Marvel’s Wolverine got off to a quiet start in Japan. Famitsu’s weekly sales chart for September 14 to 20 has Insomniac Games’ PS5 exclusive debuting at No. 5 with an estimated 20,039 copies, a fraction of what the studio’s Spider-Man games did in the same market. In the US, the picture looks very different. Circana’s engagement data ranks Wolverine seventh among PlayStation games by weekly active users in its launch week, and Push Square notes it was the only single-player game in that top 10.
Fifth place in a crowded Japanese week
Nintendo’s Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave topped Famitsu’s chart, published Monday, opening on Switch 2 with 127,131 copies. Nihon Falcom’s Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter took second and fourth place, with 24,724 copies on Switch 2 and 21,753 on PS5, or 46,477 combined. Rhythm Heaven Groove held third with 22,568, which puts it past 1 million lifetime in Famitsu’s count.
Wolverine, which launched in Japan on September 15, came in fifth, 1,714 copies behind the PS5 version of Trails. Gematsu’s English rundown of the chart has the same figures.
These are estimates of retail sales. Famitsu counts boxed copies, download cards and console pre-installs, so digital purchases from the PlayStation Store aren’t included, which Push Square also points out.
Well behind Spider-Man
Push Square compared the debut with Insomniac’s Spider-Man games, and it isn’t flattering. Here are Famitsu’s launch-week figures for each:
- Marvel’s Spider-Man (PS4, 2018): 132,520
- Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (PS5, 2023): 77,348
- Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales (PS4 and PS5, 2020): 41,522 combined (22,882 on PS4, 18,640 for the PS5 Ultimate Edition)
- Marvel’s Wolverine (PS5, 2026): 20,039
The fairest comparison is Spider-Man 2, the other PS5-only launch. Wolverine sold about a quarter of Spider-Man 2’s opening, and it had more time to do it. Wolverine launched on a Tuesday, so it got six days in its first Famitsu tracking week. Spider-Man 2 launched on a Friday and got three.
The platform matters too. In the same week, Famitsu counted 34,341 Switch 2 consoles sold in Japan against 7,847 across the whole PS5 family. Push Square’s Liam Croft points to the PS5’s smaller audience in Japan and Spider-Man’s wider appeal as likely factors. He also notes that Wolverine didn’t reach even a third of what Spider-Man 2 managed.
A top 10 hit on US PlayStation
US engagement data tells a better story. Circana analyst Mat Piscatella posted Monday morning that Wolverine debuted at No. 7 on US PlayStation in Circana’s Player Engagement Tracker for the week ending September 19. The tracker ranks games by weekly active users, not concurrent players. Push Square reports that Wolverine was the only single-player game in that top 10, surrounded by live-service mainstays like Fortnite and Call of Duty.
Players also stuck with it. Piscatella said the average US Wolverine player spent 14.2 hours with the game that week, which ranked in the top 20 of all PlayStation titles for playtime per player. NBA 2K27 led that list at 23.1 hours.
Engagement isn’t the same as sales. Circana’s tracker counts players, not copies sold, and Sony hasn’t released sales figures for Wolverine. Push Square notes that Sony hasn’t commented on the game’s performance and expects some kind of update with the company’s next earnings report in November.
That leaves a split verdict for now: a soft retail start in Japan, where PlayStation is a small market, and a strong launch week with US PlayStation players. For more on the launch, see our earlier report, Marvel’s Wolverine is out on PS5, and Insomniac teases a scent trail fix.
