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Media Create Sales: Week 40, 2013 (Sep 30 - Oct 06)

Busaiku

Member
Nintendo does have stuff lined up for 2014 for 3DS.
There's a new Kirby game, Super Smash Bros, Mario Party Island Tour, Mario Golf World Tour, Yoshi's New Island, and The Legend of Zelda A Link Between Worlds is coming out December 26.

There won't be anything as big as Pokemon X/Y, sure, but they can definitely keep the momentum going.
 

Busaiku

Member
well they have to include it in their quarter report. Also they released some dd data for animal crossing previously after it did so well.

That would be their game shipments and digital sales though, no way to make out how much more they shipped or not.
 
well they have to include it in their quarter report. Also they released some dd data for animal crossing previously after it did so well.

there quarter report that includes pokemon is 4 1/2 months away and they dont have to seperate digital from retail for individual games.
 

Lumyst

Member
Even setting aside that there's probably a heavy dose of post-purchase rationalisation weighing into the "love" it doesn't make it a good product for the wider market.

Well, there's no "post purchase rationalization" on my part, I got it foremost for access to the games in its library while knowing about the games that were on it and are to come, I rationalized the purchase before making it.

But I conceded a while ago that it's Nintendo's job to create products that are broadly accepted by the market, they've got the money to "profess to the heavens how great the WiiU is" should they think that's what they have to do, they have the money to make the games for it that they think it needs, all I can do is buy games for it and enjoy those games, discuss those games here on NeoGAF for my enjoyment. I once thought Nintendo designed for Japan first and crossed their fingers that the rest of the world would react, but sales are abysmal all around the world, including in Japan, so the WiiU must be a product of Nintendo's mind rather than a product of Japan's mind, and is broadly undesirable to the human beings of all cultures of the current era.

edit: Oh yeah, and notice that I put "profess to the heavens how great the WiiU is." in quotes. Of course I know that it's not Nintendo but the broader market that decides whether something is great, hence to Nintendo sales numbers should be their answer to the question "Is this a great product?" :p
 

cafemomo

Member
Vita is dead.

the vita shall steam forward to greatness like the Titanic!
c20ojEM.jpg
 

Lumyst

Member
Hah, all this talk about the Vita and WiiU reminds me of the Optimst's Creed plaque hanging in my bathroom:

Promise Yourself

To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.

To talk health, happiness and prosperity to every person you meet.

To make all your friends feel that there is something in them.

To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.

To think only of the best, to work only for the best, and to expect only the best.

To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.

To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.

To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile.

To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others.

To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

Though for me it's just a neat decoration to look at, that kind of stuff should be memorized by Nintendo and Sony's PR departments.
 

extralite

Member
Where's MH4 in the eShop all time chart?

I already answered that question earlier, still on #3. But as MH4 is currently selling more than ACNL it is closing the gap. Slowly.

Pokemon X is now at #3, Y at #5 of the recent charts. Zelda 3D before X and Mario Tennis before Y.

As expected, the younger average age of the audience and the split into two title makes the digital performance somewhat less impressive than MH4's.
 
Well, there's no "post purchase rationalization" on my part, I got it foremost for access to the games in its library while knowing about the games that were on it and are to come, I rationalized the purchase before making it.

But I conceded a while ago that it's Nintendo's job to create products that are broadly accepted by the market, they've got the money to "profess to the heavens how great the WiiU is" should they think that's what they have to do, they have the money to make the games for it that they think it needs, all I can do is buy games for it and enjoy those games, discuss those games here on NeoGAF for my enjoyment. I once thought Nintendo designed for Japan first and crossed their fingers that the rest of the world would react, but sales are abysmal all around the world, including in Japan, so the WiiU must be a product of Nintendo's mind rather than a product of Japan's mind, and is broadly undesirable to the human beings of all cultures of the current era.

edit: Oh yeah, and notice that I put "profess to the heavens how great the WiiU is." in quotes. Of course I know that it's not Nintendo but the broader market that decides whether something is great, hence to Nintendo sales numbers should be their answer to the question "Is this a great product?" :p
Yeah, it sounds like you made a fully informed decision and that's fine. You knew what you were going to get with the Wii U and bought it anyway. And you're able to separate being perfectly satisfied with a product you've bought and realising that it's not necessarily a good product for the market.

I just tend to see it a lot from some fans in many of these threads about sales and software support for these failing platforms. Both the inability to separate personal interest from the wants of the marketplace and lashing out towards anything that creates cognitive dissonance towards their purchasing decision.

I bought it, it must be good.
It's not the product; I didn't make the wrong decision, everybody else has.
The market is wrong, they just don't get it. They need to be shown the error of their ways.
Stupid companies why aren't they supporting this great system I own.
 

Lumyst

Member
There was a risk Nintendo took, to have a vision for their product, to go against industry expectations, because I suspect they thought that doing what's traditional would lead to traditional results (Gamecube, N64) but funnily enough they are in a weird situation where the more traditionally focused Gamecube performed better saleswise since neither casual nor traditonal gamers find the WiiU appealing.
 

Thorgal

Member
"Tales of xillia sold over 1 million copies worldwide"

Japan (Asia) - 770.000
US + Europe - Over 230.000

As far as we know, only 3 Tales of games have crossed one million mark (I don't include ports on portable systems or remakes)

[GCN - PS2] Tales of Symphonia - 1.439.000 (GCN 953.000 - PS2 486.000)
[PSX] Tales of Destiny - 1.139.000
[PS3] Tales of Xillia - 1.000.000

If i recall right TOX was the highest selling Tales of game in Japan.

