The New Year isn't only the most important winter holiday in Japan, but it's also a very relevant sales driver, especially due to the "Otoshidama" tradition, prompting parents to give their kids celebratory envelopes full of money.
Thanks to the latest Media Create figures, combined by DualShockers with historical data from the same source, we learn that both the Wii U and the PS4 passed local milestones last week.
The Wii U has now sold over 3 million units in Japan (3,020,662), while ove 2.3 million PS4 consoles have found a loving local home. More precisely, the number is 2,301,077. Incidentally, the 3DS also passed 20.1 million units, bringing the total to 20,185,999 units.
Combining today's figures with historical data also lets us take a look at the sales for all Japanese consoles in 2015, which are as follows:
- 3DS: 2,347,554
- PS4: 1,330,410
- PS Vita:1,069,471
- Wii U: 877,082
- PS3: 219,103
- Xbox One: 20,624
And yes, this means that the Xbox One also achieved a little milestone today, overtaking 20,000 consoles sold in 2015.
The PS4 launched one year and two months after its competitor in Japan, and has been closing the gap almost every week since. Yet, the Wii U dominated most of this holiday season, taking basically the whole month of December thanks to convenient Splatoon and Super Mario Maker bundles and an arguably broader target, combined with the lack of big Japanese titles on the other side. Sony's console managed to regain the top of the home console market for the first time this week.