Three new releases took advantage of the last days before the Pokémon tsunami to find a place in the sun, or in the shade of Splatoon 3, it depends. And it was Tactics Ogre: Reborn that gathered the most players with a nice score of 57,256 sales on PS5, PS4 and Switch, not counting downloads. The warm reception reserved for this classic goes in the direction of the success of Triangle Strategy (86,298 sales in March) and compensates for the timidity of The DioField Chronicle (12,068 sales in September). For the record, Tactics Ogre on Super Famicom had sold 250,054 cartridges at its launch in 1995, while its port released in 2010 on PSP started with 181,942 sales.
Sonic Frontiers can also have a smile. Buoyed by the success of the films and the ambitious nature of this open-world installment, the hedgehog achieved 46,276 sales across all three platforms. It doesn’t look like much, but it’s already more than all the Sonics released in the last 20 years in Japan, where the hedgehog has never shone unless it participates in the Olympic Games with Mario. Sonic Forces, the previous title from Sonic Team, barely exceeded 10,000 sales the week of its launch. In fact, you have to go back to the days of the Dreamcast to see a Sonic rock the archipelago: Sonic Adventure carried with him 176,614 players the week of its launch and its sequel 84,508.
Kratos has never been a strong character in the Japanese market either. Its best start comes from 2018’s God of War which surpassed 50,000 sales the week of its launch. Far from the performance recorded in the United Kingdom, God of War Ragnarok will be satisfied with 40,637 copies, still not counting downloads, with a considerable advantage for the PS5 version (common thing with us but still rare in Japan).
On the console sales side, the Switch is approaching 100,000 sales before the traditional end-of-year explosion following the launch of Pokémon. For its part, the PS5 has returned to an acceptable level close to 30,000 sales and above all is increasingly reducing the gap with its trajectory from last year. Another week or two at this level and the Sony console will end 2022 in Japan on a better figure than 2021, a year which ended with insignificant stocks.