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[Mibu no ookami]

Yes, the weak yen makes it more expensive for people in Japan buying things abroad, and cheaper for people abroad to buy things in Japan. It doesn't make things cheaper for people in Japan who are buying things in yen.

Where did I say it makes things cheaper for people in Japan who are buying things in yen?

 

[Mibu no ookami]

I did reread what you said. Which part do you think I got wrong? You clearly said you thought the store.playstation charts were pretty analogous to units sold.

How can it be analogous when games with 0 unit sales appear so high on the chart?

That's the opposite of what I said... I said there is no tether to digital and physical sales.

In the week we were discussing, you mentioned Kingdom Come was 21st on the store.playstation chart. But if you removed the games which are helped by MTX or hadn't released yet, it was way higher than 21st. That was the cause of the disconnect.

That was not the entire cause of the disconnect.

As for DQ3 being low on the digital list for December, which list do you mean and what ranking counts as low?

DQ3 fell on the PS Store charts rather quickly, despite still charting physically.

 

[Woopah]

That's the opposite of what I said... I said there is no tether to digital and physical sales.

Im not claiming you said that. This is your exact quote:

"And while these charts cover revenue, when the price of these games are similar, it's pretty analogous to units sold, especially in games that don't have heavy MTX"

But those charts are not analogous to digital units sold, because they feature lots of games which aren't even out yet and are affected by MTX as we both agreed.

We have three charts:

1. Physical unit charts from Famitsu / Media Create
2. Digital unit charts from PS blog
3. Digital revenue charts from PS Store

Generally, the numbers we get from chart 1 gives us a good idea of what to expect in chart 2 (for games with a physical version). If a game sells over 10k units a month physically, that's generally going to give it a good position on the digital unit charts too.

But there is a disconnect between those 2 charts and chart 3, due to MTX and pre-orders.

That was not the entire cause of the disconnect

Not entirely but those are the main two reasons. The vast majority of games that were above Kingdom Come in that chart either offered MTX or weren't out yet.

DQ3 fell on the PS Store charts rather quickly, despite still charting physically..

Which is my issue with the chart. The PS Store indicated that the digital ranking of DQIII fell rather quickly when in reality it didn't.

The PS Store weekly charts in December had DQIII ranked below titles like FIFA, DQX, Path of Exile 2, GTA V and Monster Hunter Wilds. In terms of digital unit sales, DQIII outsold all those games in December.

For games over 5,000 yen, DQIII was the 4th best selling PS5 game digitally in December. So it hardly fell at all.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Im not claiming you said that. This is your exact quote:

"And while these charts cover revenue, when the price of these games are similar, it's pretty analogous to units sold, especially in games that don't have heavy MTX"

But those charts are not analogous to digital units sold, because they feature lots of games which aren't even out yet and are affected by MTX as we both agreed.

We have three charts:

1. Physical unit charts from Famitsu / Media Create
2. Digital unit charts from PS blog
3. Digital revenue charts from PS Store

Generally, the numbers we get from chart 1 gives us a good idea of what to expect in chart 2 (for games with a physical version). If a game sells over 10k units a month physically, that's generally going to give it a good position on the digital unit charts too.

But there is a disconnect between those 2 charts and chart 3, due to MTX and pre-orders.



Not entirely but those are the main two reasons. The vast majority of games that were above Kingdom Come in that chart either offered MTX or weren't out yet.



Which is my issue with the chart. The PS Store indicated that the digital ranking of DQIII fell rather quickly when in reality it didn't.

The PS Store weekly charts in December had DQIII ranked below titles like FIFA, DQX, Path of Exile 2, GTA V and Monster Hunter Wilds. In terms of digital unit sales, DQIII outsold all those games in December.

For games over 5,000 yen, DQIII was the 4th best selling PS5 game digitally in December. So it hardly fell at all.

