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Media Create Sales: Week 3, 2012 (Jan 16 - Jan 22)

Mpl90

Two copies sold? That's not a bomb guys, stop trolling!!!
It's kind of crazy 1/5th of the userbase downloaded that demo, lol.

Eh, really, the number of downloads considering which game we're talking about is very good...This can also tell us of what kind of people is buying Vita at the moment, from a certain point of view.
 

AZ2002

Banned
http://www.famitsu.com/news/201201/30009160.html

It has been reported that in the last 10 days, the Ragnarok Odyssey demo on PSN has enjoyed over 100k of downloads! Surely this means that Japan is super excited for the game, and will rush to buy the game this week! But wait, there's a catch! Surely since most of them familiarized themselves with the game on PSN, they would also buy the game on PSN instead of a retail store! This means Ragnarok Odyssey will sell over 100k this week, but only on PSN! No one can prove me wrong! :eek:

thats impressive.as long as MonHun isnt released on the Vita theres an opportinity for other publishers to copy its model and become the next big thing on Vita which can really affect MonHun sales if it was released on the system later.i guess thats explain all the rumores about MonHun Vita latley as Capcom doesnt want that to happen.
 

Mpl90

Two copies sold? That's not a bomb guys, stop trolling!!!
Care to elaborate?

Considering the download number is very high not only for the sales potential of the game, but also, if not especially, for the low install base, we could assume Vita is being bought primarly by tech-focused people, informed gamers, Sony fans (obviously) and then other people.
 

Takao

Banned
I thought you were trying to say the hardware was being bought by MH fans or something... Based on the downloads of some PSP demos have gotten the userbase does seem a bit more tech active than the Nintendo equivalent, but I think that comes with the territory given Vita and PSP make active note of the online marketplace, as well as the fact the PS userbase is usually in their teens/early 20s.
 

manueldelalas

Time Traveler
thats impressive.as long as MonHun isnt released on the Vita theres an opportinity for other publishers to copy its model and become the next big thing on Vita which can really affect MonHun sales if it was released on the system later.i guess thats explain all the rumores about MonHun Vita latley as Capcom doesnt want that to happen.
This post is awesome.
 

Road

Member
Sorry for the slightly-off topic post but I have a case discussion for lecture tomorrow about the 'Console Wars', believe it or not (it's a Strategy class, just lucked out on the case choice).

I'm searching everywhere for an accurate worldwide sales-to-date chart of PS3 vs. 360 vs. Wii. I'm hoping for a simple line chart to show how quickly Wii pulled away at the beginning, and how quickly PS3/360 are catching up now. Most I've found online seem to end at 2009.

I also don't want to bring blatant lies and shit data in by using chartzzzzzzzzzzz, hence I come to you guys for help. Does anyone have a link, or even an Excel file that's been tracking worldwide data since launch?

Please help me look like a total baws in front of my classmates. Thanks everyone :)

I'd use: http://garaph.info/shipmentcompare.html

It's based on shipments which is really the most (or rather, the only) reliable worldwide sales information. Or you can go directly to each company's investor's relation page and gather that kind of data yourself.
 

Chris1964

Sales-Age Genius
Yeah it's definitely going to bomb hard. But trying to extrapolate how well certain titles on the list will do based on Comgnet's pre-orders alone is totally silly. But yet, as long as they remain a reference source for Mpl90 to obsess over like a bunch of other meaningless info sources he tends to, others will be tempted to use that as the main discussion point. Same with Amazon rankings, random retailer blogs, etc.

amazon and comgnet insanity must slow down but there are specific retailer blogs no one can doubt. sinobi is one of them. I don't remember that blog giving an estimate and being wrong, with shipments or sales. azalyn and maybe get6-2 follow by a distance.
 

Aostia

El Capitan Todd
amazon and comgnet insanity must slow down but there are specific retailer blogs no one can doubt. sinobi is one of them. I don't remember that blog giving an estimate and being wrong, with shipments or sales. azalyn and maybe get6-2 follow by a distance.



I'm with you, on this.

