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Media Create Sales: Week 38, 2017 (Sep 18 - Sep 24)

duckroll

Member
Not a huge difference. I think they could have easily done well in the west by releasing the game on the Wii and the PS3. The more people who would have purchased the game, the better.

Here's a more accurate look of the first week sales:

02. / 00. [WII] Tales of Graces (Namco Bandai) - 143.215 / NEW
02. / 00. [PS3] Tales of Graces F (Bandai Namco) {02/12/10} - 215.187 / NEW

It's a pretty huge difference when you consider that a year old port outsells the entire LTD of the original version in the first week, and then goes on to sell another 100k+.
 

fortunato

Banned
They told me it is the normal slowness of Japanese third party in adopting new hardwares

PS4 release date in Japan: February 22, 2014

First Namco Bandai PS4 game: Dragon Ball XenoVerse, February 5, 2015

Thats because Tales of Graces bombed on the Wii.

Tales of Symphonia sequel sold well on Wii in North America. Also, Wii didn't have much competition in the jRPG genre. I think Tales of Graces could have sold respectable numbers in the West on Wii.

125k is a big difference when it comes to a game that can sell around 350k. Also, if i remember correctly, Wii version managed these sales only because it went straight to the bomba bins after it's release.

Are you sure? The game was sold at full price by Amazon (and third parties on Amazon) for a whole year.
 

casiopao

Member
125k is a big difference when it comes to a game that can sell around 350k. Also, if i remember correctly, Wii version managed these sales only because it went straight to the bomba bins after it's release.

If u see the circumstances of wii Grace release, i would said there is 200k+ baka who buy a bad product there lol.

That game was even pulled back by Bamco due to software issue. It is not strange to see non existent legs for the title.
 

EDarkness

Member
Here's a more accurate look of the first week sales:

02. / 00. [WII] Tales of Graces (Namco Bandai) - 143.215 / NEW
02. / 00. [PS3] Tales of Graces F (Bandai Namco) {02/12/10} - 215.187 / NEW

It's a pretty huge difference when you consider that a year old port outsells the entire LTD of the original version in the first week, and then goes on to sell another 100k+.

The Wii game was plagued with bad word of mouth. I remember my students giving that game a hard time and when the PS3 version was announced it was considered the "superior" version. I'd say that Namco really shot themselves in the foot for rushing the Wii version out.

Even still, I think the game would have done fairly well in the West.
 

duckroll

Member
The Wii game was plagued with bad word of mouth. I remember my students giving that game a hard time and when the PS3 version was announced it was considered the "superior" version. I'd say that Namco really shot themselves in the foot for rushing the Wii version out.

Even still, I think the game would have done fairly well in the West.

Only if they fixed the Wii version for parity though. I agree it would have done well, but that wasn't an investment they wanted to make.
 
Not a huge difference. I think they could have easily done well in the west by releasing the game on the Wii and the PS3. The more people who would have purchased the game, the better.

150% of the LTD of a late port.....

No one is gonna buy shitty product with tons of bugs lol. Consumer are not idiot lol.

Graces was bombing before then with poor preorders and first week sales.

PS4 release date in Japan: February 22, 2014

First Namco Bandai PS4 game: Shadow Warrior, October, 2014

Fixed

Tales of Symphonia sequel sold well on Wii in North America. Also, Wii didn't have much competition in the jRPG genre. I think Tales of Graces could have sold respectable numbers in the West on Wii.


.

Tales of Symphonia is the most popular Tales game in history in the West. I don't think Wii had much of an audience for JRPGs relative to other platforms at the time or NB shyed away due to the bad rep that SKU was getting.
 

Oregano

Member
That why i said if i remember correctly. Still, it's pretty strange that Amazon was selling it at full price for a year with all these problems and the PS3 version announcement 7 months after it's release.

Probably just lack of supply, rather than lack of demand.

Edit: It would be high demand keeping the price up. Silly mistake.
 

Laplasakos

Member
Graces was bombing before then with poor preorders and first week sales.

