The PlayStation 4 is not scoring big in Japan. Enterbrain, the publisher of Japanese video game magazine "Famitsu," released a report on the game industry in Japan and noted that revenue for the first half of 2014 was the same as the first half of 2013. The PlayStation 4 launch in February has not made a difference in video game revenue in Japan.
Media Create, a market research firm, estimates that the PS4 sold 8,000 units in the week of June 23rd in Japan. That is only about 600 more than PlayStation 3. During that same week, Wii U sold 10,600 consoles, PlayStation Vita sold 22,200 and Nintendo 3DS sold 27,800 handhelds.
Strangely, according to Media Create's sales figures, the PS4 version of open-world hacking action game Watch Dogs was the second-bestselling game in Japan that week, selling 63,600 copies. That is more than double the sales of the PlayStation 3 version of Watch Dogs, which was about 31,000 units. PlayStation Vita strategy/action game Freedom Wars was the top seller at 189,000 copies, accounting for sales of the PlayStation Vita nearly doubling that week, according to Media Create.
Looking at those same consoles on a longer timeline, Sony has sold 620,000 PlayStation 4 consoles in Japan since its February release. In contrast, Nintendo has sold 1.8 million Wii U consoles since launch, Sony's PlayStation Vita handheld has sold 2.8 million units in Japan and the Nintendo 3DS portable has sold 15.7 million times in Japan.
Things are looking better for Sony and the PlayStation 4 elsewhere in the world. According to market research firm NPD Group, the PlayStation 4 had the biggest launch of any console in U.S. history--Sony said the console sold more than 1 million in North America in the first 24 hours and 2.1 million consoles worldwide during the launch month of November 2013. PlayStation 4 also broke sales records for a console launch in the U.K., according to market research firm Chart-Track.
PlayStation 4's direct competitor is Microsoft's Xbox One. The Xbox One will not launch in Japan until September 2014. Historically, Xbox consoles do not sell well in Japan. Media Create's sales figures shows that Xbox 360 sold only 201 consoles during the week of June 23 in Japan, compared to PlayStation 3's nearly 7,500 units sold.
