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An Updated Look at Japanese Game Sales on Steam [Steamspy figures - May 2016]

Console games aren't always that frontloaded either. Persona 4G opened at 34k in NPD and went on to 350k in the West in a year. Naruto Storm 3 had an NPD opening of <150k and went on to 1 million in NA in over a year. Danganronpa opened at 13.5k and its LTD in the west is at 200k (100k in US) and was deemed a great success.

Afaik the 200k are for all Danganronpa entries, not just D1.
 

tauke

Member
I'm sad to see such a big drop for Danganronpa 2. Maybe most who played DR1 falls despair at the ending lol and I preordered both games the moment it is available on Steam.

This has to be stated again (and yes, I know it has been on sales, but really). Holy shit. Why did the game get such great word-of-mouth marketing online anyways?

I've beaten it 7+ times at this point and, while unlikely, I would be so down for a #2.

Capitalism ho!
 

Sesha

Member
This should be added to the OP:

Capcom

Bionic Commando - 118.000
Bionic Commando: Rearmed - 396.000
Dark Void - 37.000
Dark Void Zero - 34.000
Dead Rising 2 - 450.000
Dead Rising 3 - 379.000
DuckTales Remastered - 185.000
Remember Me - 627.000

Also, USF4 has had a free weekend so the numbers are no longer reliable. You should probably add that as an asterisk so as to not give the wrong impression about the numbers.

---

Some added context about the DMC franchise numbers, since people are already speculating wildly about the implications:

- The numbers for DmC and DMC4SE are inflated, having been on two and one Humble Bundles respectively. The pre-bundle numbers were 86.000-93.000 for DMC4SE and somewhere between 550-590k for DmC. The pre-bundle numbers for DMC4SE were varying wildly, as you can still see on its page. The bundle began May 10th, for the record.

- DMC4 was released on PC in July 2008 and on Steam in December 2009 (almost a full two years after the console versions!). With DMC3SE on PC in June and October (in NA) on PC, and July 2007 on Steam. So the numbers do not accurately reflect the amount of PC sales for either.

- Despite being an excellent game, the PC port of DMC3SE is also terrible, needing mods to work properly, and enjoys dreadfully poor reviews on Steam. This keeps even hardcore DMC fans from buying, with some preferring to emulate the PS2 version instead. Meaning unlike the other DMC games, it's unlikely to be bought even during sales.

Unrelated, but it kills me that DmC Definitive Edition still isn't available on Steam. Like, what the hell, Capcom?! It's the way superior version, and not having it available on a platform it's likely to sell decently on completely kills the potential for some of its added features making it into future DMC games. If Must Style, Gods Must Die and toggle option for lock-on don't make it into the next game at any point I'll probably go crazy.
 
im curious about what the japanese devs think of the sales numbers

It depends on the scope of the project and other things. Idea Factory said they are totally happy with the sales of Neptunia.

K-T maybe not with their latest games.

Spike-Chunsoft may be happy too considering the Danganronpa Series on Vita sold 200k, while its at about 67k on Steam after just 3 months with just 2 entries.
 

MrT-Tar

Member
If Jet Set Radio can sell over 1.5m on Steam alone, why haven't we got Future yet?

Rhetorical question, it's SEGA, that's why.
 
Edit: Considering port costs (if there is already a translation/console port out), let me say that in 99% of the cases the port costs nowadays are not really that high. I know some of the port costs of some games (from a few years ago) and lets say if a game that doesnt need to be rewritten is ported, if it sells about 5000 times, it recoups the port-cost.
I find it silly that majority of the talk regarding potential releases on PC is centered around the cost of port. Do the publishers have no interest in making revenue and just barely breaking even?

If just breaking even was considered good by a publisher, they could have ported the game to every platform under the sky.
 

kswiston

Member
Access Games

Deadly Premonition: The Director's Cut - 197.000 (published by Rising Star)
D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die - 65.000 (published by Playism)

I think the above might as well be added on the list.

you forgot
Agarest: Generations of War 2 - 46,674 ± 5,571 http://steamspy.com/app/312790

BTW: really surprised by Akiba's Trip numbers :) especially when it was broken on Win 10 for quite some time


I will add all of these. Thanks.