Yeah this also important. There wasn't much demand for the game from Wii owners and Tales fans. Combined with the fact that Tales is a frontloaded franchise, i doubt it would have legs even if the game launched in a better state. Bugs only made it worse.
 

cw_sasuke

If all DLC came tied to $13 figurines, I'd consider all DLC to be free
Tales of Symphonia is the most popular Tales game in history in the West. I don't think Wii had much of an audience for JRPGs relative to other platforms at the time or NB shyed away due to the bad rep that SKU was getting.

ToS was pushed by Nintendo in the west that why it was that big. Something similar could have happened for ToG since Nintendo was willing to push japanese IP like Monster Hunter and Samurai Warriors in the west - but when the initial response in Japan was lackluster and Bamco made it clear that the future of the series would be on PS3, there was no point for Nintendo to support/market a western ToG release on Wii.
 

Fisico

Member
Tales new main entries of had a standard of selling between 600-800k on the 128bits generation, Destiny 2, Symphonia, Rebirth, Abyss (all on PS2 asides from Symphonia where the GC sku sold slightly less than the PS2 late port) before Bandai Namco had the wonderful idea to develop an X360 exclusive and a Wii exclusive that both bombed mega hard ending up around 200k LTD

Late ports of both on PS3 are now around 500k and 380k respectively.

They didn't bomb in the sense that they had to sell their shipment through bomba bins, they bombed because they sold barely a third of what they should have sold by series standards and would have by releasing on PS3 (see Xillia)

There is no way to put some kind of positive spin into the sales of both original SKU for these titles.

Bandai Namco really made the bare minimum for the series since the release of Berseria by the way, no announcement of anything game related ever since (they released the Rays, their third Tales mobile title) even at the Tokyo Games Show on the mobile game booth which featured dozen of their titles I couldn't see any of the three active Tales titles (Link, Asteria, Rays) being mentioned.
Roaming through game stores, Akihabara, Nakano, the IP has been losing mindshare and shelf space at a dramatic pace for the past few years, if they want to make a soft reboot for the series I hope for them that they will not wait too long

ToS was pushed by Nintendo in the west that why it was that big. Something similar could have happened for ToG since Nintendo was willing to push japanese IP like Monster Hunter and Samurai Warriors in the west - but when the initial response in Japan was lackluster and Bamco made it clear that the future of the series would be on PS3, there was no point for Nintendo to support/market a western ToG release on Wii.

Nintendo also had Last Story, Xenoblade and Pandora's Tower to fill that "niche" market later on.
 
Graces was bombing before then with poor preorders and first week sales.

Wasn't Tales of Graces Wii released really close to New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Final Fantasy XIII, that couldn't have been good for initial sales and the word of mouth would have killed any interest after the fact.

Edit:
New Super Mario Bros. Wii released December 3
Tales of Graces Wii released December 10
Final Fantasy XIII released December 17
 

fortunato

Banned
That why i said if i remember correctly. Still, it's pretty strange that Amazon was selling it at full price for a year with all these problems and the PS3 version announcement 7 months after it's release.

Third party sellers were selling at even higher prices. Point is, the game wasn't selling through bargain bins.

Fixed



Tales of Symphonia is the most popular Tales game in history in the West. I don't think Wii had much of an audience for JRPGs relative to other platforms at the time or NB shyed away due to the bad rep that SKU was getting.

Was Shadow Warrior distributed by Namco Bandai in Japan? Still, not really a representative game, and in line with Xenoverse 2 Switch launch period.
 

Fisico

Member
Wasn't Tales of Graces Wii released really close to New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Final Fantasy XIII, that couldn't have been good for initial sales and the word of mouth would have killed any interest after the fact.

Edit:
New Super Mario Bros. Wii released December 3
Tales of Graces Wii released December 10
Final Fantasy XIII released December 17

Tales of Xillia released close to Final Fantasy XIII-2 on the same platform and had a >500k FW
Nvm I misremembered
A good product being sold to the right audience should sell regardless, also Graces had, ironically you could say, better legs than Tales of Xillia, selling a third of its LTD number after first week while Xillia only sold slighlty above 20% of its LTD number after first week.
 
Tales of Xillia released close to Final Fantasy XIII-2 on the same platform and had a >500k FW
Nvm I misremembered
A good product being sold to the right audience should sell regardless, also Graces had, ironically you could say, better legs than Tales of Xillia, selling a third of its LTD number after first week while Xillia only sold slighlty above 20% of its LTD number after first week.

