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Media Create Sales: Week 4, 2016 (Jan 25 - Jan 31)

Kysen

Member
I see no reason to split off mobile discussion into a separate thread. I doubt anyone would even post in it.

I find the mobile info interesting and hope they stay in these threads.

If people care so little about mobile as to not post in a dedicated thread why is it brought up at all. I'm for it going elsewhere so the focus remains on dedicated devices.
 

Jigorath

Banned
If people care so little about mobile as to not post in a dedicated thread why is it brought up at all. I'm for it going elsewhere so the focus remains on dedicated devices.

The better question is, why would anyone be annoyed with mobile information being posted in this thread? Even if you don't care about it, then can't you just scroll down and ignore the post in question? It's only a few posts each week with actual mobile talk. I don't think it's taking away focus from anything with dedicated devices.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
I don't post in the MC threads all that often but I do read regularly. I do think Japanese mobile discussion is a valid thing to post (even if I'm of the personal opinion where I don't like mobile games and don't want to hear about them :p), since it gives a more holistic picture of industry trends over there. I agree with some of the posters in here that if there are mobile-related postings, they're more than a graph and a basic explanation, some actual discussion would be nice.

I'm certainly willing to rethink how I present mobile information. I tried to pull back on the graphs quite a bit recently since I noticed people weren't overly interested and I no longer felt we had a good handle on what type of revenue chart data tied to (well, before Sega's new info dump).

The few exceptions would be when I was predicting what would be reported as a success or failure in the upcoming financial reports and for Yokai Watch (Level 5 has had a very troubled mobile division historically) and then Dragon Ball this week since we were on the topic.

If people have suggestions of what kind of things they'd like in particular I can aim for more of that.

Similarly if people want me to dig up things on dedicated games (I usually see a lot of interviews and news about them, along with reading financial reports), I would be happy to oblige. I did do a few posts like this for Sega when asked: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=182904675&postcount=360

For that amount of typing though, I'm more interested in a specific request of "Hey what is ________ doing about __________?" so that I know at least one person will get some use out of it.
 
I think that the way things are currently works well. There's no need to split mobile data out of the thread, because it works fine as is. I think the biggest issue is probably more of one that we all have years and years of knowledge of what sales mean for a game from following the industry (eg, niche RPG selling 150k in its first week is pretty good, mid-large budget game below 70k is bad, Monster Hunter should be selling 2-3 million, etc), so that most people can have a pretty strong idea of what numbers represent at a glance (aside from posters who just come in once a week to say "my god Splatoon" and then leave).

The mobile market is newer, and it's not always apparent what something ranking at a certain level means the way it is for packaged sales, which can lead to less interesting discussion being had. As things continue on I think that issue will diminish to some extent.
 

Sterok

Member
Has there been any general mobile threads for western countries? And if so, how did they end up? NPD tends to be used for generic US retail discussion, and I guess the PAL threads for Europe. Either way it would be nice to have an official place for small mobile queries.

Is the goal to expand overall discussion of the mobile market or to make sure threads stay focused on a main subject? If it's the former (which I assume it is), then I think keeping mobile talk here would be better. It's easier to get people wandering in here who may have a spontaneous observation or question than it would be in a dedicated mobile thread.

Personally I'm interested in what's going on there, but I have neither the personal investment nor the general knowledge to add much to those discussions. But I like seeing the data and the analysis, so I do want it to be continued in some format.
 

test_account

XP-39C²
I also think everything should be in one thread. As long as its about sales in the japanese gaming industry, it fits the topic, in my opinion. These threads are also fairly slow moving after the initial 50-200 posts, and i still havnt seen that some posts containing sales data have conflicted any other discussion going on here.
 

Chris1964

Sales-Age Genius
The content in the OP wouldn't change. I'd be cannibalizing the second and third posts in the thread to post all the other information we dump in the middle of the thread so it's also near the start, and thus people wouldn't need to comb the thread to find information like this.

If someone cares he can find what he wants. We won't take from hands with baby steps anyone who is bored to do a minimum search.

OP has links for every previous thread and the updated version of database. I have combined new releases with YSO predictions at a single post making super easy the search of them.
 
The better question is, why would anyone be annoyed with mobile information being posted in this thread? Even if you don't care about it, then can't you just scroll down and ignore the post in question? It's only a few posts each week with actual mobile talk. I don't think it's taking away focus from anything with dedicated devices.