Regarding revenue, outside of a few huge AAA titles, we don't really get revenue for console releases either. People like to trumpet the sales for stuff like the Uncharted series, even though the first three games have had millions of units worth of bundling (with systems and controllers) over the years, occasionally sell for dirt cheap on PSN, have been $20 Greatest Hits titles for some time, etc. Also, almost all of the worldwide console sales numbers we get are just shipments.

I'd be curious to see how much a publisher actually sees out of a $20 greatest hits title. After manufacturing, distribution, retailer cuts, etc, it's probably not all that much higher than what the retailer sees from a $5-10 Steam game.
 
I find it silly that majority of the talk regarding potential releases on PC is centered around the cost of port. Do the publishers have no interest in making revenue and just barely breaking even?

If just breaking even was considered good by a publisher, they could have ported the game to every platform under the sky.

Thats not the case at all. I am just saying that from what I talked about with people knowing the costs of ports, the average port needs to sell about 5000 times to make the money back, so if it sells 10.000 it already makes revenue.

I just made this post, because people seem to think a (normal) port needs to sell at least 100.000 times to first make the cost back, because somehow console fans always come into these threads and say "The sales are bad. It just sold 50.000." even when sometimes we have official words that even the publisher or dev said its a great success.
 

ar4757

Member
Kudos to Sega. Too bad Sega Europe won't localize P5 in addition to porting PC games.

PC gamers, what's wrong with retro games - Megaman should have higher sales than that!
 
Thats not the case at all. I am just saying that from what I talked about with people knowing the costs of ports, the average port needs to sell about 5000 times to make the money back, so if it sells 10.000 it already makes revenue.

I just made this post, because people seem to think a (normal) port needs to sell at least 100.000 times to first make the cost back, because somehow console fans always come into these threads and say "The sales are bad. It just sold 50.000." even when sometimes we have official words that even the publisher or dev said its a great success.
If a publisher is going to continue supporting the platform, it means they are having some kind of success with it. If they drop the support altogether, it means they don't see it as worthy. So at the end of the day, when we see Koei Tecmo and Square Enix publishing their games on PC, it means they are still having success despite some of the failures and they know that their games have potential to grow on PC.

I will add all of these. Thanks.


Regarding revenue, outside of a few huge AAA titles, we don't really get revenue for console releases either. People like to trumpet the sales for stuff like the Uncharted series, even though the first three games have had millions of units worth of bundling (with systems and controllers) over the years, occasionally sell for dirt cheap on PSN, have been $20 Greatest Hits titles for some time, etc. Also, almost all of the worldwide console sales numbers we get are just shipments.

I'd be curious to see how much a publisher actually sees out of a $20 greatest hits title. After manufacturing, distribution, retailer cuts, etc, it's probably not all that much higher than what the retailer sees from a $5-10 Steam game.
The bolded is not true at all. We do get sell-through numbers even if occasionally. Uncharted 4 was 2.7m sellthrough including the digital sales. Numbers from Japan and UK are given each week that are all sell-through. We also get NPD leaks every now and then that are sell-through numbers. Infact the console digital sales are completely shrouded in mystery which makes the comparison to a platform like SteamSpy ridiculous, as we never get any digital sales figure for the consoles.
 

notaskwid

Member
If Jet Set Radio can sell over 1.5m on Steam alone, why haven't we got Future yet?

Rhetorical question, it's SEGA, that's why.

There are plenty Sega published games that were exclusive to the Xbox that still haven't found their way out of it. Otogi, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Shenmue 2, Jet Set Radio Future... I wonder if they are somehow related.
 

Linkark07

Banned
I'm not sure which number makes me more sad, FFV or Trails SC.

Hopefully Grandia II did well enough for GungHo to continue porting GameArt's catalogue.

Same here, cant believe FFV is the FF with the lowest sales in Steam. Same with SC (although it was to be expected).

