Today the release of the Media Create software charts finally revealed the debut performance of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and it's definitely a solid one.

In order to see how the game stacks against its predecessors, below we have gathered the Japanese debut performance of the previous games of the series. Data are mostly from Media Create, integrated with Famitsu when not available.

  • Metal Gear Solid - 1998- PlayStation - 316,833
  • Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty - 2001 - PS2 - 456,747
  • Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance - 2002 - PS2 - 81,600
  • Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes - 2004 - GameCube - 37,300
  • Metal Gear Acid - 2004 - PSP - 24,149
  • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - 2004 - PS2 - 548,186
  • Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence - 2005 - PS2 - 103,984
  • Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops - 2006 - PSP - 178,370
  • Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus - 2007 - PSP - 93,354
  • Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots - 2008 - PS3 - 464,926
  • Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker - 2010 - PSP - 434,366
  • Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes - 2014 - PS4/PS3 - 211,518
  • Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain - 2015 - PS4/PS3 - 411,199 (293,652 on PS4, 117,547 on PS3)

The Xbox One and Xbox 360 sales for Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain are not counted in the total, because they were so low that they didn't appear in the top 20 ranking. This means that Media Create did not disclose precise numbers. Given the low numbers, the margin of error is minimal.

From the table below, you can see that Hideo Kojima's latest labor of love had the fifth best launch week in Japan of the franchise's history.

Considering that among the main releases Ground Zeroes had the worst performance of among the main games, we can definitely say that the series has regained popularity in Japan since last year, especially given the fact that nowadays the market is dominated by mobile platforms and portables.

It didn't get to the enormous numbers made by some of some of the earlier games (even if it did come close), but Metal Gear Solid is back in Japan, and Japanese gamers did welcome it with open arms.