My opinion: Sinobi is a reliable source for leaks; first day sales, shipments estimate and so on. Other blogs could be a curiosity, up to now.

Comgnet is a curiosity; there is no evidence that those numbers can reflect the actual sales data, but we can obtain at least a preliminary idea of the trend.

Amazon is absolutely useless for sales data anticipations.
 
I'd use: http://garaph.info/shipmentcompare.html

It's based on shipments which is really the most (or rather, the only) reliable worldwide sales information. Or you can go directly to each company's investor's relation page and gather that kind of data yourself.
Yeah, here is specifically what I think he wants. The latest quarter is yet missing word from Sony, and ignore any funny business in the ones column--it's just a way I have of marking whether a number is from a flat statement of the total, or came from adding a new number to a previous total.
 

cw_sasuke

If all DLC came tied to $13 figurines, I'd consider all DLC to be free
Is Revelations sold out in Japan ? The price kept going higher and higher the last days at amazon.
 

duckroll

Member
amazon and comgnet insanity must slow down but there are specific retailer blogs no one can doubt. sinobi is one of them. I don't remember that blog giving an estimate and being wrong, with shipments or sales. azalyn and maybe get6-2 follow by a distance.

Some retailer blogs have have very good information about shipment estimates, first day sales, etc, because they actually subscribe to tracking information or know people who do. There can be no doubt about that. I am talking about the random Japanese blogs where the guy simply works at a small retailer and talks about how things are selling at his store for the week. Stuff like "We put up signs for this new random game, it is helping draw attention to the title." and "We took in 10 copies of the this title and sold 5, not very impressive. But we took in 30 copies of this other title and it is almost all gone now!" are not useful at all. There are dozens of blogs like this, and until I requested for it to stop, they were being posted here a bit too frequently. Don't you agree?
 

Chris1964

Sales-Age Genius
Some retailer blogs have have very good information about shipment estimates, first day sales, etc, because they actually subscribe to tracking information or know people who do. There can be no doubt about that. I am talking about the random Japanese blogs where the guy simply works at a small retailer and talks about how things are selling at his store for the week. Stuff like "We put up signs for this new random game, it is helping draw attention to the title." and "We took in 10 copies of the this title and sold 5, not very impressive. But we took in 30 copies of this other title and it is almost all gone now!" are not useful at all. There are dozens of blogs like this, and until I requested for it to stop, they were being posted here a bit too frequently. Don't you agree?

To the point that what every store sells I agree, nobody cares if he sold 10, 20 or 30 copies. These small stores can be useful only if they present a similar trend. When every blog says that MonHun Diary G or Monster Hunter Tri is massively overstocked, TriG faces supply problems, 3DS or Vita hype is dying shortly after launch these are observations that need to be posted since they give a picture almost from first day a game or even a system game goes on sale.

Same with amazon and comgnet. You can see trends and early price drops but the way they are used right now counting preorders one by one or how many places a game went up or down make them useless.
 

duckroll

Member
To the point that what every store sells I agree, nobody cares if he sold 10, 20 or 30 copies. These small stores can be useful only if they present a similar trend. When every blog says that MonHun Diary G or Monster Hunter Tri is massively overstocked, TriG faces supply problems, 3DS or Vita hype is dying shortly after launch these are observations that need to be posted since they give a picture almost from first day a game or even a system game goes on sale.

Same with amazon and comgnet. You can see trends and early price drops but the way they are used right now counting preorders one by one or how many places a game went up or down make them useless.

Yes, this is exactly my point. If we're talking about a specific trend, or there is a specific discussion point which is being made, if it can be supported by a lot of additional evidence such as many retailers saying the same thing, and similar sales trends reflected by Comgnet, Amazon Japan, and even Tsutaya, then it is worth discussing because of that trend or point.