Also Blazblue Chronophantasma is quite low. Wondering if it is because ArcSystem stupid idea of releasing the games months after they were released on consoles.
 

notaskwid

Member
Same here, cant believe FFV is the FF with the lowest sales in Steam. Same with SC (although it was to be expected).

Also Blazblue Chronophantasma is quite low. Wondering if it is because ArcSystem stupid idea of releasing the games months after they were released on consoles.

Pretty easy to understand FFV. FFV and VI's ports are hated by the majority of the fanbase but VI is much more popular than V ever was.
 
If a publisher is going to continue supporting the platform, it means they are having some kind of success with it. If they drop the support altogether, it means they don't see it as worthy. So at the end of the day, when we see Koei Tecmo and Square Enix publishing their games on PC, it means they are still having success despite some of the failures and they know that their games have potential to grow on PC.

I dont think its that easy. If you talk to some western publishers or even the PR of the japanese publishers, you get to know, that japanese companies are ruled by the CEO and even if game ABC sells well, that doesnt mean they will release the sequel on PC, because the CEO might think PC is just for visual novels.

The western publishers here on GAF said how hard it is to work together with the japanese branches (and I also have experience working with them, but in the DVD-anime sector). Look at VC, the target-demographic are mainly anime-fans or at least people who like japanese games. The next port was Sonic, because I am sure someone at Sega Japan thought "Lets release Sonic now, even though people bought an anime-game! That makes sense!"

What I wanna say is, that japanese devs/publishers dont act like western publishers. Even if they "just" make a revenue of 1 million $ with the port, they might think: "Its not enough." for whatever reason.

Also Blazblue Chronophantasma is quite low. Wondering if it is because ArcSystem stupid idea of releasing the games months after they were released on consoles.

I think it might also be, because they announced like 4-5 fighting games in half a year. GGXrd came out, then Chronophantasma, then Melty Blood Undernight is also releasing soon afaik. Besides that you have Koihime Enbu.
 

kswiston

Member
This should be added to the OP:

Capcom

Bionic Commando - 118.000
Bionic Commando: Rearmed - 396.000
Dark Void - 37.000
Dark Void Zero - 34.000
Dead Rising 2 - 450.000
Dead Rising 3 - 379.000
DuckTales Remastered - 185.000
Remember Me - 627.000

Also, USF4 has had a free weekend so the numbers are no longer reliable. You should probably add that as an asterisk so as to not give the wrong impression about the numbers.

I purposely skipped over the Western games published by Capcom (as I did with all the western games games published by Square Enix). I made some exceptions for series that had mixed western and Japanese development since it wouldn't make sense to keep some entries and exclude others. I guess I should add Dead Rising 3 though, since I included 2.

We've had over a year of Steamspy figures now, and I have noticed that Free Weekends don't really affect the numbers much beyond the following couple of weeks. USF4 had its free weekend last July. It's possible that numbers are inflated a couple percent to reflect accounts that played the free weekend but haven't logged in since, but I doubt the impact is enough to make much of a difference.

To illustrate my point, Rainbow Six had a free weekend about a month ago. Steamspy numbers spiked for about a week, but quickly returned to about the same level as before (plus 20-30k copies, which could be reasonably attributed to the sale they had during that free weekend).

http://steamspy.com/app/359550
 

kswiston

Member
The bolded is not true at all. We do get sell-through numbers even if occasionally. Uncharted 4 was 2.7m sellthrough including the digital sales. Numbers from Japan and UK are given each week that are all sell-through. We also get NPD leaks every now and then that are sell-through numbers. Infact the console digital sales are completely shrouded in mystery which makes the comparison to a platform like SteamSpy ridiculous, as we never get any digital sales figure for the consoles.

I am talking about worldwide LTD totals. We get sell-through for individual territories of course, especially in the first few weeks. Sometimes we will get sellthroughs in initial sales reports like the Uncharted example. However, when Naughty dog updates their Uncharted sales numbers a year from now, it will be shipments including all bundles, digital, etc.

All of the worldwide LTD numbers we get out of Nintendo are shipments as well. Ditto for other companies when they bother to update the sales status of their titles beyond the first month.

I only see arguments about units vs revenue when PC titles are involved.

