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Media Create Sales 11/5 - 11/11 2007

Stealth

Member
It's definitely disheartening to see that Nintendo's core franchise title can't maintain a head of steam past release, considering the amount of Wii units sold in Japan. Although I suppose the Twilight Princess sales should have been telling, I just assumed that Mario would have, about a year later, done something more significant. It's not like Galaxy's numbers are bad, it just doesn't mesh with Nintendo's utter dominance of the market in Japan.
 

justchris

Member
smurfx said:
lmao jeez man it's just videogames you don't have to take it so seriously. besides nintendo can't force people to buy a game.

Actually, I bet you they could.

"If you don't buy Super Mario Galaxy, we will activate the self destruct chips that come standard in every DS."

Tiktaalik said:
What about those 2 million Wii Sports owners, the huge majority of which have completely ignored Mario Galaxy? Wii Fit is the same audience as Wii Sports. Clearly it's not making a connection.

That's only very broadly true. The appeal of Wii Fit & Wii Sports is not the same.
 

Tenbatsu

Member
I really feel sorry for Zack & Wiki, such a good game and its no where to be seen. If this trend carrys on, nobody is gonna make new IP anymore.
 
Tenbatsu said:
I really feel sorry for Zack & Wiki, such a good game and its no where to be seen. If this trend carrys on, nobody is gonna make new IP anymore.
To be fair Z&W had a lot going against it on top of being a new IP. There are new IPs that have recently been a success in Japan. They are mostly (exclusively?) on DS though.
 

ethelred

Member
Phife Dawg said:
To be fair Z&W had a lot going against it on top of being a new IP. There are new IPs that have recently been a success in Japan. They are mostly (exclusively?) on DS though.

Exclusively on DS? Not even close. There have been many, many successful new IPs on systems other than the DS in recent years.
 

C.T.

Member
ethelred said:
Exclusively on DS? Not even close. There have been many, many successful new IPs on systems other than the DS in recent years.

Maybe he didn't mean just a new name, but a new game concept; something that is really rare.
 

ethelred

Member
Lobster said:
Especially on the 360.

Not in Japan. I meant that there have been many successful new franchises on non-DS systems in Japan alone.

C.T. said:
Maybe he didn't mean just a new name, but a new game concept; something that is really rare.

I suppose so. I'm not one to think there are that many genuinely new game concepts, though. Treasure Island Z, while fantastic, is certainly not a new game concept, and I'd argue against most of the successful new DS franchises being classified as such either. Brain Training isn't. Nintendogs isn't. Ouendan isn't.

ivysaur12 said:
I feel like Zack & Wiki would have failed no matter what system is was on.

Capcom needs to make Treasure Island Z DS.
 

justchris

Member
Steroyd said:
Holy shit at SMG.

*chucks people buy Wii's for 1st party games out the window*

/eats crow

It's now minigames. :/

....what was the last 3rd party mini-game collection that actually sold well on the Wii in Japan? RRR, how did that do?
 

Rolf NB

Member
Lobster said:
Not really. Everyone knows this is because of the price drop..Even 360 crossed streams when it recieved a price drop. Now a Wii Price drop..hell it could cross the DS.
What where huh? Really?
 

Lobster

Banned
ethelred said:
Not in Japan. I meant that there have been many successful new franchises on non-DS systems in Japan alone.
.

Oh right. In Japan. But if WW, 360 has definitely brought many new IPs to our world and they were succesful.

bcn-ron said:
What where huh? Really?

Never.
 

Timbuktu

Member
Lobster said:
Oh right. In Japan. But if WW, 360 has definitely brought many new IPs to our world and they were succesful.

Well, new IPs simply have to be very aggressively marketed as MS has done with their titles. And it's not like the Japanese can not accept new things when Wii and DS were taken up as quickly as they were. The market is simply losing interest in the traditional form of gaming, sadly and anything short of a cultural phenomenon (which is what Wii and various DS titles are) seems to be judged as failure. I'm still hopeful that Mario will still gradually gather sales as word of mouth spread and sooner or later the rest of the Wii market would discover it. But I also have to admit that since the release of the DS, I've also spent more time on portables. Playing on the train and in bed feels right, but in the living room gaming has to compete with TV and film.
 