But outside of that, I really think that simply posting such data and hoping that "other people" will pick out anything that could be useful and discuss them is irresponsible. Information by itself is never harmful, since it is just data. I just think that we can definitely cool off from Mpl90 posting every single bit of info he comes across, regardless how useless it is. :)
 

Durante

Member
I haven't done the statistical analysis, but from watching this thread I don't think Comgnet numbers can or should be dismissed as a mere curiousity, or put on the same level as amazon charts. There clearly is a significant correlation between sales and Comgnet points, particularly if you do comparisons within one franchise or with games targeting a similar userbase, like Mpl90 was doing. Obviously it's not 100%, but if I had to build a predictive model today for Japanese retail game sales I'd start with a combination of the existing sales databases and the weekly Comgnet points.
 

duckroll

Member
I haven't done the statistical analysis, but from watching this thread I don't think Comgnet numbers can or should be dismissed as a mere curiousity, or put on the same level as amazon charts. There clearly is a significant correlation between sales and Comgnet points, particularly if you do comparisons within one franchise or with games targeting a similar userbase, like Mpl90 was doing. Obviously it's not 100%, but if I had to build a predictive model today for Japanese retail game sales I'd start with a combination of the existing sales databases and the weekly Comgnet points.

Do you even know what "Comgnet points" are?
 
I haven't done the statistical analysis, but from watching this thread I don't think Comgnet numbers can or should be dismissed as a mere curiousity, or put on the same level as amazon charts. There clearly is a significant correlation between sales and Comgnet points, particularly if you do comparisons within one franchise or with games targeting a similar userbase, like Mpl90 was doing. Obviously it's not 100%, but if I had to build a predictive model today for Japanese retail game sales I'd start with a combination of the existing sales databases and the weekly Comgnet points.

Has a regression been performed on that? Because I think we would see no correlation at all, just some very vague trend.
 

Chris1964

Sales-Age Genius
I haven't done the statistical analysis, but from watching this thread I don't think Comgnet numbers can or should be dismissed as a mere curiousity, or put on the same level as amazon charts. There clearly is a significant correlation between sales and Comgnet points, particularly if you do comparisons within one franchise or with games targeting a similar userbase, like Mpl90 was doing. Obviously it's not 100%, but if I had to build a predictive model today for Japanese retail game sales I'd start with a combination of the existing sales databases and the weekly Comgnet points.

The problem with comgnet is and always will be that the vast majority doesn't know what comgnet is. Even Square was so excited with its extended use again that decided to come back.
 

Durante

Member
Has a regression been performed on that? Because I think we would see no correlation at all, just some very vague trend.
Is there an archive out there for previous weeks' comgnet data? I could run some tests then.

Do you even know what "Comgnet points" are?
Well, what I gathered from these threads is that they represent pre-orders at a particular chain of retailers. Which is why it is important to take franchise / target audience into account to try and factor out the different pre-order/sale ratios of different kinds of games.
 

duckroll

Member
Well, what I gathered from these threads is that they represent pre-orders at a particular chain of retailers. Which is why it is important to take franchise / target audience into account to try and factor out the different pre-order/sale ratios of different kinds of games.

Right, and now we're not just seeing the pre-order charts being presented here, but also the comgnet sales charts. The problem is that aside from a few regulars in here, the majority of people who will read and/or join in MC threads don't really know anything about comgnet (nor should they be expected to honestly), and will definitely mistake it for some sort of definitive sales chart if posted without clarification.

Another problem with comgnet chart is that because of specific user interest, we often tend to also discuss games which tend to sell very poorly. At the lower ranges of comgnet, the numbers really mean nothing at all beyond "not many people are interested in this game at all". A game which is not in the comgnet pre-order charts at all could still sell more than a bunch of titles which have very low points. So that's another assumption which people tend to naturally make.
 

Mpl90

Two copies sold? That's not a bomb guys, stop trolling!!!
preorders
http://translate.google.com/transla.../homepage3.nifty.com/TAKU64/cong/&sl=ja&tl=en

weekly sales
http://www.mng.ameba.jp/blog/

If you try to do comparisons in the end you'll see that it doesn't tell all the truth.

Fixed, to make sure he sees the fantastic inventions of Google Translation!

