This Week In Sales: Naruto Takes The Top-20 By Storm, Dattebayo!

Period: The week of February 1st – February 7th (2016)

Top-seller: Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 (PS4) – 64,446

Nintendo 3DS sales: 2,705

Nintendo 3DS LL sales: 459

New Nintendo 3DS sales: 4,389

New Nintendo 3DS LL sales: 19,991

PlayStation Vita sales: 23,090

Wii U sales: 3,939

PlayStation 4 sales: 31,058

Xbox One sales: 286

<< Last week’s software sales chart

<< How to read and understand sales

Last week, Japan saw a major release from Bandai Namco with Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 for PlayStation 4. Media Create has provided the latest update on video game software and hardware sales data for the week of February 1st through February 7th, 2016.

First things first, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 took the top spot of the week after having sold 64,446 copies on PlayStation 4. Here’s a look at how the fourth installment from the series compares to the previous titles and their opening week sales numbers:

• Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3—87,661 (2013)

• Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2—66,675 (2010)

• Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm—44,000 (2008)

As you can see from the above comparisons, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 fell short by over 23,000 units from its predecessor. While there are probably several reasons as to how that happened, the two main points that come to mind are that Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 released when the PlayStation 3 was still at the top of its game in Japan while Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 released in a time when the PS4 barely began to pick up in Japan.

It’s also worth noting that Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 released in Japan when the manga series was entering its climax, and the level of hype was pretty high. Meanwhile, Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 released well over a year after the manga’s original end has concluded. Nonetheless, the series remains popular enough in Japan, and this may be the end of the Ultimate Ninja Storm series, but it wouldn’t be too surprising to see Naruto come back in a different title.

In 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place we have Dragon Quest Builders respectively on PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 3 for a combined total sales figure of 98,326 units, which is pretty impressive for a second week when we see most titles drop significantly in sales numbers. In a less positive note, the Wii U sales number dropped by a whopping 5,000 units from last week. This can be attributed to the fact that there hasn’t been any new Wii U releases, nor any major upcoming titles in the horizon.

The only other new title that we saw last week in Japan was the PS Vita otome game Sengoku Koi Senki: Omoide Gaeshi CS Edition by Prototype, which sold 4,359 on its opening week.

On a final note, I thought it was pretty interesting that last week we saw Splatoon, Yo-kai Watch Busters, and Minecraft: PlayStation Vita Edition drop out of the top-10, and it looked like they were going to quietly keep dropping over time, but you can see that they’re back on the list at #07, #08, and #09.

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

Sales data acquired from 4Gamer and Media Create.