How many times does it need to be said that it was given away free. "Sales" where nowhere near that amount before the promotion.

Anyone have expanded access to Steamspy numbers (or saved numbers) for Jet Set Radio before the giveaway in February? The free accounts give you the past 2 months, but I know some people can see further back than that.
 
This has to be stated again (and yes, I know it has been on sales, but really). Holy shit. Why did the game get such great word-of-mouth marketing online anyways?

I've beaten it 7+ times at this point and, while unlikely, I would be so down for a #2.

EasyGameStation is still doing that odd strategy-civ-thing for the time being (ah, the joys of Doujinshi Time).

"Steam? What's that? Who cares?"

Chuck said it best. There's a ton of varied factors and leadershit failures to keep in mind. Not everyone is Kondo (and he's been hand-tied by scope and shareholders from doing this dream of his).
 
I only see arguments about units vs revenue when PC titles are involved.
Because there is no certain way of knowing how much revenue is generated from PC games, especially if it is showing an impressive number like over 1 million for Jet Set Radio. As we later saw, it was due to a free promotion and also given dirt cheap in bundles.

I am sure Sega would have immediately brought back the franchise if the game sold these 1 million for like $10 on average, just like they did with Valkyria Chronicles after its success on Steam. We are getting a new Valkyria game and they are also trying again with the HD Remaster. Maybe the 1.5 million number for Jet Set in reality generated barely a blimp in revenue for Sega.
 

kswiston

Member
Because there is no certain way of knowing how much revenue is generated from PC games, especially if it is showing an impressive number like over 1 million for Jet Set Radio. As we later saw, it was due to a free promotion and also given dirt cheap in bundles.

I am sure Sega would have immediately brought back the franchise if the game sold these 1 million for like $10 on average, just like they did with Valkyria Chronicles after its success on Steam. We are getting a new Valkyria game and they are also trying again with the HD Remaster. Maybe the 1.5 million number for Jet Set in reality generated barely a blimp in revenue for Sega.

Ya. Jet Set is not really reflective. It was probably in line with the other Dreamcast ports before the giveaway.

Some other older games have had impressive sales for their genres though. It looks like Final Fantasy X will easily fly past 200k on full or near full priced sales. And thats at $30 for a remaster that came out a couple years ago on consoles and is easily available for less than $20 now on ps3 if you look around.
 

Sesha

Member
I purposely skipped over the Western games published by Capcom (as I did with all the western games games published by Square Enix). I made some exceptions for series that had mixed western and Japanese development since it wouldn't make sense to keep some entries and exclude others. I guess I should add Dead Rising 3 though, since I included 2.

We've had over a year of Steamspy figures now, and I have noticed that Free Weekends don't really affect the numbers much beyond the following couple of weeks. USF4 had its free weekend last July. It's possible that numbers are inflated a couple percent to reflect accounts that played the free weekend but haven't logged in since, but I doubt the impact is enough to make much of a difference.

To illustrate my point, Rainbow Six had a free weekend about a month ago. Steamspy numbers spiked for about a week, but quickly returned to about the same level as before (plus 20-30k copies, which could be reasonably attributed to the sale they had during that free weekend).

http://steamspy.com/app/359550

Makes sense. Just keep in mind that some titles listed in the OP were also done overseas, such as Lost Planet 3, which was developed by Spark Unlimited and not internally. For Dead Rising 2, its the only entry to be done by Blue Castle when they were called that, and it had a Japanese team of producers and designers. But I see you added it to the OP.

I believe you. I still think USF4's free weekend warrants disclosure. Just add an explanation about your observations regarding free weekends to the OP.

How do you feel about a $10 upgrade ;p

I'd pay full price for it at this point. It's weird to me they intended DmC for a Western audience but then doesn't bother releasing the remaster on Steam.
 

Raw64life

Member
FF7 @ 1 million pleases me.

DQ:H's low total is pretty shocking tho :/

DQ Heroes PC was a shit port of a spinoff game for a series that Square-Enix has never bothered to promote outside of Japan and was announced two weeks before the port came out. I wish it would've sold better, but S-E got out of it exactly what they put into it: virtually nothing.
 

