Thanks ^^
Then, is Sony prioritizing shipping consoles to China?
US I get. But other than China what other market than the US is bigger than Japan? What other market would Sony prioritize?
Sony is the top selling console in bunch of European countries for the past two months, in North America they are in 2nd place with around
100K units per week for March based on outselling PS4 this month launch aligned in terms of units. In Spain we've seen that it's selling
10K per weeek - while in the UK it sold the most both February and March. So overall North America & Europe are being priortized for the shipments and the console continues to be sold out as soon as it hits the stores.
There are obvious reasons for that as the main goal is to ensure
FIFA/COD/GTA audience migrates to the PS5 rather than the XSX, currently Sony is definitely in better position than Microsoft from this perspective, as both platforms are basically selling out but Sony having started scaling production well ahead of their competitor.
Sony hasn't launched PS5 in China officially it's expected to happen later in the year, this is the main reason I would personally be inclined to think a lot of the PS5 sold in Japan are actually selling on the gray market in China for a huge profit. There is a lot of very rich people in China that would pay a premium, so this is one of the reason I expect the audience in Japan to actually be smaller than the official shipment data. From my perspective possibly more than 15% of the units shipped to Japan thus far, end up being resold elsewhere. There is no other reason for PS5 software to perform so badly with over 500K audience. Also in terms of Software pushing hardware, maybe the PS5 update for
Genshin Impact will be a relatively major thing for Asian markets, the issue is that Sony is probably not shipping more than 15% of WW stock of PS5's to the market, thus making it extremely difficult to compete with the Switch which is likely outselling it in most of Asia by ten to one so far this year.
The issue is something that we've talked a lot about in these threads, as Sony killed off the Vita, they made their ecosystem a lot less attractive to smaller Japanese third parties, when they scaled their marketing support for smaller Japanese games it made a lot more sense for these PSV supporters to fully focus on the Switch with the goal of being in the directs, mini-directs, cross game promotions etc. If Sony had invested the same type of effort into the Vita that it has into VR, it's possible that they could have maintained 20-30% market share in Japan competing with the Switch but the moment they exited it basically meant that PSV audience in large migrated to the Switch, now we are seeing also PS4 audience migrate towards the Switch as so far this year PlayStation ecosystem accounts for less than 5% of the physical software market. Even at the height of the DS/Wii days Nintendo platforms didn't manage more than 70% market share. So the current situation is unprecedented in the history of Japan since 1994 when PS1 launched.
If this ends up being an year where the Switch surpasses 6 million hardware sales in Japan - it will be no doubt also third party momentum that has made it possible -
eBaseball(July),
Hades(September),
Age of Calamity, Momotaro, Sakuna(November),
Among Us, Derby Stallion, Fitness Boxing 2(December),
Little Nightmares 2(February),
Monster Hunter Rise, Olive Town, Bravely Default 2, Apex Legends(March),
Rune Factory 5(May),
Baseball Spirits, SMT V, Shin Kun, Fall Guys, Monster Hunter Stories 2, Samurai Warriors 5(summer). In the past few years it was mostly first/second party & indies pushing the Switch forward, 2021 will be the first year where we really see consistent support from Japanese third parties.
And I honestly don't think it will slow down in 2022 which might end up as the Software Peak for the system. As we are only now seeing the impacts of having so many different publishers focused on your platform as the default choice.
With rest of Asia trending in a similar direction as we know that Tencent managed to sell well-over
1 million units in an year since officially launching the Switch in China. While from Media-Create we know that Taiwan/South Korea are basically mirroring Japan ever since
New Horizon and
Ring Fit started to dominate the charts there.
For last FY I expect that Nintendo sold between
27-30 million units. Around
11 million of the annual shipment going to North America, Japan
6 million, Europe
7 million while I estimate that at the moment East Asia represents around
4.5 million, RotW at around
1.5 million. We should find out in May but this is what I think we will see in their report.
This year they are officially launching in Thailand with a local partner and growing their presence in Taiwan. If they can hit close to
4.5 million for the last year a 100% increase YoY next year in East Asia will ensure the region overtakes Japan & Europe as the second most important market for Nintendo going forward. Obviously as a single country Japan will remain #2 but as a region Asia will become a crucial part of Nintendo's growth strategy. This will definitely positively impact third parties aligned with Nintendo and further incentives them to create more games for the system. I also think that unless some of the Chinese giants release a competing platform - we might see very strong support from Chinese developers in the future, as they eye both global and local growth.