Japan Sales Charts: PS5 Can't Quite Topple 100k in Final Weeks of Year 1
Image: Push Square

All in all, Sony had a decent year in Japan in 2023 – although it couldn’t topple 100k in the final two weeks of December. The system instead settled for a total tally of 81,943 units, less than half that of ageing rival Nintendo Switch. Obviously, the House of Mario’s role as market leader in its home nation is pretty much unthreatened at this point – even if its hybrid hardware is rumoured to be replaced later this year.

The bundled Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 was PS5’s best-seller, moving 53,238 units and breaking Nintendo’s dominance in the software top ten. It should be noted, these sales account for the period spanning 18th December through 31st December, so a total of two weeks as opposed to the usual one week. It’ll be interesting to see if Sony can do anything to improve its software sales in 2024, as while hardware has done well, it’s still not shifting as many games as you’d expect it to.

Software Sales

  1. [NSW] Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Nintendo, 10/20/23) – 221,738 (1,549,401)
  2. [NSW] Momotaro Dentetsu World (Konami, 11/16/23) – 192,620 (795,681)
  3. [NSW] Pikmin 4 (Nintendo, 07/21/23) – 78,589 (1,119,027)
  4. [NSW] Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince (Square Enix, 12/01/23) – 77,035 (510,477)
  5. [PS5] Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (SIE, 10/20/23) – 53,238 (166,731)
  6. [NSW] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Nintendo, 04/28/17) – 46,452 (5,631,598)
  7. [NSW] Minecraft (Microsoft, 06/21/18) – 38,472 (3,394,222)
  8. [NSW] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Nintendo, 12/07/18) – 38,005 (5,400,275)
  9. [NSW] WarioWare: Move It! (Nintendo, 11/03/23) – 37,147 (141,554)
  10. [NSW] Pokemon Scarlet / Pokemon Violet (The Pokemon Company, 11/18/22) – 35,679 (5,246,363)

Hardware Sales

  1. Nintendo Switch OLED – 107,928 (6,428,158)
  2. PlayStation 5 – 72,207 (4,298,170)
  3. Nintendo Switch Lite – 31,547 (5,674,074)
  4. Nintendo Switch – 29,391 (19,684,424)
  5. PlayStation 5 Digital Edition – 9,736 (666,687)
  6. PlayStation 4 – 1,119 (7,915,336)
  7. Xbox Series S – 605 (295,123)
  8. Xbox Series X – 554 (244,984)
  9. New 2DS LL (including 2DS) – 34 (1,192,744)

[source famitsu.com, via gematsu.com]