This Week In Sales: Monster Strike Hits A Homerun, Fallout 4 Catches On

Period: The week of December 14th – December 20th (2015)

Top-seller: Monster Strike – 437,903

Nintendo 3DS sales: 9,984

Nintendo 3DS LL sales: 4,921

New Nintendo 3DS sales: 25,964

New Nintendo 3DS LL sales: 103,246

PlayStation Vita sales: 52,289

Vita TV sales: 834

Wii U sales: 79,266

PlayStation 4 sales: 46,749

Xbox One sales: 512

<< Last week’s software sales chart

<< How to read and understand sales

Last week in Japan, they got a bunch of key releases that managed to make it on time just before Christmas. We also saw an increase in hardware sales, with noteworthy boosts for New Nintendo 3DS LL, Wii U, and PlayStation Vita, which we can mostly assume are going to the good boys and girls in Japan, courtesy Old Saint Nick.

Top place this week is Monster Strike for 3DS, which saw 437,903 units sold, being the first title to pass Monster Hunter X on the list since its release. Monster Strike is a super popular smartphone game, and with it getting its first Nintendo 3DS title, we can give it a comparison with Puzzle & Dragons Z, which followed the same steps of a big smartphone game going 3DS.

Interestingly, Puzzle & Dragons Z released in December 12, 2013, and saw a booming start with 543,630 units sold in its first three days. As for Monster Strike 3DS, it sold 437,903 units in its first three days of sales after releasing on December 17.

Monster Strike 3DS may have fallen short of GungHo’s hit title that released during the same time this year two years ago, and it might not be considered a “blockbuster” start as we’ve seen with titles such as Monster Hunter X and others, but it’s still a great start, nonetheless.

Further down the list, we have JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven with 23,534 units sold on PS4 and 20,883 on PS3 for a combined total of 44,417 units. Compared to the series’ previous entry in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle, which saw 425,718 units sold on the PS3 alone two year ago, you could consider it a big letdown for Bandai Namco. But to be fair, All Star Battle was the first JoJo game in about 7 years at the time, while Eyes of Heaven released a little over a year and half after its previous game.

Spike Chunsoft and tri-Ace’s collaboration “side-view” RPG also released this week, and it sold 19,984 and 17,413 units for PS Vita and PS4 respectively for a total of 37,397 units in its first week, which is on the lower side of sales.

Finally, Fallout 4 should also get an honorable mention, as it impressively sold 123,018 copies in its first week on PlayStation 4. Looking back five years ago when its previous title in Fallout: New Vegas released in Japan, which sold 37,249 units in its first week, it’s safe to say that the Fallout fever has caught on in Japan. We’ve also seen trends of other western titles see relatively high numbers in their opening weeks, as seen in Star Wars Battlefront last month.

Next week, we have Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem (Genei Ibun Roku #FE) making its debut on Wii U on December 26, which will be interesting to keep an eye on.

The complete top-20 software sales chart for last week is as follows:

Sales data acquired from 4Gamer and Media Create.