If you have read some of the posts, you would know that it's not about people getting annoyed - it's about that mobile sales news and data dropped occasionally in a thread about another topic might not be the best way to discuss about them. Also, MC sales thread lasts a week, while mobile games are discussed for months, if not years, and having sales data for game X spread across 52+ threads doesn't really help the discussion.
 

test_account

XP-39C²
If you have read some of the posts, you would know that it's not about people getting annoyed - it's about that mobile sales news and data dropped occasionally in a thread about another topic might not be the best way to discuss about them. Also, MC sales thread lasts a week, while mobile games are discussed for months, if not years, and having sales data for game X spread across 52+ threads doesn't really help the discussion.
Is there really that much difference to show a mobile chart every week to showing sales chart every week though? The mobile charts only shows positions, kinda like the PAL charts, so i dont think that much sales data is being "lost", so to speak, even if its posted in multiple threads.

By the way, doesnt AppAnnie allow for historical data to be showed in one graph as well? If so, it should be easy to find historical data directly from AppAnnie.
 
Imagine if instead of my post.

that would be great especially for some occasional events like monthly digital sales or some LTD updates which come out every once in a while, I mean, I read everyday this topic but sometimes I have more time, some time less as everyone I guess, so sometime you can miss a report and you have to go back for pages.
if every important data is "locked" into the first page it would be great, I always go back to OP to see data, and I suppose that aggregating all news of those kind would be nice

or, as Chris1964 does for weekly sales, just use a link reference in some cases (I think about digital sales which has its own topic and it's always updated by mpl90)

I also agree about changing the name of the topic to "Japanese Weekly Sales: Week 4, 2016 (Jan.25 - Jan.31)" for example
Many years ago it was ok a "M-C" thread cause they had the last data while Famitsu was a week later, but now we get all the three trackers data at the same time, and honestly the most "complete" is Dengeki, 50 games with 50 sales data, then comes Famitsu, 30 games with 30 games data, and then M-C, 50 games but only 20 sales data, so a generic title would be more representative about what's discussed here.
 
Can someone give me a little help ?

I'm not so informed about *only* digital releases, I just finished the 3DS chart (NOT updated yet) but I realized there were a couple of games which Chris1964 tracked but they were digital releases only.

Considering I just wanted to have a "retail" chart, there are some games which data only cover digital ? I took a look at the digital sales topic but I didn't find info for such small results.

For example, the lastest games, Vitamin X (#436) and Z (#437) have such small numbers I don't understand if they come from digital or retail, but I suppose they are retail cause there are not cumulative sales for games such as MH4 or AC (which digital sales are known, iirc).
 

horuhe

Member
So, according to that blog, there appears to be a shortage of Wii U in Japan?

Looks like Nintendo wasn't expecting such "good" sales during the holidays, and now

The blog who originally talked about the Wii U shortage was this. Rakuten Books and the entire Shopping Mall have the Wii U console sold out 売り切れ. They push other sets to buyers. However, as far as I know, neither Sofmap nor Bic Camera said something about it. Today is the SMT IV Final release date and no info was stated about that. Maybe it's something related to online sellers, though.
 

Kid Ying

Member
I think nothing should change. Mobile is a part of the japanese market and that's what the thread is all about.

About the changing of the name, when famitsu started to show numbers at the same timeframe as MC, people wondered if those threads should be named japanese sales and opted to stick with média create because people were more used to and i think that's still valid. I'm a famitsu fan, so i usually go with them for when i want to search something, but i think the média create name is much more familiar for those posts.
 

ZSaberLink

Media Create Maven
All right, based on the feedback, I see two main options and a third one that's basically staying the course.

Option 1: Make a monthly Japanese mobile games thread.

1.) After earnings season ends (it will be over in a few more days) and we have a variety of data to work with, try to start up a new series of monthly Japanese Mobile Games sales threads that include that month's App Annie top-10 earners, the Sega revenue ranking chart (so we have a barometer for how sales performance works for top titles), and any other notable information for that month (new releases - at least as is possible given the low level of English reporting on this - and any other type of information we get like daily earnings or other such things).

2.) For overlapping games, post in both threads as normal. For example, when Snack World comes out, it would make sense to put its mobile performance in the Media Create thread and its Media Create performance in the mobile thread since we're comparing the performance of the SKUs. It would also make sense to discuss how things like Monster Strike and Puzzle & Dragons did/are doing on mobile when discussing the dedicated games. There are obviously judgment calls involved in this.

