Shift Up’s new Action RPG known as Stellar Blade was released less than a month ago and quickly became a critical and sales success. This is due to several factors, such as its impressive graphics, its dynamic combat system and the appearance of its beautiful protagonist, EVE. As expected, this South Korean title was well received all over the world, but it resonated strongly with the Japanese audience, where it sold a lot of copies.
Stellar Blade continues to be Japan’s favorite video game!
This was announced by the official Stellar Blade Twitter account, which confirmed that the new Shift Up video game remains at the top of the sales charts in Japan for the third week in a row (and continues to be a hit in many other countries as well). To celebrate, the Twitter account posted an adorable image of the game’s 5 main female characters posing and smiling for a photo. All this was reported by Famitsu, who also published the official numbers: In this last week, Stellar Blade sold 13,033 units, accumulating a total of 80,164 units sold since its official release last April 26.
At first glance, this may not seem like a very large number, but there are many factors to take into account that make Shift Up’s success particularly surprising: Stellar Blade introduced an entirely new intellectual property to the world, so it couldn’t rely on the passion of pre-existing fans to sell copies. Not to mention that this is a PlayStation 5 exclusive video game, so right off the bat it already faced the problem of having a much smaller audience. Also, remember that it’s 80,164 units sold in a single country, so this number should be even bigger if we take into account its global sales.
The success of Stellar Blade in Japan caught many people’s attention, since, as we mentioned previously, Shift Up is a studio coming from South Korea. We are used to seeing and tasting video games made in Japan that are successful worldwide, while South Korean developers usually specialize in “Gacha” titles for mobile devices (Like Goddess of Victory: Nikke, Shift Up’s other flagship title). It is not common for a Korean studio to release a “Triple A” video game for consoles, so the fact that this one has sold so many copies and resonated so much with the Japanese audience is something that could change the Korean industry forever.
In addition to Stellar Blade’s third consecutive week as Japan’s #1 video game, the other members of this ranking are very interesting, as they give us a good look at the current market in this country. Although it obviously includes new titles, such as Endless Ocean Luminous or Princess Peach: Showtime!, there are many other video games that are still a huge sales success in Japan, even though they were released a long time ago. Such as Minecraft, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe or Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
