Hogwarts Legacy achieved a remarkable launch in Japan, outselling Nintendo’s recent success by a great deal. The new Harry Potter title not only set a 22-year-old record for sales in the UK, but it also became the most popular single-player game ever seen on Twitch, besides being the greatest Steam launch for WB Games.
Just a few days after its initial launch on a limited number of platforms, Hogwarts Legacy has already become one of the most successful video games of 2023. This is an incredible accomplishment, especially considering that the action RPG has only been released on half of its intended platforms. Avalanche Software has previously revealed its intention to release the game in stages, and they are still in the process of porting it to last-gen consoles.
Japan’s Famitsu recently estimated that the latest Harry Potter game, Hogwarts Legacy, sold a whopping 67,196 copies in its debut week in the Far Eastern nation. This is an impressive feat, because Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, the game in second place, was outsold by Hogwarts Legacy by almost 40,000 copies. To put this in perspective, the new Pokemon games, which have been available for months, have sold nearly 5 million units in Japan. Even more, Hogwarts Legacy outsold the following five best-selling titles combined in the observed period.
In addition, this data is related only to physical retail sales, and while digital purchases are not as popular in Japan as they are in the West– Nintendo games, for instance, have been evenly split between the two channels since 2020 the total sales numbers of Hogwarts Legacy in Japan may be even higher. Furthermore, the game did not even have the chance to benefit from an entire week, as it rose to the top of the weekly sales charts in only three days, shortly after the first positive reviews of Hogwarts Legacy were released.
For the week ending February 12, the top three physical games in Japan were Splatoon 3 (13,343), Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (11,807), and Minecraft (7,566). Nintendo titles filled up the remainder of the top 10, such as Fire Emblem Engage (7,267) and Nintendo Switch Sports (7,127). The only non-Nintendo title was Gran Turismo 7 (5,065), which came in between Mario Party Superstars (5,155) and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (5,025).
The remarkable success of Hogwarts Legacy has demonstrated Japan’s unwavering affection for the Wizarding World franchise, which could have been one of the reasons why Japan was one of the initial regions to obtain Harry Potter: Magic Awakened in 2021. The mobile game has not been released internationally yet, with Warner Bros. having previously declared that the Western public can look forward to it in 2023.
The Hogwarts Legacy video game is accessible now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. The ports for PS4 and Xbox One will become available on April 4th, with the Nintendo Switch version to follow on July 25th of 2023.