Kosma

Banned
Poor Ratchet, poor poor Ratchet. Could any Jgaffers/Sales Agers say how the previous Ratchets did in Japan?
 

Galactic Fork

A little fluff between the ears never did any harm...
I'm curious about the new DS PSP marketshare trend. Not too long ago, the DS was doing 120 to 130k by itself, and the PSP was at around 20 to 30k. Now the DS stays at around 70 to 80k, and the PSP 50 to 60k. Seems the handheld market growth is pretty much the same, with the DS losing a lot of share to the PSP. This Christmas might be a really interesting battle in the handheld war.

I'm also wondering if Nintendo will create a new DS version before the end of the life cycle. A DS micro, or a DS Media Edition. I figure the handheld generation will wind down after 5 years. The Slim coming out now kinda requires them to put at least more 2 years into the generation before the PSP2, and Nintendo will keep the DS going as long as they can.
 

Terrell

Member
Tiktaalik said:
Hahahah

What about those 2 million Wii Sports owners, the huge majority of which have completely ignored Mario Galaxy? Wii Fit is the same audience as Wii Sports. Clearly it's not making a connection.
If they own Wii Sports and are playing it, it's not quite the same as people walking into a store to buy Wii Fit and seeing Mario Galaxy on the shelf. Unless Nintendo is beaming Galaxy ads into Wii Sports Baseball, there IS a difference between these two groups: one will not be as likely to know Mario Galaxy even exists, the other will be much more likely to know it was something they could buy after seeing Mario's rotund little mug on a boxart next to their coveted Wii Fit treasure.
 
hero said:
Wii Fit will bring in so many new console owners that they're bound to pick up Mario..

I'd wager that the Wii fit buyer is less likley to buy MArio than the current Wii user base, lets face facts the Wii is now a party/.fitness machine

Great idea but in Practice after the novelty has worn off the people who actually buy and play games on a regular basis want up to date technology and dont want the manual dexterity that the wii entails for long periods of time.
 

AniHawk

Member
oo Kosma oo said:
Poor Ratchet, poor poor Ratchet. Could any Jgaffers/Sales Agers say how the previous Ratchets did in Japan?

June 28, 2007:

1. PS2 - Super Robot Wars: Original Generations (Banpresto) - 345,600 / Debut
2. NDS - The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo) - 136,586 / 439,000
3. NDS - Itadaki Street DS (Square-Enix) - 60,256 / 209,000
4. NDS - Practice by Observing: DS Observation Training (Nintendo) - 49,168 / 314,000
5. PSP - Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters (Sony) - 38,682 / Debut
6. WII - Wii Sports (Nintendo) - 36,869 / 1,792,000
7. PS2 - Tales of Fandom, Vol. 2: Luke Version (Bandai-Namco) - 34,416 / Debut
8. PS2 - Tales of Fandom, Vol. 2: Tia Version (Bandai-Namco) - 30,232 / Debut
9. WII - Donkey Kong Jet (Nintendo) - 30,137 / Debut
10. NDS - Listen! Write! Increase Vocabulary! Initial English Training (Benesse) - 29,910 / Debut

November 24, 2005:

01. NDS Animal Crossing - Nintendo - 325,466
02. GCN Naruto 4 - Tomy - 122,322
03. GBA Rockman EXE 6 Grayga - Capcom - 107,099
04. PS2 Soul Calibur III - Namco - 106,920
05. PS2 Ratchet & Clank 4th (deadlocked) - SCE - 85,487
06. GBA Rockman EXE 6 Falzar - Capcom - 65,560
07. GBA Pokemon Fushigi no Dungeon Red - Pokemon - 57,143 (170,041)
08. PS2 Ikusagami - Genki - 52,547
09. NDS Pokemon Fushigi no Dungeon Blue - Pokemon - 50,309 (173,865)
10. PS2 Gundam Seed Rengou vs ZAFT - Bandai - 42,427 (340,791)


Only two I could find.
 

