released in Japan at ¥39,980 on February 22, 2014. In September 2015, Sony reduced the price of the PS4 in Japan to ¥34,980, with similar price drops in other Southeast Asian markets. Within the first two days of release in Japan during the weekend of February 22, 2014, 322,083 consoles were sold. PS4 software unit sales surpassed 20.5 million on April 13, 2014. During Japan's 2013 fiscal year, heightened demand for the PS4 helped Sony top global console sales, beating Nintendo for the first time in eight years. Since 2016, Japanese video games have been experiencing a resurgence, as part of a renaissance for the Japanese video game industry. In 2017, Japanese video games gained further commercial success and greater critical acclaim. In 2016, the global success of Pokémon Go helped Pokémon Sun and Moon set sales records around the world. Final Fantasy XV was also a major success, selling millions. There were also other Japanese RPGs that earned commercial success and/or critical acclaim that year, including Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past, Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse, Bravely Second, Fire Emblem Fates, Dragon Quest Builders, World of Final Fantasy, Exist Archive: The Other Side of the Sky and I Am Setsuna. Anticipating the release of the console's successor, the Nintendo Switch, a hybrid video game console, Nintendo had planned to diminish production of the Wii U. It formally announced the end of its production on January 31, 2017. The company had posted its first loss as a video game company in 2012 prior to the Wii U's introduction that year, and had similar losses in the following years due to the console's poor uptake. The New York Times attributed Nintendo lowering financial forecasts in 2014 to weak hardware sales against mobile gaming. Previously, the company had been hesitant about this market, with then-president Satoru Iwata considering that they would "cease to be Nintendo" and lose their identity if they attempted to enter it. About three years prior to the Switch's announcement, Iwata, Tatsumi Kimishima, Genyo Takeda, and Shigeru Miyamoto crafted a strategy for revitalizing Nintendo's business model, which included approaching the mobile market, creating new hardware, and "maximizing [their] intellectual property". Prior to his death, Iwata was able to secure a business alliance with Japanese mobile provider DeNA to develop mobile titles based on Nintendo's first-party franchises, believing this approach would not compromise their integrity. Following Iwata's