DQ3 was below Romancing SaGa 2 Revenge of the Seven on the top downloads list in December. Romancing Saga came out in October and DQ3 came out in November, so RS2 should have fallen further and that's what was reflected in the physical retail charts. Again, it's not 1:1, which is what my point was and that there is a disconnect. It's not the first disconnect that I've seen.

If you read everything I said, I did acknowledge that some of the 5,000 yen plus games had MTX and said that you could also sort by most downloaded with the same price point rather than best selling.

 

[Woopah]

DQ3 was below Romancing SaGa 2 Revenge of the Seven on the top downloads list in December. Romancing Saga came out in October and DQ3 came out in November, so RS2 should have fallen further and that's what was reflected in the physical retail charts. Again, it's not 1:1, which is what my point was and that there is a disconnect. It's not the first disconnect that I've seen.

If you read everything I said, I did acknowledge that some of the 5,000 yen plus games had MTX and said that you could also sort by most downloaded with the same price point rather than best selling.

Which I agree with.

If you'd compared the physical unit chart and digital unit chart and said there's sometimes small disconnects due to different games having different digital ratios, I'd have no problem with that at all.

SaGa could have been selling 2,000 digital units per week and DQIII 1,500 digital copies a week and that would put SaGa on top of it.

A game thats first physically can be fourth digitally, or one thats fifth physically can be third digitally.

Likewise you can have differences caused by price promotions.

My issue was you claiming a massive disconnect because of Kingdom Come's 21st placement on PS Store. Because the PS Store ranking doesn't give us the unit sales ranking.

 

[Orbital2060]

SIE raised PS5 prices after the yen staged an epic rally against the dollar, euro and yuan, and Sony Group shares plunged.

It's worth mentioning that Sony Group operating income declined 7% in FY23, cash reserves dropped by ¥167 bn, debt almost doubled in just two years, and Pictures and I&SS cut their profit forecasts in the second quarter of FY24.

If SIE permanently dropped PS5 prices to 299-399, Yoshida (Chairman, 1959) and Totoki (CEO, 1964) would be cooked.

They are leaning on PlayStation to buoy the whole conglomerate's financials for the next several years, and cling to power.

Their ambition has done serious damage to PS5 in Europe and Japan.

Last year, sales declined 20% in Europe, where the PS5 is trailing the PS4 by 7 million, and 43% in Japan.

However, China is making PS5 hardware sales unpredictable.

Jim Ryan had the foresight to invest in China, and SIE is starting to reap the rewards.

Jim Ryan prioritized Japan over Europe, his own territory, because Japan was #2 in overall PS Store spending.

Japanese PlayStation players spend a lot of money on F2P and digital games (Source: SIE, 2022)

Jim Ryan retired in March 2024. The PS5 was on track to sell 13 million in Japan, a significant improvement over the PS3 and PS4.

Ironically, the Japanese executives have surely ruined PlayStation chances of recovery in Japan.

LTD
PS5 5,459,563 (Mar 31, 2024)
PS4 4,536,525 (Apr 2, 2017)

----------------------------
LTD
PS5 6,718,977 (Mar 10, 2025)
PS4 6,505,208 (Mar 11, 2018)




PlayStation has made $21 bn since 2014. Where did the profit go ?

There is a lot of focus on Sony profits being higher than ever, while elsewhere we see hardware drops, at least in Europe and Japan as you mention. Software sales are in a bad state in Japan as well, so whats your take on where this profit comes from? Is this profit coming from F2P games and their MTX, or are sales of hardware and software in other regions making up that profit?

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

I'm not sure if people realize how heavy Japanese PS users are into F2P games this gen. ZZZ, which is a gacha game, is currently higher than MH Wilds on the Japanese PSN when sorted by best selling.

Heck, 8 out of 12 titles on the best selling list, which is revenue based, are F2P games.

すべてのゲーム | 公式PlayStation™Store 日本

For comparison, here's the same best selling ranking, but for PSN US. Just 2 F2P titles out of 12 which is a polar opposite to the PS JP ranking.

All games | Official PlayStation™Store US