I think timing is an important part as well,Titanfall 2 and Radiant Dawn are two examples,both are good games being sandwiched between multiple big releases
 
Tales of Xillia released close to Final Fantasy XIII-2 on the same platform and had a >500k FW
Nvm I misremembered
A good product being sold to the right audience should sell regardless, also Graces had, ironically you could say, better legs than Tales of Xillia, selling a third of its LTD number after first week while Xillia only sold slighlty above 20% of its LTD number after first week.

Timing is important though and big releases can overshadow other games, and releasing your product next to the most anticipated Wii game of that year and arguably the most anticipated JRPG of that generation does not seem like smart business sense. Releasing any jrpg next to FFXIII would have been sales suicide, that game was being hyped since the beginning of the seventh generation.
 

Laplasakos

Member
Timing is important though and big releases can overshadow other games, and releasing your product near the most anticipated Wii game of that year and arguably the most anticipated JRPG of that generation does not seem like smart business sense. Releasing any jrpg next to FFXIII would have been sales suicide, that game was being hyped since the beginning of the seventh generation.

Tales of Graces would be a massive success on Wii but Mario and FFXIII killed it. I guess FFXV didn't sell so well because it was released near YW3 Sukiyaki (since YW is bigger than FF now in Japan). That would make a nice excuse.

Seriously now. If Tales fans were interested in the game, they would have buy it regardless of Mario or FFXIII, either when it launched or in the long run. They had plenty of time since the PS3 version was announced in August.

The only real excuse for the game is that the Tales fanbase was never on Wii. Baba clearly said it during the release of Xillia and it's why they didn't bothered with another Tales game on Wii and numbers prove it was the right decision.
 
Because all the third parties are against nintendo and hate their systems, you need to see the pattern over the years :p

what

Wasn't Tales of Graces Wii released really close to New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Final Fantasy XIII, that couldn't have been good for initial sales and the word of mouth would have killed any interest after the fact.

Edit:
New Super Mario Bros. Wii released December 3
Tales of Graces Wii released December 10
Final Fantasy XIII released December 17

Wasn't its release date sandwiched between Final Fantasy XIII and New Super Mario Bros Wii. I feel that played a part as well.

Sure, but its clear Wii wasn't the preferred platform for the fans of Tales.
 
Tales of Graces would be a massive success on Wii but Mario and FFXIII killed it. I guess FFXV didn't sell so well because it was released near YW3 Sukiyaki (since YW is bigger than FF now in Japan). That would make a nice excuse.

Seriously now. If Tales fans were interested in the game, they would have buy it regardless of Mario or FFXIII, either when it launched or in the long run. They had plenty of time since the PS3 version was announced in August.

The only real excuse for the game is that the Tales fanbase was never on Wii.

The yokai watch effect died down by the time YW3 released and it's shown by the games sales
 

Orgen

Member
...

I was kidding, in case you didn't understand.

I was kidding...

A lot of kidding here...

tenor.gif


I'm also kidding. Slow week here :D
 

Alrus

Member
By the time Tales of Graces Wii came out, Namco had already announced that Vesperia was getting ported to the PS3 and released that version. A lot of tales fans probably figured the same was going to happen to Graces and skipped it.

That + no fanbase on the wii beforehand + buggy mess lead to it selling pretty poorly on that system (yet it still sold better than Xenoblade or Last Story).
 
https://youtu.be/wgPWS_4PvcA?t=44

This is just a curio I found. I'm fascinated by the 2nd hand prices of games and consoles in Japan.

Basically, there's this part of the video in the beginning where the guy's in a Hard Off checking out the old consoles, and there's some interesting stuff there. Like how the nearly all the Wiis are 1,000 yen, but the Gamecubes are 3,000 yen. The PS2s are still going for 6,000 yen, but the PSXs are going for 2,500 yen.
 

L~A

Member
Huh, now that's odd.

Harvest Moon: The Tale of Two Towns + releasing on December 14th on Nintendo Switch Nintendo 3DS.

http://blog.esuteru.com/archives/20019731.html

Should mention that the game was already released on 3DS, though only in the west. Not sure if Marvelous went and made further improvements or not (I remember the 3DS version being pretty poor).
 