However, both Chris and duckroll are right: there are blogs as Sinobi, azalyn and get6-2 which can be considered pretty reliable, and others which can't be reliable if taken separated from each other. As well as Comgnet points...and then Amazon charts, at least for price drops in some cases.

But, talking about something else, what do you expect from Theatrhythm, an upcoming title certainly interesting for what it represents, the union between the FF world and the Taiko / RH gameplay, with such a stylized design?
 

duckroll

Member
But, talking about something else, what do you expect from Theatrhythm, an upcoming title certainly interesting for what it represents, the union between the FF world and the Taiko / RH gameplay, with such a stylized design?

I think it'll do only okay initially. Nothing particularly high at launch, but it could have serious legs if the gameplay resonates with the audience and the word of mouth is good. There's a solid track list, and they plan on adding more songs through DLC post-launch, so that could keep people interested and give the game good legs, but only if the gameplay and fan interest holds up.
 

Durante

Member
If you try to do comparisons in the end you'll see that it doesn't tell all the truth.
Yeah, I wouldn't expect that, I'm just saying that it's one of the more useful data points available for prediction, as long as you take its specific caveats (as mentioned by duckroll) into account.

Fixed, to make sure he sees the fantastic inventions of Google Translation!
I like that it just stops "translating" halfway through some of the pages. Anyway, thanks to you and Chris for the link.

I'd like to try and train a machine learning algorithm using the comgnet numbers for the preceding week, the actual sales number, the platform and the genre of the games and estimate the error with some cross validation. But it seems like it would take too much time and/or specific scripts to scrape and gather the data, associate games with the correct names/genres and put it into a usable format.
 

donny2112

Member
I also want to make it clear that while I'm a moderator, a lot of the time I'm also just expressing a viewpoint here, based on what I think is best for the thread. If a lot of regular contributors to the thread disagree, we can definitely come to a consensus about what we want to discuss and what we don't in the thread.

If Comgnet data is never posted, we'll miss the occasional time where it's useful for predicting (e.g. sequel comparison on same platform).
If Comgnet data is posted rarely, people won't be used to it, and we'll have to explain it all over again with the history each time it is used.
If Comgnet data is posted regularly, it could potentially overwhelm regular discussion of the real numbers with superfluous data points.

Maybe a more formatted (and limited) weekly presentation of the data (instead of Google Translate info dump) with a persistent disclaimer explaining what it is, what it's not, perceived biases, and how it's been useful in the past might be appropriate to avoid removing it entirely.

I don't want a Square2005 repeat of trying to extrapolate the Top 30 from it, but I also don't want to completely lose visibility to it. schuelma has spent a lot of time with the comgnet data, so I'd be interested in his opinion on it, too. :)
 

duckroll

Member
Maybe a more formatted (and limited) weekly presentation of the data (instead of Google Translate info dump) with a persistent disclaimer explaining what it is, what it's not, perceived biases, and how it's been useful in the past might be appropriate to avoid removing it entirely.

I like this idea, and I would love to hear what other suggestions could be made to further improve such a format.

I don't want a Square2005 repeat of trying to extrapolate the Top 30 from it, but I also don't want to completely lose visibility to it. schuelma has spent a lot of time with the comgnet data, so I'd be interested in his opinion on it, too. :)

Yes, I also agree here. I don't think we should exclude comgnet completely from the thread in a form of a "bad data ban". It's not fair to the people who do use the data well, and honestly even I check comgnet pre-order ratings when I want an overview of certain market trends. It's entirely in the way it is being presented which is the "problem" and we should tackle that together.
 

Road

Member
I like to check pre-orders on COMGNET for particular games, for many reasons, but mostly because it is about trying to have a glimpse about what will happen in the future.

