Today is Wednesday, so we get the usual Media Create charts painting the scenario for the Japanese market between February 12th and February 18th.

Below you can check out the full software chart:

  1. Monster Hunter World – PS4 – 85, 322/1,836,291
  2. Secret of Mana - PS4 - 36,042/New
  3. Splatoon 2 – Switch – 21,815/2,042,844
  4. IDOLiSH 7 Twelve Fantasia! - PS Vita - 21,481/New
  5. Dynasty Warriors 9 – PS4 – 21,180/138,675
  6. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – Switch – 19,280/1,346,387
  7. Secret of Mana - PS Vita - 17,947/New
  8. Toaru Majutsu no Virtual-On - PS4 - 17,938/New
  9. Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet - PS4 - 12,981/88,604
  10. Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle – Switch – 12,776/142,591
  11. Super Mario Odyssey – Switch – 12,640/1,614,506
  12. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Switch – 11,764/871,528
  13. Bayonetta Non-Stop Climax Edition - Switch - 11,694/New
  14. Bayonetta 2 - Switch - 9,532/New
  15. Pokémon Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon – 3DS – 9,358/1,558,042
  16. Toaru Majutsu no Virtual-On - PS Vita - 9,284/New
  17. Dragon Ball FighterZ – PS4 – 5,975/88,943
  18. Mario Party: The Top 100 – 3DS –  5,842/161,624
  19. ARMS – Switch – 4,234/369,040
  20. 1-2-Switch – Switch – 4,194/399,757

Following, you can check out the hardware chart:

  1. PS4 - 41, 496
  2. Switch - 39, 303
  3. PS4 Pro - 8,006
  4. New 2DS XL - 5,778
  5. PS Vita - 4, 959
  6. New 3DS XL -3,423
  7. 2DS - 959
  8. Xbox One X - 133
  9. Xbox One - 57

First of all, we see that Capcom's Monster Hunter World is still firmly at the top of the charts, helping the PS4 hold its edge against the Switch once more.

Square Enix's Secret of Mana also had a fairly solid debut with about 54,000 copies sold between PS4 and PS Vita.

The Nintendo Switch remasters of Bayonetta and Bayonetta 2 has a pretty disappointing debut with about 20,000 copies sold at retail combined. Ultimately, it's just another signal of the fact that Japanese gamers really don't care all that much about remasters. Secret of Mana was mostly saved from this trend because it's possibly more akin to a remake, and the original game is old enough that many contemporary gamers have not played it, with the addition of the nostalgia factor for those who did.

Another very relevant detail comes from today's issue of Weekly Famitsu. The magazine reveals that Monster Hunter World sold 652,614 copies between January 26th and January 28th. According to Famitsu's estimate (which normally differs from Media Create slightly probably due to different estimation methods and retail sources) the game sold 2,003,026 copies in its first week combining retail and digital, with a rate of full-game digital downloads of 36%.

This potentially places the game as the second or third best debut for a Monster Hunter title ever. According to Famitsu's own numbers, the top debut is certainly Monster Hunter Portable 3rd's with 2,146,467 copies sold at retail. I said "second or third" because Monster Hunter 4 debuted with 1,875,115 copies sold at retail, but we don't have digital estimates.

Basically whether Monster Hunter World beat Monster Hunter 4 or not depends on whether the 3DS game sold less or more than 127,000 copies digitally in its first week on the Nintendo eShop. Considering that it was back in 2013 when digital distribution was still in its infancy on 3DS, it's possible but not too likely.

It's worth mentioning that Monster Hunter World still leaves both games (and all other mainline releases) behind in terms of attach rate compared to the installed base of its console.

If you want to compare, you can check out the prior week's results.