For the second month in a row, Pikmin 4 outsold all other games at Japanese retail, defeating the only brand-new entry to reach the Top 30: Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon by FromSoftware.
According to the most recent Famitsu figures, the Garden Critter adventure video game from Nintendo sold 235,000 copies in August, increasing its overall lifetime sales to 753,000.
Hello and welcome to the latest Nintendo Everything Refresh episode! Your host Ajay Kamat examines the release of Pikmin 4 and makes predictions about what it means for the franchise’s future in this episode.
Hosts
- Nicolas Shadday: @_Dayshade
- Nick Serpa: @ndserpa
- Elias Nox Lutes: @FabledFirelight
- Dennis Gagliardotto: @LyonHart_
- Luiz Estrella: @Luizestrella_
Here are Japan’s Top 10 best-selling physical games from July 31 to August 27, 2023, courtesy of Famitsu:
| Rank | Title | Publisher |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pikmin 4 | Nintendo |
| 2 | Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon (PS5) | FromSoftware |
| 3 | Mario Kart 8 Deluxe | Nintendo |
| 4 | The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom | Nintendo |
| 5 | Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon (PS4) | FromSoftware |
| 6 | Minecraft: Switch Edition | Microsoft |
| 7 | Super Smash Bros. Ultimate | Nintendo |
| 8 | Splatoon 3 | Nintendo |
| 9 | Nintendo Switch Sports | Nintendo |
| 10 | Pocket Monsters Scarlet/Violet | Pokémon |
A quick, but important note for our weekly listeners
Since recording this episode, we’ve learned of situations with our production crew that will limit the amount of episodes we can produce. In this episode, we discussed our intentions to return to weekly episodes. The likelihood is that the program will go on a brief break for 4-5 weeks before these problems are fixed, if at all. We regret the inconvenience and intend to start the event again as soon as we can!
The garden critter adventure video game from Nintendo sold 235,000 copies in August, according to the most recent Famitsu figures, increasing its overall lifetime sales to 753,000.
This means that in under two months, the game has surpassed the previous physical sales record for the franchise, which was previously held by 2020’s Pikmin 3 Deluxe for Switch with 660,000 units sold.
Pikmin 4, Armored Core 6
Armored Core 6 was forced to settle for No. 2, despite the fact that it was published toward the end of the month on August 25 (two days before Famitsu began compiling data for August).,
In contrast to Pikmin, Armored Core fell short of its predecessor. After a similar late-month launch in 2012, Armored Core 5 sold 194,000 copies, while this year’s revival only managed to sell 163,000. It’s important to keep in mind that this just considers boxed sales; given how rapidly the digital market has expanded over the past ten years, FromSoftware’s most recent title almost certainly sold more copies overall.
A month-over-month rise in sales helped Mario Kart 8 Deluxe move up the charts, from No. 5 to No. 3. The 57,000 copies that were sold in August brought the album’s total sales in Japan to just under 5.5 million (again, excluding digital).
In Japan, packaged game sales totaled 1.25 million last month, a 27% decrease from 1.7 million the month prior.
Additionally, hardware sales decreased overall by 20% to 530,000 units.