies sold in the archipelago is Splatoon 2 ), which is in the 25th position of weekly sales with 5,773 copies (out of 3,983,014). Is there any chance that we will see any non-Switch game in the Japanese Top 10? As we saw above in the Falcom paper, very rarely. Source: Famitsu (ranking), via Gematsu and Reset Was . Read too: Ghost of Tsushima interrupts Nintendo’s winning streak (in Japan) Note: This article has been indexed to our website. We do not claim legitimacy, ownership or copyright of any of the content above. To see the article at original source Click Here