I remember when Tales of Graces came out the sales were pretty poor. Didn't hit bomba bins though but it underperformed. I'm sure the bugs and stuff had a part in it but it also just seemed that by that time the Wii easn't the prefered system for RPGs. The PS3 was. Granted stuff like Xenoblade, Last Story etc filled gaps but still.

Last Story should totally be remastered btw. With some upgraded textures at a highrr res the game would hold up.
 

Vinnk

Member
I remember when Tales of Graces came out the sales were pretty poor. Didn't hit bomba bins though but it underperformed. I'm sure the bugs and stuff had a part in it but it also just seemed that by that time the Wii easn't the prefered system for RPGs. The PS3 was. Granted stuff like Xenoblade, Last Story etc filled gaps but still.

Last Story should totally be remastered btw. With some upgraded textures at a highrr res the game would hold up.

Yeah, It didn't hit the bomba bins as a new title at all. But after the after the PS3 version came out you could find used Wii copies really cheap (like 500-1000yen). I think a lot of the fanbase got the new version and ditched the old.

And totally agree on the Last Story. Such an ambitious game that was trying to push the Wii hardware too much. The framerate was the one thing that held it back from being a truly beautiful game.
 

L~A

Member
And totally agree on the Last Story. Such an ambitious game that was trying to push the Wii hardware too much. The framerate was the one thing that held it back from being a truly beautiful game.

Heh, forget the improved textures. Just 60fps would make this a great version... those FPS drops in town, ha ha.

Alas, chances of even such an unambitious port to happen are even lower than a new Pandora game by Ganbarion. Among the "RPG Trilogy", this is the one that surprised me the most back in the days (Pandora's Tower, I mean).
 

Eolz

Member
So being a late port no longer has an effect on sales? Let's remember that for future discussions.

That's not what I said though?
Just saying that saying that the PS3 port is a success while the original is a bomb makes no sense with those numbers.
Both got mediocre to average sales for that series, and got about the same ratio of FW to LTD sales. I'm just saying that's not a bomb at that sales level, unless you got weird sales expectations and double standards like a publisher like Capcom would.
 
Yeah, It didn't hit the bomba bins as a new title at all. But after the after the PS3 version came out you could find used Wii copies really cheap (like 500-1000yen). I think a lot of the fanbase got the new version and ditched the old.

And totally agree on the Last Story. Such an ambitious game that was trying to push the Wii hardware too much. The framerate was the one thing that held it back from being a truly beautiful game.

Heh, forget the improved textures. Just 60fps would make this a great version... those FPS drops in town, ha ha.

Alas, chances of even such an unambitious port to happen are even lower than a new Pandora game by Ganbarion. Among the "RPG Trilogy", this is the one that surprised me the most back in the days (Pandora's Tower, I mean).

Kinda sucks. This is definitely one of the titles from the Wii era I wish was remaster for a new audience (along with Zack & Wiki). Really good games that just didn't get a great audience.
 

boiled goose

good with gravy
Despite selling a ton of hardware, was it the preferred platform for anything other than Nintendo games?

Taiko drumming?

In the West. Lego games, dancing rhythm games, etc.

Also probably sonic games.

Also probably party and fitness games. Basically casual stuff and local multi play. With Wii sports being the system seller it's easy to see why
 

Laplasakos

Member
That's not what I said though?
Just saying that saying that the PS3 port is a success while the original is a bomb makes no sense with those numbers.
Both got mediocre to average sales for that series, and got about the same ratio of FW to LTD sales. I'm just saying that's not a bomb at that sales level, unless you got weird sales expectations and double standards like a publisher like Capcom would.

It makes perfect sense with these numbers, with the only difference that Wii version didn't exactly bombed but heavenly underperformed.

Tales series had always been in the 300k-600k ballpark, with Destiny, Destiny 2 and Xillia being the only exceptions. So the PS3 version number is a good number for that series and not mediocre average as you said. And we are still talking about a port here. Wii version from the other hand (210k) is below average and there is no way you could put these two in the same bag. I mean you can but it doesn't make much sense in my opinion.
 
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