This Week In Sales: The Time Is NieR

Period: The week of February 20th –  February 26th (2017)

Top-seller: NieR: Automata – 198,542 (PS4)

Nintendo 2DS –  4,303 (Last week – 4,665)

New Nintendo 3DS sales: 1,254 (1,203)

New Nintendo 3DS LL sales: 15,984 (16,426)

Wii U sales: 464 (491)

PlayStation 4 sales: 37,008 (21,204)

PlayStation 4 Pro: 6,481 (5,999)

PlayStation 3 sales: 505 (500)

PlayStation Vita sales: 10,704 (8,284)

Xbox One sales: 469 (76)

<< Last week’s software sales chart

<< How to read and understand sales

Last week in Japan was a good one with two big titles that took the chart by storm with NieR: Automata and Super Robot Wars V. The Witch and the Hundred Knight 2 and other titles also saw releases. Here’s the latest from Japanese sales tracker, Media Create, with a look at software and hardware sales from the week of February 20 through February 26, 2017.

The #1 spot of the week goes to none other than NieR: Automata with 198,542 copies sold for PS4, just shy of the 200k mark in retail. This is definitely a huge improvement for the series that started with just a debut of about 12,500 copies sold in its first week with NieR Gestalt and 60,000 for NieR RepliCant. RepliCant sold over 130,000 copies by the end of its release year back in 2010 and the series acquired a cult following at the time.

Everything about the game, from design to music, Yoko Taro’s antics, and stylish action, NieR: Automata has all the ingredients needed to further expand on its brand from the power of word-of-mouth, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see it continue growing from here on out, especially in the West.

The next new title is Super Robot Wars which charted at #2 for PS4 with 100,154 units sold in its debut and #3 for PS Vita with 83,833 copies sold. It tops the franchise’s previous title in Super Robot Wars OG: The Moon Dwellers which sold a combined total of 109,107 copies between its PS4 and PS3 versions, but falls a little shy of previous titles from the mecha strategy series. To give you an idea, 3rd Super Robot Wars Z sold 270,669 copies between PS3 and PS Vita back in 2014 and The 2nd Super Robot Wars OG sold 217,710 for PS3 back in 2012. However, do keep in mind that the market has changed since back then, so what’s close to 200,000 in sales today might’ve sold much more back then.

At #5 we have Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 3 Ultimate, a PS Vita version featuring improvements on the hit PS2 otome game by Koei Tecmo’s Ruby Party, which sold 13,682 copies in its debut. Definitely some good numbers for any visual novel game, especially one that’s a remake.

The next new title is The Witch and the Hundred Knight 2, which placed #7 with 13,421 copies sold on PS4 for its debut. This is a huge drop from the first game’s 49,209 copies sold for its debut on PS3 back in 2013, and not much more than its enhanced PS4 version in The Witch and the Hundred Knight Revival that sold 8,902 copies in its September 2015 release week. This is definitely a disappointment for Nippon Ichi, and we can expect to see some changes for the series if they decide to keep it going.

And finally, we have Assassin’s Creed The Ezio Collection at #12 with 6,734 copies sold for PS4.

In the hardware front, we got to see a pretty nice bump in sales for all Sony consoles that got help from NieR: Automata and Super Robot Wars V. The Nintendo numbers are continuing to drop, and understandably so with the Switch’s release just around the corner.

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

Sales data acquired from 4Gamer and Media Create.