Pachael

Member
Despite the different publishers, I think Falcom should have its own category like Arc does.

Looked for good ol'
Gurumin - 68,967 ± 6,772 (probably included some of the free keys during marketing, but good effort nonetheless)
 

Durante

Member
Dark Souls 3 selling more than 900.000 copies at full price (of USD 60 / EUR 60 in important territories!) is probably the single largest success of any Japanese developed and published game on PC ever.

And that's before any discounts or long-tail sales which are usually what the impressive numbers on PC are attributed to.

Yeah, MGSV and DSIII would easily be there on top for revenue gain. It's also showing that releasing PC ports late deliberately is such a foolish idea that seems to be the norm for the Japanese publishers.
Indeed.

Tales of Zestiria - 142.000
Final Fantasy Type-0 - 133.000
Well, Zestiria is a better game than FFT0.
 

kswiston

Member
Dark Souls 3 selling more than 900.000 copies at full price (of USD 60 / EUR 60 in important territories!) is probably the single largest success of any Japanese developed and published game on PC ever.

And that's before any discounts or long-tail sales which are usually what the impressive numbers on PC are attributed to.

Yup. Even for PC friendly western games, close to 1M full priced copies after a month or so would be impressive.
 
Dark Souls 3 selling more than 900.000 copies at full price (of USD 60 / EUR 60 in important territories!) is probably the single largest success of any Japanese developed and published game on PC ever.

And that's before any discounts or long-tail sales which are usually what the impressive numbers on PC are attributed to.

Indeed.


Well, Zestiria is a better game than FFT0.



This isn't surprising. Both Dark Souls 3 and MGSV are the biggest selling one. And guess what ? They're the only AAA Japanese games who got same day and date release as their console versions.
 

4Tran

Member
Some people may find it strange how the first title in a series can sell very well, but its sequels sell much worse. However, this isn't a phenomenon that only happens with Japanese games. The same thing happened with series like Legend of Grimrock. I think what's happening is that a game comes out with good word of mouth, and a lot of people end up buying on that basis or as part of a sale. However, there are a lot of Steam customers who buy a lot of games and don't play or don't finish them; and for these people, there's a lot less reason for them to pick up any sequels.

In my crazy mind i see sega of japan displeased that their western division is doing fine income
I doubt that's the case. Sega is the most Western- and PC-focused of all the Japanese publishers. Three of their biggest franchises are PC-only and have minimal sales in Japan.
 
Big fucking surprise.

That's also the reason why Dark Souls 3 is tracking beyond Dark Souls 2 sales. Later release. Now some Japanese publishers are understanding the simplest logic: Release during marketing hype and you can be sure to sell your game at full price.
 

Ascheroth

Member
I doubt that's the case. Sega is the most Western- and PC-focused of all the Japanese publishers. Three of their biggest franchises are PC-only and have minimal sales in Japan.

PC has nothing to do with Sega Japan, that's entirely on Sega Europe.
 
Looking at the sales figures of Jet Set Radio and Valkyria Chronicles makes it even more ridiculous SEGA aren't putting out more ports of their legacy IPs like Skies of Arcadia, Jet Set Radio Future, Otogi etc.
 

Tizoc

Member
I doubt that's the case. Sega is the most Western- and PC-focused of all the Japanese publishers. Three of their biggest franchises are PC-only and have minimal sales in Japan.

Yoooooooooou don't know about SEGA during the early 90s huh?
 

Kaleinc

Member
DmC: Devil May Cry - 803.000 (what)
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance - 544.000 (the)
Devil May Cry 4 - 286.000 (hell?)
 

Vitor711

Member
DmC: Devil May Cry - 803.000 (what)
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance - 544.000 (the)
Devil May Cry 4 - 286.000 (hell?)

Bundles.
Also - DMC4 is a great combat engine wrapped in an awful, awful game. Search your feelings, you know it to be true.
 

Saty

Member
Keep in mind old games weren't Steamworks. Resident Evil 5, SF4, DMC 4 were GWF titles so most retail copies won't be tracked.
 
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