3.) My main concern is that at this point I don't think there's an obvious home for discussing the Japanese industry as a whole, which I'm not sure is especially helpful. In this scenario, neither thread is an obvious fit for discussing how the interactions between Capcom's ambitions in mobile/online and how their ambitions in dedicated gaming interact. The same is true for Square Enix, Sega, or even Nintendo, who seems interested in using mobile games to onboard potential customers to their dedicated devices through My Nintendo rewards. This is also true for IPs as a whole. A page or two ago I went over how Dragon Ball's audience in Japan seems to have had a notable shift to mobile, but how Namco is incentivized to keep making dedicated games due to how the IP performs worldwide. However, if this is preferred, I'm certainly not opposed to it.

Option 2: Overhaul Media Create into Japan Sales Weekly (we can leave the titles mostly the same an append onto them for searching purposes).

1.) The most common complaint about the mobile posts was that people felt it was hard to find old dedicated information in these threads. NPD threads lack full information in the OP/first few posts for externalities don't exist for Japan. We can shift the Media Create threads to reserving the first few posts for all the types of information we actually track. We put Media Create and Famitsu in there currently, but I don't see much reason to not have a second post that tracks all the information we seem to value less, but still follow. We could put in Dengeki, Comgnet, upcoming release schedules, the prediction league titles, the prediction league scoreboard, the monthly digital sales, notable sales announcements, links to financial results, quotes of notable executive statements about sales, or anything else of that nature that people see fit. I'm fine with just editing those posts to contain that information since generally they're just "woohoo I love Game X!" so I'd just add a "--------------------------------" and then put in that type of information below. If people want to make sure their information gets put into one of the first posts, they can just put in a red highlighted "Log To Top" and I'll try to make sure it gets done. Digging up historical information would be much easier this way since you'd only ever have to look at the first few posts to have everything notable. The OP itself stays the same as it always does in this scenario, and it's only the first couple of replies that have additional information.

2.) If we do step one, similarly we can put mobile in either the second or third post and have it contain the same types of information that would otherwise go into the mobile monthly sales thread as described above. At this point we also have everything presented in one place and it's easy to discuss the overall industry. Mind, the discussion would probably be more varied in the thread at this point since we're very openly expanding to the entire industry, including things about dedicated games we don't always discuss in an organized manner.

Option 3: Leave things as is.

1.) This is also an option, but since we seem to have a variety of strong opinions on this, I feel we should probably go with one of the above.

Edit:

If it's helpful I can convert posts 2 and 3 of this thread as an example of Option 2.

---


Admittedly I was being unfair there. My apologies. Thanks for the feedback.

I'm for option 2 primarily (staying the course is fine too, but #2 makes info a lot easier to find). Oftentimes I just don't really have the background to contribute to the mobile discussions, but I do find them interesting at times. That way, we can talk about the entire gaming industry in Japan while having all the relevant parties present.
 

horuhe

Member
So, according to that blog, there appears to be a shortage of Wii U in Japan?

Looks like Nintendo wasn't expecting such "good" sales during the holidays, and now

The blog who originally talked about the Wii U shortage was this. Rakuten Books and the entire Shopping Mall have the Wii U console sold out 売り切れ. They push other sets to buyers. However, as far as I know, neither Sofmap nor Bic Camera said something about it. Today is the SMT IV Final release date and no info was stated about that. Maybe it's something related to online sellers, though.

Sorry for double posting, but Rakuten confirms there won't be stock until late February or even March. http://books.rakuten.co.jp/rb/12348412/
It is speculated about shortages in Wii U CPU's production. Mitsumi Electric Co. Ltd. supplies pieces for Wii U hardware and it seems, they are having problems to deliver them. http://www.mitsumi.co.jp/
At Bic Camera Hachioji, Wii U is also sold out. It seems stock problems are everywhere.
ifVr8Aa.jpg

fweInzd.jpg
 

Vena

Member
I don't think I ever expected to see the WiiU sold out...

... at least not because of increased demand.
 
Sorry for double posting, but Rakuten confirms there won't be stock until late February or even March. http://books.rakuten.co.jp/rb/12348412/
It is speculated about shortages in Wii U CPU's production. Mitsumi Electric Co. Ltd. supplies pieces for Wii U hardware and it seems, they are having problems to deliver them. http://www.mitsumi.co.jp/
At Bic Camera Hachioji, Wii U is also sold out. It seems stock problems are everywhere.