Tiktaalik

Member
Terrell said:
If they own Wii Sports and are playing it, it's not quite the same as people walking into a store to buy Wii Fit and seeing Mario Galaxy on the shelf. Unless Nintendo is beaming Galaxy ads into Wii Sports Baseball, there IS a difference between these two groups: one will not be as likely to know Mario Galaxy even exists, the other will be much more likely to know it was something they could buy after seeing Mario's rotund little mug on a boxart next to their coveted Wii Fit treasure.

This is actually the exact reason I think Mario Galaxy has failed, because unlike their efforts with the DS, Nintendo hasn't been releasing compelling casual software consistently for the Wii to keep people coming into the stores. After Wii Sports there's what really? People haven't had any reason to go to the store, and as a result they didn't know Mario Galaxy existed and weren't encouraged to buy it.
 

909er

Member
Tiktaalik said:
I seem to keep reading this line more and more recently :\

I've read it a couple times too, on 2ch. I think it's from Koji Igarashi. He was talking about where the next Castlevania would logically go.

Basically, he said that a large majority of fans (and thus sales) for the series comes from NA, and he went on to say that the PS3 hasn't sold enough systems, the Wii is interesting but not sure if he could pull off a Castlevania on it, so that leaves the 360 as the logical next system for Castlevania games since it has the most systems sold in America.
 

Terrell

Member
sphinx said:
I think I understand what is happening with the Wii in Japan.

could it be that people see the Wii mainly as a multiplayer console? I am seeing a trend that games that are " tremendously fun " on multiplayer are getting the good sales. Maybe wii owners don't like single player adventures like Zelda and Mario games?

Mario party 8 having better sales overall than galaxy would make me say " what the fuck is wrong with you people?!?!?!? " if I was miyamoto.

Seeing how the early reports of RE:UC indicate that it will sell well, It ocurred to me that it may be on the back of a fun, interesting co-op multiplayer mode.

how does my theory sound?
It sounds not entirely unthinkable. Maybe this new breed of gamer doesn't find gaming that exciting by themselves. Maybe Nintendo anticipated that and whipped together that semi-shoddy sounding "multiplayer" for Galaxy.
 
Everyone seems to forget that first day sales for Castlevania were 8k of a 20k shipment. So if Famitsu has first week sales of 20k and MC 19k, it seems that....its sold out! (Vinnk check?).

JoshuaJSlone said:
Famitsu has its predecessor and it starting out very similarly. If DBZBT3 has legs like DBZBT2, it could be surprisingly high by the time we see it again.

DBZBT2 was at 158K the last time we got an update on it mid-year. It took 7 weeks to even reach half that.
Seriously, its not. BT2 launched on Christmas period, benefited greatly from Wii launch (absence of competence), with continuous sell-out of Wii hardware with 60-80k weeks. BT3 is only going to crawl to its first shipment, since its sell through the first week was poor.
 

jrricky

Banned
GreenGlowingGoo said:
I'm curious about the new DS PSP marketshare trend. Not too long ago, the DS was doing 120 to 130k by itself, and the PSP was at around 20 to 30k. Now the DS stays at around 70 to 80k, and the PSP 50 to 60k. Seems the handheld market growth is pretty much the same, with the DS losing a lot of share to the PSP. This Christmas might be a really interesting battle in the handheld war.

I'm also wondering if Nintendo will create a new DS version before the end of the life cycle. A DS micro, or a DS Media Edition. I figure the handheld generation will wind down after 5 years. The Slim coming out now kinda requires them to put at least more 2 years into the generation before the PSP2, and Nintendo will keep the DS going as long as they can.
Ive actually read somewhere tonight that a revised DS is underway or is possibly finished. Its going to be slimmer with bigger screens and internal memory, and no gba support. Wont see the light of day until DS loses steam though.

