sales

Calendar sales of a certain foreign world leader are surpassing those of native stars in Japan

Perhaps even stranger still, this particular person has achieved an almost cult-like status among some Japanese women.

Read More

Japanese publishers team up for a “Stop! Pirated manga” online campaign

The fight against the illegal distribution of manga online is somewhat ironically led in part by a famous pirate character.

Read More

KFC Japan earned 6 billion yen over Christmas weekend, proving that Japan loves Christmas chicken

The fried chicken industry in Japan is no small fry

Read More

Japanese console game market shrinks to nearly one-third its size ten years ago

Japanese game makers and distributors are in need of a serious power-up.

Read More

McDonald’s Japan faces largest deficit ever, closing 190 stores and retiring 100 HQ staff

We have said it many times: 2014 was not a good year for McDonald’s in Japan. Ever since being involved in an expired chicken scandal last summer, the Japanese public at large has held a grudge so deep against the restaurant you’d think Ronald himself left a flaming bag of dog poop on everyone’s doorstep and keyed their cars on his way off the premises.

Now as the new fiscal year in Japan begins we can see that this anger wasn’t limited to mere online whining either. Japanese people seem to have united and hit McDonald’s where it hurts most: the bottom line.

In an announcement on 16 April, McDonald’s Holdings Company Japan President Sarah Casanova announced that the company currently sits on the largest deficit ever at a super-sized 38 billion yen (US$319M).

Read More

The PS4 is selling like hot cakes all over the world…except in Japan. But why?

To say that gamers looked forward to the launch of the PlayStation 4 would be a huge understatement. The hype that built up in the months prior to the console’s November 2013 release date was nothing short of phenomenal, with over a million pre-orders being placed and Sony revealing that it had sold just as many units during the console’s first weekend at retail in the US alone.

Now, over a year after its release, Sony has announced that it has sold more than 20 million units to customers around the world. It’s not exactly an objective source, sure, but that’s still a lot of plastic boxes sitting under TVs. Of course, a huge chunk of those sales were gobbled up by Europe and North America, but we bet Japan – PlayStation’s homeland – also accounts for a fair slice of the pie chart, right?

Well, apparently not quite as much as you might expect…

Read More

Yo-Kai Watch 2 continues to dominate video game sales in Japan

On December 13, the third edition of the mega-popular Yo-Kai Watch 2 Nintendo 3DS game, subtitled Shin’uchi [真打], was finally released in Japan. The franchise has gained so much popularity that people have even taken to calling it “Pokémon for the newest generation.”

As you can probably imagine if you’ve been keeping up with our site, a frenzy of people rushed to buy the new game both in stores and online. But even we couldn’t prepare ourselves for the actual numbers–just wait till you read how many units of the game have sold so far!

Read More

Super Smash Bros for 3DS sells over a million copies in just two days

You have to hand it to Nintendo. While behemoth publishers like EA and Activision are constantly badmouthed for releasing sequel upon sequel, year after year, the house that made Mario somehow not only still commands tremendous respect from its fans, but, if sales data released earlier today is any indication, manages to make stacks of cash by releasing updated versions of games many of us first started playing more than a decade ago.

Read More

Party at Sony’s place! Over a million PlayStation 4 consoles sold in first 24 hours

Pay a visit to Sony HQ today and you’ll no doubt see an awful lot of smiling, and perhaps tired-looking, faces. Following Friday’s launch of the PlayStation 4 in North America, President of Sony Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, yesterday shared the news via his Twitter feed that over a million units of the next-generation console had been sold within the first 24 hours of going on sale.

Read More

Still no arrests one year after Japan officially begins prosecuting Internet pirates

In the year since revisions to copyright law in Japan made illegal downloading a crime punishable with jail time and heavy fines, the music industry hasn’t experienced a significant increase in profits. In fact, police have yet to prosecute anyone for the crime! It kind of make you wonder if they know that Internet pirates don’t have peg-legs and eye patches…

Read More

Japan’s 30 Best Selling Video Games of All Time

The following is a list of the 30 most sold video games in Japan in the history of video games across all platforms.  Western Gamers may be surprised that violent shooters take a rather large backseat to RPG’s, mushroom stomping, and Pikachus in the minds of Japanese game consumers.

Read More

Was KFC’s Great Chicken Give-Away a Success? Depends on How You Look at It

This past Fourth of July, while Kentucky Fried Chicken was celebrating Independence Day in the US, KFC Japan was busy commemorating the anniversary of the fried chicken chain’s entrance into the Japanese market.

On this day they held a one-day all-you-can-eat sale where customers could get 45 minutes of non-stop chicken for 1,200 yen.  A very generous deal but how much did KFC stand to lose on such an offer, or did they lose?  Let’s crunch the numbers and see.

Read More