I don't think I ever expected to see the WiiU sold out...

... at least not because of increased demand.

Indeed. Didn't expect that. Even if it's caused by production problems.
Checked the Japanese nintendo twitter but no word on it there. Only saw the Fire emblem fates routes going half price and another Ashley theme.
 

test_account

XP-39C²
The WiiU is back to selling ~10k a week, so it doest seem like theres increased demand. Sounds more like theres is low production numbers and if theres any problems there, it could easily affect the supply chain.
 
Hmmm, if there are stock issues for Wii U hardware due to demand being greater than stock, then we should see a random increase of hardware sales in the coming weeks as new shipments come in. Though, not sure if it's widespread enough to confirm anything.....or is it?
 

maxiell

Member
Lots of people aren't necessarily experts on Japanese sales so don't contribute, but lurk and read. Don't judge the value of the post by the discussion it engenders.

Mobile is probably going to be a lot more interesting to the regulars in this thread after Nintendo drops Miitomo and Luigi's Mansion iOS on an unsuspecting whorl.
 

horuhe

Member
SMT IV Final launch at TSUTAYA. There is stock only for the Mario Maker Set. They are pushing even the Genei Ibun Roku Limited Edition that didn't sell at time, since there is no stock for Shiro Set, and no other option.
Hmmm, if there are stock issues for Wii U hardware due to demand being greater than stock, then we should see a random increase of hardware sales in the coming weeks as new shipments come in. Though, not sure if it's widespread enough to confirm anything.....or is it?
If I'm not mistaken, and doing some research, stock problems have been occurring at least since one week ago. StreetsAhead commented something about it yesterday and some videogame related pages also posted it on their respective websites.
However, I'm almost sure the problem is due to lack of supply at Mitsumi headquarters. We're talking about, at least, two more weeks with these kind of problems.
 

horuhe

Member
Some Rakuten comments.

- PlayStation 4 was the best selling console of the week. PlayStation Vita is keeping sales steady due to Dragon Quest Builders release.
- Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 was the best selling game of the week. Rakuten Books and Edion were the retailers that sold more units of the game.
- Mario Tennis is also selling well. The Shiro Set was sold out for the only seller, Books. No other retailer has stock.

For next week,
- Shin Megami Tensei IV Final had really strong pre-orders. Gonna be the best selling title of the week.
- Due to Wii U stock problems. Other sets made an appearance, especially pre-orders for Pokken Tournament were high demanded.

http://ranking.rakuten.co.jp/weekly/101205/
 
Some Rakuten comments.

- PlayStation 4 was the best selling console of the week. PlayStation Vita is keeping sales steady due to Dragon Quest Builders release.
- Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 was the best selling game of the week. Rakuten Books and Edion were the retailers that sold more units of the game.
- Mario Tennis is also selling well. The Shiro Set was sold out for the only seller, Books. No other retailer has stock.

For next week,
- Shin Megami Tensei IV Final had really strong pre-orders. Gonna be the best selling title of the week.
- Due to Wii U stock problems. Other sets made an appearance, especially pre-orders for Pokken Tournament were high demanded.

http://ranking.rakuten.co.jp/weekly/101205/

Nice PlayStation sales. Wii U doing well won't last very long, but maybe it'll be enough to at least give the Console some life this year.....
NX System delayed... :p
 

Vena

Member
Nice PlayStation sales. Wii U doing well won't last very long, but maybe it'll be enough to at least give the Console some life this year.....
NX System delayed... :p

Rakuten has regularly been not-descriptive of the market, so don't read into it and just wait for the actual results in eight hours.
 

horuhe

Member
Nice PlayStation sales. Wii U doing well won't last very long, but maybe it'll be enough to at least give the Console some life this year.....
NX System delayed... :p

Yeah, don't read too much on it. Even though it has a big presence is not any representative. I really want to see the numbers of this week.
 

Chris1964

Sales-Age Genius
I'm not so informed about *only* digital releases, I just finished the 3DS chart (NOT updated yet) but I realized there were a couple of games which Chris1964 tracked but they were digital releases only.

There aren't digital releases only except from these Famitsu has tracked unter "_Download Card_"
 

ULTROS!