Oh, and the PSP shares are still years away from ds, barely moved I think.
 

Terrell

Member
Tiktaalik said:
This is actually the exact reason I think Mario Galaxy has failed, because unlike their efforts with the DS, Nintendo hasn't been releasing compelling casual software consistently for the Wii to keep people coming into the stores. After Wii Sports there's what really? People haven't had any reason to go to the store, and as a result they didn't know Mario Galaxy existed and weren't encouraged to buy it.
Well, Wii Fit isn't so far off that Galaxy is going to disappear from shelves. There's still hope for a casual game rush causing a sales bump for it, That's kind of the point, Wii Fit can still offer this kind of result you're looking for, though maybe not on the grandiose scale that we saw with DS titles.
 

ksamedi

Member
WiiFit will get things going in Japan for console gaming. Even if everybody is saying those people don't buy other games which is totaly false. Casuals have a push efect but also a pull effect (pull hardcore in, push more to outer rings). What a lot of people also can't seem to think of is that people who buy Wii's also automatically buy the system for every person in the household, so the hardcore kid could buy games for it as well.
 

jrricky

Banned
mr_bishiuk said:
I'd wager that the Wii fit buyer is less likley to buy MArio than the current Wii user base, lets face facts the Wii is now a party/.fitness machine

Great idea but in Practice after the novelty has worn off the people who actually buy and play games on a regular basis want up to date technology and dont want the manual dexterity that the wii entails for long periods of time.
dont generalize. Last I heard it was a game system.
 

Timbuktu

Member
Tiktaalik said:
This is actually the exact reason I think Mario Galaxy has failed, because unlike their efforts with the DS, Nintendo hasn't been releasing compelling casual software consistently for the Wii to keep people coming into the stores. After Wii Sports there's what really? People haven't had any reason to go to the store, and as a result they didn't know Mario Galaxy existed and weren't encouraged to buy it.

I don't see Wii Sports players being very concerned about getting games on their first week either. Do people go to the stores because of particular casual software being released? Or do they go to the stores to see what's new that they can get for their Wii? They'll get it whenever they walk into the store with an extra bit of cash. They don't read up about the games, don't pre-order and probably don't really care about being the first ones to play the game. I'm just guessing of course, but it's hard to predict any pattern from something we haven't seen before.
 

Tiktaalik

Member
Terrell said:
Well, Wii Fit isn't so far off that Galaxy is going to disappear from shelves. There's still hope for a casual game rush causing a sales bump for it, That's kind of the point, Wii Fit can still offer this kind of result you're looking for, though maybe not on the grandiose scale that we saw with DS titles.

That's a good point. Ideally though I think Nintendo should have released another casual game earlier in the fall to build things up too.
 

Terrell

Member
Tiktaalik said:
That's a good point. Ideally though I think Nintendo should have released another casual game earlier in the fall to build things up too.
I certainly don't disagree with you, Nintendo totally fumbled the ball that way, should have released the game in America first, get us and the internet abuzz with its success here, and released it closer to or after Wii Fit in Japan, in the absence of any other casual software to buoy consumer interest in what's on the Wii shelves. But I still think Galaxy is going to have enough legs to make it somewhat irrelevant in the end anyways... still on my wait and see approach, since sales of games before the holiday ramp-up in Japan can be pretty turbulent at the best of times.
 
Anyone know if Galaxy is getting any marketing in Japan? Obviously it needs some. The little I've heard suggests it isn't, but it's never too late. I recall Pikmin had a late sales boost due to one of its songs getting some kind of publicity--I think it was released as a single, or incorporated into a radio release (?).

edit: found it on Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai_No_Uta
 

jrricky

Banned
Tron 2.0 said:
First week's sales.

506,074 LTD in Japan.

