"Software sells consoles, but only if people actually buy them"

A game can sit at #2 while the console it lives on stays third. Onimusha: Way of the Sword's sustained ranking in Japan's charts looks like evidence that PlayStation 5 has finally found its footing in the market that once defined the brand, until you recognize what it actually measures: desire for one remake, not momentum for a system. The distinction matters because Japan's gaming market is where remakes go to prove they're safe bets while actual generational adoption stalls.

This has happened before, and it revealed something Capcom's strategy is banking we forgot. In 2024, Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade and Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth both charted high in Japan, both critical successes, both exactly the kind of prestige remake that should signal PS5 health. Neither moved the hardware needle. Switch outsold PlayStation 5 in Japan that year by a margin that hadn't tightened in months.

The late PS3 cycle offers the pattern. Around 2009 to 2011, when the PlayStation 3 was losing to the Wii's installed base, Japanese publishers responded with remakes of beloved franchises and legacy sequels. Metal Gear Solid 4. Final Fantasy XIII. Devil May Cry 5. These charted. They sold software. They did not close the gap because chart position measures what a dedicated fanbase will buy for a game they already want to play. It does not measure whether the console itself has become essential to people who don't yet own one.

Capcom is counting on Onimusha to break that pattern, to be the remake that actually drives new hardware adoption instead of merely delighting people who already chose PlayStation. The risk is real: a game holding #2 in week two could drop to #8 by week five, or it could sustain and still fail to move a single PS5 unit into a household that would have chosen Switch instead. We won't know which until we know what happened after the ranking stopped being remarkable.

A game can sit at #2 while the console it lives on stays third.

What matters about Onimusha's chart position is not whether it proves PS5 momentum in Japan. It's whether it proves that Capcom understood the difference between a game people want and a system people want. Whether they had any choice but to bet on the remake anyway because building new IP carries the risk a remake doesn't. That's the real story the ranking can't tell you. It's the reason you should watch whether Onimusha's success translates into PS5 sales, not assume the ranking itself already answered the question.