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A Look at Japanese Game Sales on Steam - Spring 2017 edition [Steamspy figures]
- Thread starter kswiston
- Start date
There is a very good market for them, but the Firis port is bad and shows that they have learnt very little regarding PC.
Sophie only doing 22k is disappointing though.
sixteen-bit
Member
SA1 over 2? By a full 20%?
SA1 was in the $1 tier of a humble bundle last year
There is a good market for them, but the Firis port is bad and KT are infamous for being the single shittiest company with japanese ports on Steam.
IIRC, most of SV sales came from steam sales. Once they start having this on sale (and there are more perv mods), sales numbers will probably spike as well.
This is true when you have three important caveats though.
1.) The most successful games have sequels that do better. Most series die off after a few entries.
2.) Sequels do better when comparing sales in the same time scale. Like Dark Souls 3 is vastly ahead of where Dark Souls 2 was at this far from launch, even though it's notably lower than Dark Souls 2 plus Scholars of the First Sin.
3.) Some sequels improve in average selling price, but not total units, as the first game in the series is often given away in bundles or sold very cheaply early on to try and find an audience. Later entries often don't follow the same price curve.
Some series definitely die off on Steam, but raw unit counts as of today aren't going to be a perfect illustration of that.
Abilidebob
Member
To be fair I'd attribute it to the launch date. So close to a whole bunch of games that the kind of people that buy SK games would be interested too. In just a month we had Berserk, 2 Ateliers, Nier, Senran, Nights of Azure, and a bunch of other japanese games being released, not to mention the console releases. Hell, I pre-ordered Nier on Steam but still didn't really play it because Zelda is consuming my life. No way I'd buy Senran Kagura NOW when I have no idea when I'd be able to play it. But as the game has multiplayer I do get scared that when I buy it the community will be dead.
Steamspy is an approximation. Either Steamspy changed some algorithms in between or the sales were so insignificant that new samples updated the values to probably the most accurate number.
The numbers for Sophie aren't bad given the recency of the release and the niche nature of the game. Releasing Firis so close to Sophie, and at double the price doesn't seem to have been the best move though. I'm not sure where the port quality was in those cases, as I haven't played them. I expect both to gradually go up as time passes.
I left those off because the large majority of their sales are not on Steam, and they earn money through active subscriptions. Steam numbers don't matter all that much in those cases. Most of the other games have Steam Keys as their default PC version, perhaps with a DRM free version on GOG that is missing from these numbers.
Tizoc
Member
Umm Chaos Code shows it has 1,000 owners, unless I am misinterpreting something?
Guess people really DO like Big the Cat~
SA1 over 2? By a full 20%?
Guess people really DO like Big the Cat~
I think it's 400k+ just from Steam and Japan physical so definitely above that
Yeah I'm sure the game will have legs (and this time the DLC doesn't come with the game so there's more money to be made there too) just wasn't expecting sub 20k sales
yeah it's a busy period and it's a much worse deal than the previous game (+$10 and no DLC included) I just was expecting something around 20~30k (although i don't even remember how Shinovi did on launch tbh)
That was a typo. I'm not sure how I managed that.
I have updated the OP with the correct number: 17k
Thanks for noticing.
afternoon delight
Member
Hmm. When you view the Arc System works library in publisher view, you get some different numbers in some cases http://steamspy.com/dev/Arc+System+Works
I wonder if Steamspy has a glitch right now.
I think there's a bug in parts of SteamSpy's reporting, and as such that caused some of the numbers here to be incorrect. The Under Night In-Birth one stuck out to me, as that would be a massive jump for a game that didn't really have any significant discounts or updates (when's UNIEST??? ;_; ) since release.
If you search by developer, French Bread's page says they have sold ~42,000 copies of Under Night In-Birth: Exe Late (UNIEL) and ~37,000 copies of Melty Blood: Actress Again: Current Code (MBAACC). However, when you look on the game page for UNIEL, it shows that there are only ~17,000 owners, whereas MBAACC's numbers match what's on the search page.
(Those titles will never not be weird to type out in full, geez.)
If you search by developer, French Bread's page says they have sold ~42,000 copies of Under Night In-Birth: Exe Late (UNIEL) and ~37,000 copies of Melty Blood: Actress Again: Current Code (MBAACC). However, when you look on the game page for UNIEL, it shows that there are only ~17,000 owners, whereas MBAACC's numbers match what's on the search page.
(Those titles will never not be weird to type out in full, geez.)
Obliterator
Member
Really unfortunate how Bersaria is selling compared to Zesteria. Bersaria is a VASTLY better game
It's doing fine. It sold the same amount as Zestiria in that timeframe, while not having a second game as an incentive.
Sad Affleck
Member
Those Dark Souls numbers seem to indicate that Nioh would be a good fit for Steam.