Again, Famitsu. Last updated 25.06.07. Only counting the Wii.
WTF??? Thats even worse than I thought. The old franchises are dying in the Japanese market :(
 
sphinx said:
I think I understand what is happening with the Wii in Japan.

could it be that people see the Wii mainly as a multiplayer console? I am seeing a trend that games that are " tremendously fun " on multiplayer are getting the good sales. Maybe wii owners don't like single player adventures like Zelda and Mario games?

Mario party 8 having better sales overall than galaxy would make me say " what the fuck is wrong with you people?!?!?!? " if I was miyamoto.

Seeing how the early reports of RE:UC indicate that it will sell well, It ocurred to me that it may be on the back of a fun, interesting co-op multiplayer mode.

how does my theory sound?

What about Mario Strikers Charged? that bombed and the whole point of it is multiplayer!
 
Oh btw, release list time...I added Card Hero which is the ONLY Nintendo title on DS for December. The numbers are from Famitsu in case you are wondering why they don't match with MC.

11/08
NDS Katei no Igaku: DS de Kitaeru Shokuzai Kenkou Training - ¿¿??
NDS Mario Party DS - 242,000
NDS Yosumin DS - 4,200
PSP Akumajou Dracula X Chronicle - 20,000
(11/11) PS3 Shin Sangoku Musou 5 - 176,000
(11/11) PS3 Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction - 11,000
(11/11) 360 Shin Sangoku Musou 5 - 27,000

11/15
NDS Famista DS
NDS Game Center CX: Arino no Chousenjou
PS3 Heavenly Sword
PSP Anata o Yurusanai
WII Biohazard Umbrella Chronicles

Rest of the list:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=8379282&postcount=454

I don't what happened with the DS Training from Rocket Company, I think it wasn't on the Famitsu data we received....
 

AniHawk

Member
Leondexter said:
Anyone know if Galaxy is getting any marketing in Japan? Obviously it needs some. The little I've heard suggests it isn't, but it's never too late. I recall Pikmin had a late sales boost due to one of its songs getting some kind of publicity--I think it was released as a single, or incorporated into a radio release (?).

edit: found it on Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai_No_Uta

I thought Sp0rsk said it had a big advertising blitz but I could have been hallucinating again.
 

AniHawk

Member
jrricky said:
WTF??? Thats even worse than I thought. The old franchises are dying in the Japanese market :(

Well Zelda did 800k on the DS and Mario is approaching 5m. It's really console gaming that's slowly being phased out there.
 
AniHawk said:
I thought Sp0rsk said it had a big advertising blitz but I could have been hallucinating again.

That's scary if true. I'm still holding out hope that Japan will revive at least one home console. I grudgingly tolerate handhelds.
 

AniHawk

Member
It's really interesting to see the Japanese market where it is right now. It's basically where it was before the DS took off. These were normal sales in 2004 and earlier.
 

Awntawn

Member
Sho Nuff said:
WTF @ Ratchet, I knew it wasn't gonna sell that well, but not THAT bad
Eyebrows not bushy enough, pupils not sparkly enough ;'(

Let's be honest though, it was up against Musou on its own console, and SMG was released just a week ago. It shouldn't be that big a surprise.
 

AniHawk

Member
oo Kosma oo said:
Thanks AniHawk.

Well relative to installed base it's doing normal it seems. I thought this franchise was pretty Japan friendly.

Well I found one post from December 23, 2003 regarding R&C:GC. The game had sold 59k in a week. I don't know if the numbers were from that week or the launch week and were simply late. If it's the former, then the series dropped off in a big way after the third game. I did run across a LTD from 2006 for Deadlocked that had it around 180k.
 

Kosma

Banned
AniHawk said:
Well I found one post from December 23, 2003 regarding R&C:GC. The game had sold 59k in a week. I don't know if the numbers were from that week or the launch week and were simply late. If it's the former, then the series dropped off in a big way after the third game. I did run across a LTD from 2006 for Deadlocked that had it around 180k.

Well I have to admit that while I love the game, this is my first Ratchet, I'm not sure I would bother to buy it if I already played all the previous ones. For me it's fresh.
 
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