Nintendo Switch and Animal Crossing Dominated Japan’s 2020 Market

Famitsu has published a full-year sales report of Japan’s console gaming market in 2020. Although the year saw the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X launches, the console and game charts were unsurprisingly dominated by the Nintendo Switch and Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

After calculating the entire game sales for 52 weeks from December 30, 2019, to December 27, 2020, Famitsu found the total scale of Japan’s 2020 gaming market at 367.38 billion yen. That’s a 12.5% increase from 2019’s 326.45 billion yen. The number was combined from the hardware (console) and software (game) markets at 185.66 and 181.72 billion yen, respectively.

It is worth noting that the portable Nintendo 3DS family was completely phased out in September 2020. Shipments of almost all PlayStation 4 models, including the PS4 Pro but excluding only the black 500GB slim model as the single remaining model, had also ceased in Japan by September 2020.

The full chart for the game console sales in Japan in 2020 is available right below:

• Nintendo Switch (including Lite): 5,956,943 (Lifetime sales: 17,340,374)
• PlayStation 4 (including Pro): 542,647 (Lifetime sales: 9,290,890)
• PlayStation 5 (including Digital Edition): 255,150
• Nintendo 3DS family: 62,761 (Lifetime sales: 24,558,908)
• Xbox Series X|S: 31,424
• Xbox One (including X and S): 3,585 (Lifetime sales: 114,831)

In the game software segment, Animal Crossing: New Horizons was certainly in a league of its own, with more than 6 million copies sold in Japan alone. While the new Momotaro Dentetsu game also found big success in Japan, a special mention went to Ring Fit Adventure in 2nd place for selling over 1.5 million copies despite being initially released in 2019.

Nintendo Switch games almost completely dominated the top 10 2020 game sales chart in Japan. Final Fantasy VII Remake was the only PlayStation 4 game making its way to the ranking. You can read the full top 10 game rankings right below:

1. Animal Crossing: New Horizons – 6,378,103
2. Ring Fit Adventure – 1,591,366 (Lifetime sales: 2,087,005)
3. Momotaro Dentetsu: Showa Heisei Reiwa mo Teiban! – 1,233,023
4. Final Fantasy VII Remake – 949,379
5. Pokemon Sword and Shield – 892,456 (Lifetime sales: 3,880,590)
6. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – 798,174 (Lifetime sales: 3,457,183)
7. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 560,122 (Lifetime sales: 4,013,174)
8. Minecraft (Nintendo Switch) – 556,982 (Lifetime sales: 1,702,921)
9. Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics – 519,649
10. Super Mario 3D All-Stars – 492,620