Yakuza Zero has taken both the first and second position in the latest Japanese sales charts in its launch week, with the PS3 version selling 145,823 copies, followed by the PS4 version which sold 90,506 copies. While this is good news, the combined total of 236,329 copies does seem rather low for a non-spinoff Yakuza game. In comparison, Yakuza 5 sold 356,757 copies in its first week on the PS3 alone.
The cause of the lower sales might be multi-fold. First of all, the console market has seen a decline in Japan due to strong competition from mobile games. The PS3 is also showing its age, but despite that, sales for the PS4 remained weak for the most part of 2014. Secondly, Yakuza Zero was still developed for PS3, which means it wasn’t optimized for the PS4. While by no means terrible, the game’s graphics look rather outdated in comparison to the PS4’s top titles. Another factor might be that the franchise is simply showing signs of franchise fatigue. Here as well, moving to PS4 exclusively might help the developers to reinvent and update the gameplay mechanics.
On the plus side, the PS4 is starting to gain some momentum in Japan, as it was the top selling console last week, moving 33,826 copies. While the PS3 software sales are still stronger than those on the PS4, we may be getting at a point where Japanese developers will start to abandon the PS3 and move their games to the PS4 exclusively. It’d certainly be interesting to see what a Yakuza game would look like if it was free from the restraints of cross-gen development.