This Week In Sales: The Ultimate Smash Bros. Debut

Period: The week of December 3 – December 9 (2018)

Top-seller: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 1,220,535 (Switch)

Nintendo Switch sales: 281,222 (Last week – 120,546)

Nintendo 2DS sales: 620 (342)

New Nintendo 2DS LL sales: 10,021 (7,401)

New Nintendo 3DS LL sales: 3,631 (2,692)

PlayStation 4 sales: 50,450 (9,852)

PlayStation 4 Pro sales: 24,046 (10,558)

PlayStation Vita sales: 2,484 (1,798)

Xbox One sales: 32 (25)

Xbox One X sales: 117 (260)

<< Last week’s software sales chart

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Last week in Japan, we had one for the ages with the highly-anticipated release of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on the Nintendo Switch. Just Cause 4 and Capcom Beat ‘Em Up Bundle also released. Japanese sales tracker Media Create released the latest video game software and hardware sales data from the week of December 3 to December 9, 2018.

The top release of the week is none other than Super Smash Bros. Ultimate at #1 with 1,220,535 units sold on the Nintendo Switch. That’s a new record for best-selling debut for the Super Smash Bros. series.

Here’s how it stacks compared to the debuts of previous releases:

• (Jan 2008) Super Smash Bros. Brawl – 819,647 [Wii]
• (Sept 2014) Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS – 944,644 [3DS]
• (Dec 2014) Super Smash Bros. for Wii U – 227,527 [Wii U]
• (Dec 2018) Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – 1,220,535 [Switch]

Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U released separately, but even when combined it’d fall short at 1,172,171 units for its debut.

At #2 we have Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! & Let’s Go, Eevee! with 93,787 units sold for Switch. It has surpassed the one million milestone with a total of 1,012,247 units sold through Japanese retailers. Super Mario Party charted #3 with 69,861 units sold on Switch, followed by some more Switch titles with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe at #4 with 20,995 units sold, Splatoon 2 at #5 with 19,083 units sold, and Minecraft at #6 with 16,048 copies sold in the week.

As far as other new titles go, Just Cause 4 sold 16,100 units on its debut to chart #7 and Capcom Beat ‘Em Up Bundle debuted at #13 with 7,318 copies sold on PS4 and at #16 with 5,903 sold on Switch to combine for 13,221 units.

In hardware sales, the PlayStation 4 sold 50,450 units plus an additional 24,046 PS4 Pros for a total of  74,496 units. That’s much higher than last week’s combined 20,410 but we also mentioned that it was likely to happen with the big holiday sales on PS4 and PS VR bundles that started on December 6. The Nintendo Switch sold a whopping 281,222 units for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate week to top last week’s 120,546 to make up about 75.5% of all hardware sales. Going by Media Create’s figures, the Nintendo Switch is currently at 6,112,100 units sold in Japan since its launch in March 3, 2017.

The top-20 chart of the week is as follows:

Sales data acquired from 4Gamer and Media Create.