Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – steamrolling the competition

Stats for sales in Japan last year show just how much Nintendo dominated in its homeland, in terms of both software and hardware.

Unlike in the West, Japan has always been perfectly happy to reveal exactly how much its games and consoles sell.

The only time we ever get sales figures in the UK is at the end of the year, when the top 20 for the year is revealed. And now the same has happened for Japan, allowing you to compare the two.

As in the UK, the numbers below don’t include digital sales but thanks to the detailed sales figures we can get a pretty good idea of how everything did. Or rather how Nintendo did.


Japan's best-selling video games of 2018 (physical only) 1. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (NS) [Nintendo] – 2,360,655

2. Monster Hunter: World (PS4) [Capcom] – 1,962,221

3. Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu!/Let’s Go, Eevee! (NS) [Pokémon Co.] – 1,253,677

4. Splatoon 2 (NS) [Nintendo] – 1,122,324 | 2,874,420

5. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (NS) [Nintendo] 926,553 | 2,030,297

6. Super Mario Party (NS) [Nintendo] 764,853

7. Kirby Star Allies (NS) [Nintendo] 664,815

8. Super Mario Odyssey (NS) [Nintendo] 575,926 | 1,900,206

9. Minecraft (NS) [Microsoft] 525,045

10. The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild (NS) [Nintendo] – 491,648 | 1,179,692

11. Call Of Duty: Black Ops IIII (PS4) [Sony] – 479,511

12.Pokémon Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon (3DS) [Pokemon Co.] 429,672 | 2,433,279

13. Mario Tennis Aces (NS) [Nintendo] – 376,766

14. Marvel’s Spider-Man (PS4) [Sony] – 303.994

15. Taiko No Tatsujin: Drum ‘N’ Fun! (NS) [Bandai Namco] – 270,415

16. Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball 2018 (PS4) [Konami] – 252,297

17.Nintendo Labo Toy-Con 01: Variety Kit (NS) [Nintendo] – 226,845

18.Judgment (PS4) [Sega] – 224,048

19. Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (NS) [Nintendo] – 222,025

20. Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle (NS) [Nintendo] – 213,453

Nintendo completely dominate the top 20 and while you can see that the rest of the top 100 here is more varied they still accounted for 39.8% of all video game sales last year in Japan.



Capcom were a distant second, on 9.7%, in large part thanks to Monster Hunter: World, which was the only game other than Minecraft to challenge Nintendo’s dominance of the top 10.

As you can also see Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was the biggest seller, which is all the more impressive given it wasn’t released until December.

The second figure next to some game is their lifetime total, if they were released before 2018, with the highest-ranking veteran being Splatoon 2 at number four.

In terms of hardware sales the Nintendo Switch was, unsurprisingly, the biggest seller, with falling sales of the 3DS meaning that the PlayStation 4 was the only other meaningful competition.

Smartphones are still the most popular format for games in Japan, but the stats show that traditional console gaming is still pulling in some impressive numbers.

Japanese console sales for 2018 Nintendo Switch – 3,482,388 | 6,889,546 (2017: 3,407,158)

PlayStation 4 – 1,695,227 | 7,552,090 (2017: 1,935,247)

Nintendo 3DS – 566,420 | 24,304,964 (2017: 1,827,131)

PlayStation Vita – 181,728 | 5,825,354 (2017: 396,207)

Xbox One – 15,339 |102,931 (2017: 14,644)

Wii U – 2,004 | 3,303,559 (2017: 21,817)

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