This Week In Sales: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Golden Mushroom Boosts Its Way To The Top

Period: The week of April 24th – April 30th (2017)

Top-seller: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 284,834 (Switch)

Nintendo Switch: 76,679 (Last week – 48,694)

Nintendo 2DS: 4,101 (3,945)

New Nintendo 3DS sales: 1,089 (1,114)

New Nintendo 3DS LL sales: 17,873 (17,570)

Wii U sales: 543 (262)

PlayStation 4 sales: 18,848 (15,222)

PlayStation 4 Pro: 6,455 (4,112)

PlayStation 3 sales: 453 (367)

PlayStation Vita sales: 5,994 (5,164)

Xbox One sales: 101 (68)

<< Last week’s software sales chart

<< How to read and understand sales

Last week, Japan had a pretty big week with new releases in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Dragon Ball Heroes: Ultimate Mission X, Gun Gun Pixies, and Cube Creator DX. Here’s the latest, slightly delayed due to Golden Week edition, from Japanese sales tracker Media Create with a look at software and hardware sales data from the week of April 24 through April 30, 2017.

First place of the weekly race goes to the newcomer Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for Nintendo Switch, which sold 284,832 units in its debut. Let’s take a look at how it stacks compared to previous Mario Kart entries:

• [2005] Mario Kart DS – 219,391 (DS)
• [2008] Mario Kart Wii – 593,576 (Wii)
• [2011] Mario Kart 7 – 423,619 (3DS)
• [2014] Mario Kart 8 – 325,892 (Wii U)
• [2017] Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 284,823 (Switch)

It may come off as a bit of a surprise to see how low it sold compared to previous entries in the series, but Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is an enhanced port and the earliest a new Nintendo console has gotten a Mario Kart game, but the biggest part is due to the fact that Japan is Mario Kart’s smallest market. Media Create adds that by the time Mario Kart 8 released, the Wii U had already sold 1,765,000 units compared to Nintendo Switch’s figure that is close to 777,000.

It still topped The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s 230,981 debut in Japan, but keep in mind that Zelda isn’t exactly as popular in Japan compared to the West, just like Mario Kart, but both titles put up good numbers for what we often see in today’s Japanese market, nonetheless.

Next on the list we have Dragon Ball Heroes: Ultimate Mission X with a 97,093 debut to take #2, beating out the previous 3DS Dragon Ball entry in Dragon Ball Fusions, which sold 77,509 in its debut last August.

Gun Gun Pixies debuted at #9 with 8,675 units sold in its debut, which is probably a little less than Compile Heart hoped for, but we’ve been seeing an overall decline in PS Vita software sales with the lack of major exclusive titles, so we can say that it sold about as expected for a new IP.

And finally, we have Arc System Works’ budget Minecraft clone in Cube Creator DX, which charted at #15 with 4,350 units sold for Nintendo 3DS.

The PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita saw a small increase in sales compared to the week prior, but Nintendo Switch’s 76,679 takes the race with almost 30k plus from the week prior, and we can attribute this to the release of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. With this update, the Nintendo Switch has sold 776,251 units to date in Japan since its launch.

The Wii U was at around 758,000 units sold at the same 9 weeks mark since release, but its sales continued declining from there, while the Switch has been overall better received and has more titles that will certainly boost its sales soon. We’ll likely see Switch sales continue rising as titles such as ARMS and Splatoon 2 come out, but it should also be interesting to see whether Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition makes an impact when it releases later this week, as we all know how much Japan loved Minecraft: PlayStation Vita Edition.

The top-20 chart for the week is as follows:

Sales data acquired from Media Create.