Destiny Isn’t Quite At Call of Duty Levels, But Still Did Well In Japan

On September 11th, Sony Computer Entertainment published Bungie and Activision’s Destiny for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 in Japan. On PlayStation 4, the game sold 91,277 copies and on PlayStation 3 it sold 49,503 copies.

Meanwhile, Japanese sales tracker Media Create reports that Destiny sold through 74.87% on PlayStation 4, while the PS3 version saw a sell-through of 87.37%.

At first glance, those may not seem like impressive figures, but to put things in perspective, Destiny sold 140,780 copies across two platforms in Japan. That’s a higher debut than any of Sony’s Uncharted games and a better debut than The Last of Us as well. In fact, it’s a better debut than a lot of games have seen in Japan in recent years.

That having been said, Destiny’s launch sales were a little lower than those of the recent Call of Duty games, which are the closest parallel one could draw to the online shooter. Though you may not think it, Activision’s Call of Duty series actually has a fairly large audience in Japan. Each of the games is published by Square Enix, and released first with Japanese subtitles, and later re-released with a Japanese voice dub.

Here’s how the last few Call of Duty games (subtitled versions) have sold in their respective first weeks across the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 combined:

Call of Duty: Ghosts (2013) – 203,581

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 (2012) – 219,527

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011) – 210,839

Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010) – 159,201

Destiny isn’t quite at the same level yet, but it should be interesting to see if the franchise grows in the future. It should also be very interesting to see how Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare does when the game is released in Japan, to see if that franchise can continue to grow in the Japanese market.

All sales data courtesy Media Create.