Yes. The bug seems to be with the publisher/developer pages and not with the actual game profile pages. Searching for games individually (IE, typing "Chaos Code" in search) gives the correct numbers as well.
If anyone else notices an error due to this bug, let me know and I will make corrections. I quickly checked most of the other ASW games from that publisher page, and they seem to match what is on their game title pages, except for the two instances pointed out. Weird.
Obliterator
Member
Oh really? I didn't realize Bersaria is in line with Zestiria when aligned launches. That's good news then. I'd hate to see it not sell as well when it's so much better of a product
Part of the reason why I am doing these threads every 3 months or so is that they can serve as a useful archive for past Steam sales. I'm sure that Sergey and a few others can look at the past two years worth of Steamspy data, but most of us can only see the last 3 months. If I am able to keep this series of threads going, we will be able to see some rough sales patterns for longer running series.
If you look at the May 2016 thread, Tales of Zestiria was at 142k. That was about 7.5 to 8 months after launch. We'll see where Berseria is after the summer sale.
Before of after adjusting for the "assumed garbo Koei-Tecmo port" penalty?
I think their reputation for having universally awful PC versions is starting to bite them in the ass.
afternoon delight
Member
Has the game ever officially been labeled an exclusive by its companies? I haven't followed it outside of it appearing fuckawesome.
Abilidebob
Member
Good. After releasing so many games on PC you'd think they would start to treat PC releases a TAD better, but nope. Although Toukiden 2 just released and apparently isn't a complete shitshow(buuuuut 1080p locked).
If KT actually did a good job of the port (which is extremely unlikely given their history), there would be an absolutely massive market for Nioh on PC.
I think KT are the first publisher I've ever seen that have released so many bad ports that they have personally angered Durante enough that he doesn't want to fix their newest release (Toukiden 2). It's quite impressive.
It was for a time listed as "Only on Playstation"... then mysteriously that was removed.
KimonoNoNo
Member
I think the ship has long sailed as far as Sega's back catalogue being ported.
chrominance
Member
I can't decide if the Atelier numbers are good or not. I think Sophie has sold about a third of what it sold on PS4/PS3/Vita in Japan at launch. I have no idea what its North American numbers or expectations for the PC port were, obviously. It doesn't sound immediately awful to me, though.
Firis I assume got hit because it's a) full price-ish, b) isn't as good, and c) is a more troubled port than Sophie was. But also I thought Steamspy had some weirdness with recently launched games?
Firis I assume got hit because it's a) full price-ish, b) isn't as good, and c) is a more troubled port than Sophie was. But also I thought Steamspy had some weirdness with recently launched games?
I mean, I'd think people would want to finish Sophie before playing Firis, so I'd imagine that being a factor too.
Maybe they shouldn't had released both games so close to one another
I'd argue that if the game was nevertheless playable and had been released close to the console date, Nioh would still sell pretty damn well for a KT title. Just not as much as it could perform under optimum conditions.
As far as I can recall, Durante hasn't really worked on most of their games and he's been frustrated at KT for a long time (mostly rightfully, despite my personally not needing/using features like arbitrary resolutions or 4K even in games that do offer them).
I think this was a huge factor. They both look pretty similar, they're both new to PC folks, one of them costs much less.
And here was I foolishly happy it got a tiny bump ;_;
last remnant was available for 4 dollars i think or soemthing like that and wasnt it in a humble? either way, that game deserves 2 million sales, incredible jrpg.-
Abilidebob
Member
Let's not forget the lack of Trading Cards. Put some cards/emoticons/backgrounds there and BAM, easy 10k more sales.
I am a fan of the series, but there have been an absurd number of these games in a short time. These games are 30+ hours long and have released every year since 2005 in the US and 2001 in Japan. Even if you don't want to count the Mana Khemia games, we have had 8 Atelier titles on the PS3/PS4 since 2010 in the west.
M0nochromatic
Member
A friend just got a good PC so we've been browsing lists and such. Him and I just jumped into Trails on the Sky FC, and man, what a fantastic gem I've been missing out on. If SC is as good as the FC, we'll get into it for sure.
afternoon delight
Member
SC takes FC and ramps it up and then the 3rd is coming out this spring! Don't miss out!
shiftplusone
Member
LR is talked about here a lot(was a big deal for steam sales until basically everyone owned it)
It's been like 3 dollars or some shit
Dusk Golem
A 21st Century Rockefeller
The numbers don't show how many people bought and returned it, SteamSpy doesn't give accurate numbers.
For example, I released a small game a month ago. SteamSpy guesses my game has sold between 300-2640 copies.
(it's sold 1,520 copies at this very moment).
It's just a rough estimate, basically saying "Between here and here" using the data that's available.
? Do people not realize how nice the Atelier series is? Sophie sold fine for a relatively old port. Kt continues to put the games on the vita in the West even when they perform worse than that, so I don't think there is much to worry about future ports.