People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks.
Ōkami;194774675 said:
Yet another Attack on Titan ad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6gf-CqggBA

This is the kind of ads that don't really show gameplay.

Gallery_so5_1

There will be limited edition Star Ocean PS4s, Sony Store exclusive, of course.

500gb and 1tb models, no game included.

hngggggg

As a Star Ocean lover, I want this so bad.
 

Mpl90

Two copies sold? That's not a bomb guys, stop trolling!!!
All right, based on the feedback, I see two main options and a third one that's basically staying the course.

Option 1: Make a monthly Japanese mobile games thread.

1.) After earnings season ends (it will be over in a few more days) and we have a variety of data to work with, try to start up a new series of monthly Japanese Mobile Games sales threads that include that month's App Annie top-10 earners, the Sega revenue ranking chart (so we have a barometer for how sales performance works for top titles), and any other notable information for that month (new releases - at least as is possible given the low level of English reporting on this - and any other type of information we get like daily earnings or other such things).

2.) For overlapping games, post in both threads as normal. For example, when Snack World comes out, it would make sense to put its mobile performance in the Media Create thread and its Media Create performance in the mobile thread since we're comparing the performance of the SKUs. It would also make sense to discuss how things like Monster Strike and Puzzle & Dragons did/are doing on mobile when discussing the dedicated games. There are obviously judgment calls involved in this.

3.) My main concern is that at this point I don't think there's an obvious home for discussing the Japanese industry as a whole, which I'm not sure is especially helpful. In this scenario, neither thread is an obvious fit for discussing how the interactions between Capcom's ambitions in mobile/online and how their ambitions in dedicated gaming interact. The same is true for Square Enix, Sega, or even Nintendo, who seems interested in using mobile games to onboard potential customers to their dedicated devices through My Nintendo rewards. This is also true for IPs as a whole. A page or two ago I went over how Dragon Ball's audience in Japan seems to have had a notable shift to mobile, but how Namco is incentivized to keep making dedicated games due to how the IP performs worldwide. However, if this is preferred, I'm certainly not opposed to it.

Option 2: Overhaul Media Create into Japan Sales Weekly (we can leave the titles mostly the same an append onto them for searching purposes).

1.) The most common complaint about the mobile posts was that people felt it was hard to find old dedicated information in these threads. NPD threads lack full information in the OP/first few posts for externalities don't exist for Japan. We can shift the Media Create threads to reserving the first few posts for all the types of information we actually track. We put Media Create and Famitsu in there currently, but I don't see much reason to not have a second post that tracks all the information we seem to value less, but still follow. We could put in Dengeki, Comgnet, upcoming release schedules, the prediction league titles, the prediction league scoreboard, the monthly digital sales, notable sales announcements, links to financial results, quotes of notable executive statements about sales, or anything else of that nature that people see fit. I'm fine with just editing those posts to contain that information since generally they're just "woohoo I love Game X!" so I'd just add a "--------------------------------" and then put in that type of information below. If people want to make sure their information gets put into one of the first posts, they can just put in a red highlighted "Log To Top" and I'll try to make sure it gets done. Digging up historical information would be much easier this way since you'd only ever have to look at the first few posts to have everything notable. The OP itself stays the same as it always does in this scenario, and it's only the first couple of replies that have additional information.

2.) If we do step one, similarly we can put mobile in either the second or third post and have it contain the same types of information that would otherwise go into the mobile monthly sales thread as described above. At this point we also have everything presented in one place and it's easy to discuss the overall industry. Mind, the discussion would probably be more varied in the thread at this point since we're very openly expanding to the entire industry, including things about dedicated games we don't always discuss in an organized manner.

Option 3: Leave things as is.

1.) This is also an option, but since we seem to have a variety of strong opinions on this, I feel we should probably go with one of the above.

Edit:

If it's helpful I can convert posts 2 and 3 of this thread as an example of Option 2.

---


Admittedly I was being unfair there. My apologies. Thanks for the feedback.

I'd say the second option is the best one, the better approach to follow for future threads.
 
I quite like mobile news being in these threads. I'm happy with things as they are, but if they need overhauling, then option #2 for me.
 
There aren't digital releases only except from these Famitsu has tracked unter "_Download Card_"

Ok thanks
I also have some data from 2011 and 2012 about games below 3,8k and 3k took from the White Book I found in a library, I'll share asap so you can update your database
 
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