By and large, Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity has been doing quite well in its launch week. It is now the bestselling Warriors game of all time and has been a consistent title in bestselling game charts across the world.
However, it hasn’t been able to successfully claim the top spot of any of these charts because of tough competition against new high-quality next-gen games, but in Japan it came so close to taking it, only to be humbled by a surprising game.
A week after reports that Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity made superb sales in the United Kingdom, Famitsu followed suit with details of its Japanese sales figures during its launch week of November 16 to 22. Based on the information, the game has been performing well in the region, having sold over 173,000 physical copies and beating out other famous Nintendo games such as Ring Fit Adventure and Animal Crossing New Horizons to debut in second place.
This figure would usually be enough to easily take the top spot in the Japanese charts, but this time the game ended up as a runner-up because it got totally outsold by another Switch game – Momotaro Dentetsu: Showa, Heisei, Reiwa mo Teiban!
This is the latest installment in Konami’s long-running board game-inspired franchise, where players attempt to become the president of a railroad company by collecting properties all over Japan, and it crushed everyone in the competition with over 345,000 copies sold.
While this could be shocking news for players outside of the region, fans of Momotaro Dentetsu have been really waiting a long time for the franchise to debut on the Nintendo Switch. As a matter of fact, the game has been one of the most awaited Switch games in Japan for months, meaning the hype for Showa, Heisei, Reiwa mo Teiban! was built up well before Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity was surprise revealed back in September.
To make Zelda fans feel a bit better, according to the abovementioned rankings, the upcoming The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 is still the most awaited Switch game by a considerable margin. So in the peculiar event that a new Momotaro Dentetsu title ends up going up against the franchise’s next mainline installment, chances are the sales figures will be more inclined to Nintendo.
Aside from Momotaro Dentetsu and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, this week witnessed the Japan sales charts almost totally taken over by Switch games, with the PlayStation 4 edition of Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War being the only non-Switch game in the top ten. It goes to show how the popularity of Nintendo has grown in the Asian gaming market recently.