I don't really care about the weekly sales rankings. Game is out, week is done. Be glad MC numbers regularly come out as soon as Wednesday. Just build some patience and wait a few days (I know for some games that we have any greater interest we want to know the numbers nao; and it must get specially hard when you're at the peak of your company fanboyism =P). If we didn't have any numbers at all from any tracker, then it might be useful trying to get a better picture of the market using retailer rankings.
 

schuelma

Wastes hours checking old Famitsu software data, but that's why we love him.
Yes, I also agree here. I don't think we should exclude comgnet completely from the thread in a form of a "bad data ban". It's not fair to the people who do use the data well, and honestly even I check comgnet pre-order ratings when I want an overview of certain market trends. It's entirely in the way it is being presented which is the "problem" and we should tackle that together.


I personally do not think a weekly chart is really needed. I think comgnet is good when discussing relatively high profile "core" type games, and something along the lines of "well if comgnet is anything to go by, sequel X is going to drastically underperform" might be the best use of it. Just my two cents.
 

Chris1964

Sales-Age Genius
I like this idea, and I would love to hear what other suggestions could be made to further improve such a format.

Google translation reminds old bad times in these threads. Weekly chart must eclipse but preorders points for selected games could be listed once a week with notification every time what they represent. Nothing less, nothing more otherwise we are approaching VGC comgnet analysis of stupidity.
 

Mpl90

Two copies sold? That's not a bomb guys, stop trolling!!!
Mmh, yes: posting only the preorder chart once a week, with a disclaimer about what it represents, the significance of the pts, cases in which it has been useful, with comparisons for most important titles incoming could be a good way to present them.
 

duckroll

Member
Thanks for all the feedback. I think those are good suggestions. Generally when we're anticipating big core releases, Comgnet would definitely make a good talking point prior to any actual first day numbers or sales. It's a decent reflection on mainstream interest for bigger titles.

When it comes to smaller titles, especially those which might have retailer specific pre-order bonuses, it becomes basically worthless. Actual sales charts from Comgnet are also not very useful since we can honestly just wait for the MC chart for sales. Same with Tsutaya - useless.

Retailer blogs posting anecdotes about first day/first week sales should never be posted in Japanese here, Google Translate isn't much better either. Instead if there is something interesting which shows a sort of trend (especially with regards to overstock or heavy discounting), that would be worth discussing.

I think these are good ground rules we can more or less stick by for now. Since it appears we agree on these points.
 
Thanks for all the feedback. I think those are good suggestions. Generally when we're anticipating big core releases, Comgnet would definitely make a good talking point prior to any actual first day numbers or sales. It's a decent reflection on mainstream interest for bigger titles.

When it comes to smaller titles, especially those which might have retailer specific pre-order bonuses, it becomes basically worthless. Actual sales charts from Comgnet are also not very useful since we can honestly just wait for the MC chart for sales. Same with Tsutaya - useless.

Retailer blogs posting anecdotes about first day/first week sales should never be posted in Japanese here, Google Translate isn't much better either. Instead if there is something interesting which shows a sort of trend (especially with regards to overstock or heavy discounting), that would be worth discussing.

I think these are good ground rules we can more or less stick by for now. Since it appears we agree on these points.

Sounds good to me :)
 

Mpl90

Two copies sold? That's not a bomb guys, stop trolling!!!
Release dates

{2012.04.12}

[PS3] Rayman Origins (Ubisoft)
[PSV] Rayman Origins (Ubisoft)
[3DS] Rayman Origins (Ubisoft)

{2012.04.26}

[PS3] Resident Evil: Operation Racoon City (Capcom)
[360] Resident Evil: Operation Racoon City (Capcom)
[3DS] Dynasty Warriors Vs. (Koei Tecmo)
[PSP] Conception: Please have my baby (Spike)

{2012.05.24}

[PS3] Dragon's Dogma (Capcom)
[360] Dragon's Dogma (Capcom)
[3DS] G1 Gran Prix (Genki)

Yes, Dynasty Warriors has been delayed.
 
duckroll has finally find something to replace his hatred/obsession for Level 5: Comgent

:lol


So apparently the Kingdom Hearts special edition sold out already? Not entirely sure whether that's any surprise.
That doesn't necessarily mean anything; Amazon doesn't put up their whole inventory for a pre-order initially, that is, it most probably will become available later before the release
 
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