Welcome to the Nintendo Digital Sales Charts Official Thread for September and October!
Before beginning, for those who don't want to search for it, here's the link to the precedent thread, about charts in July and August and June:
http://neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=609451
So, in order to avoid any kind of misunderstanding: what are these charts about? What do they mean?
1. Introduction
Digital stores are becoming more and more important as the time goes by. And this can be said for retail titles being sold on digital stores too. After a quite bad beginning in the digital space (DSiWare but, above all, WiiWare and all its restrictions both from development and economic points of view), Nintendo made lots of improvement through 3DS and Wii U, especially for developers (the most recent improvement has been removing office space restriction), even if there are many things that can and should be one for a much bigger improvement (one for all: accounts not linked to consoles). Still, both the eShops for 3DS and Wii U provide various sales charts too, costantly updated and these are the most important things for this thread. So, after this brief introduction, let's clarify how these charts work.
2. The charts on eShop
2.1 How charts are organised
Charts logo is pretty visible on both eShops. On 3DS, you can use a filter to look at Current Releases charts and All-Time charts. The Current Releases charts represent how games are currently selling on eShop, while the All-Time charts rank the top 20 best selling titles since the launch of the services. You can also use the filter in order to view 3DS Only Charts, DSiWare only Charts, Virtual Console only Charts on both macrocategories.
2.2 Ratings
Almost every title in the charts is visualized with stars: those represent the average of all ratings. Only people who played a certain title for over an hour can rate that specific game, and it's not obligatory. Clicking on a game in charts, among other things, there's also the amount of ratings.
2.3 Different region, different charts
eShop Charts aren't the same all around the world. US has specific charts, as well as Japan, while Europe...has lots of specific charts: in fact, there aren't European charts, but specific European countries / areas charts. There are specific rankings for Italy, UK, Germany, France, Spain + Portugal, Scandinavia and Greece, etc.etc.
Now, about the threads themselves...
3. Organization of the threads
Nintendo eShop Charts Threads will be bi-monthly. For example, this one will be for May and June, the next for July and August, and so on. Charts will be posted three times / four times a week. In fact, they are posted on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but every two weeks All-Time Charts are posted on Thursday.
Major rules to follow:
Posts with 3DS Current Releases charts can consist of just the overall 3DS Current Releases chart or it can contain the 3DS Only (retail + 3DS dd exclusives, so no DSiWare, no VC titles) Current Releases too. The same for Wii U when Wii U eShop will be updated with this filter.
If you've posted charts for one console, but you want to post them for the other console too, just update your previous post, so there aren't two links referring to charts for the same country.
And that should be enough. So, let me make other two posts as future archives and...let's lit off!
Additional notes:
1)Ratings don't represent strictly sales. They're posted to give additional information about titles and (if possible) discussing about trends of ratings
2)The charts do represent what's selling right now...and don't. In fact, "Recent Releases" charts list the best selling software during the last two weeks. Stated in the eShop digital manual itself (thanks serplux XD ). There's also beril's experience testifying this.