Still as i said in the other thread Namco must be pleased.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Speaking of Tales, they're targeting one new (presumably major) title per year and scaling back their remakes/ports:

Polygon said:
Namco's Tales Studios may be reaching into its back catalogue to create packaged anniversary editions of classic Tales games, but the company's priority moving forward will be new titles, franchise producer Hideo Baba told Polygon.

Baba said the older Tales of titles are beloved by many, and as time goes by releasing remastered versions for newer consoles is always a possibility. However, as part of the studio's quest to "make attractive JRPGs," the current plan is to keep the studio's 80-member development team focused on new content.

"We're trying hard to bring one new title a year," Baba told Polygon, explaining that there is always one game in the planning stages while the upcoming title is in full development. "We start developing the next-next Tales title while working on the current one."
Source: http://www.polygon.com/2013/10/11/4...iority-is-new-titles-but-hopes-to-launch-more
 

extralite

Member
I'm sure it was dismissed long ago, but has anyone worked out a formula comparing total eShop reviews with known total digital sales figures?

EShop reviews include retail games, making them even more useless than those reviews already are. Edit: I mean for that purpose, obviously.
 
Because Symphonia sold only half on GC of what the previous game did on Playstation and the Symphonia port for PS2 outsold the GC version?

Uh, no, thanks to quite good Western sales, GC Symphonia sold twice what the PS2 version did... and Legendia and Abyss did not even begin to get anywhere near that level of success here. Way more competition there, and it'd been a while since a Tales game was on the Playstation in the US too (the previous one was the second PS1 game...). A GC version of Abyss would have sold much, much better than Baten Kaitos Origins did, why did Namco do that one but not a GC port of Abyss? It's so bizarre... but you could say that about a lot of games. Soul Calibur III being PS2 exclusive is another really baffling decision; in the US the GC version of the second game actually sold best, but because in Japan it was most successful on PS2 Namco ignores that and only releases the sequel on PS2?

Of course, some Japanese developers have taken a very long time to really get onboard with the idea of releasing games on multiple platforms on a regular basis, so I can understand why they'd do that... but that doesn't make some of those decisions any better financially.
 

extralite

Member
Uh, no, thanks to quite good Western sales, GC Symphonia sold twice what the PS2 version did... and Legendia and Abyss did not even begin to get anywhere near that level of success here. Way more competition there, and it'd been a while since a Tales game was on the Playstation in the US too (the previous one was the second PS1 game...). A GC version of Abyss would have sold much, much better than Baten Kaitos Origins did, why did Namco do that one but not a GC port of Abyss? It's so bizarre... but you could say that about a lot of games. Soul Calibur III being PS2 exclusive is another really baffling decision; in the US the GC version actually sold best, but because in Japan it was most successful on PS2 Namco ignores that and only releases the sequel on PS2?

We've been through this shit, is this groundhog day? GC was moderately successful in the West and the audience starved for games like Tales.

SCII actually sold best on PS2 in all markets in the long run and people won't buy every new SC game for Link every time.

Baten Kaitos was likely an attempt to follow up the success of Symphonia in the West and how should Namco have known in advance Abyss would fail on PS2? Tales sold better on PS2 in Japan, because of the higher install base. Same was true in the West, it's not outlandish to assume that the GC Tales success would translate to even higher success on PS2.

But it didn't, Symphonia turned out to be the exception, not a rule. Tales simply doesn't sell that well in the West.
 

marc^o^

Nintendo's Pro Bono PR Firm
Yeah, it sounds like you made a fully informed decision and that's fine. You knew what you were going to get with the Wii U and bought it anyway. And you're able to separate being perfectly satisfied with a product you've bought and realising that it's not necessarily a good product for the market.

I just tend to see it a lot from some fans in many of these threads about sales and software support for these failing platforms. Both the inability to separate personal interest from the wants of the marketplace and lashing out towards anything that creates cognitive dissonance towards their purchasing decision.

I bought it, it must be good.
It's not the product; I didn't make the wrong decision, everybody else has.
The market is wrong, they just don't get it. They need to be shown the error of their ways.
Stupid companies why aren't they supporting this great system I own.
Where you fail hard with this simplistic vision is that, not making a decision doesn't mean it's a wrong decision. It just means no decision was taken. And that can change. And the reason it can change is because of system sellers. The product can be good, yet need software to convince the mass market. When Sony launched the PS3, they said it could release with no game and sell 5 millions, remember that? That was wrong. The product was good but that's not enough, software is key. Price is key. Value is a rather complex equation.

You don't want Wii U to take off, why not... But it's not written in stone it won't, whatever the passion you put in saying it will, every single day. And the product is fine, you should have one to see if it makes you change your mind.
 

extralite

Member
Pokemon X/Y now on #2/3 in the recent charts. So each version only took half a day to outdownload all of several weeks of downloads of every single title but MH4.
 
We've been through this shit, is this groundhog day? GC was moderately successful in the West and the audience starved for games like Tales.

SCII actually sold best on PS2 in all markets in the long run and people won't buy every new SC game for Link every time.
Well, the PS2 sold for a long time and they eventually bundled Soul Calibur II with some other games and stuff so I'm not surprised that it eventually sold better on PS2, but in the initial period after launch, it sold best on GC. That's a fact. And then they announced that the sequel would be on PS2 only. So, so weird.

Baten Kaitos was likely an attempt to follow up the success of Symphonia in the West and how should Namco have known in advance Abyss would fail on PS2?
The sales of Legendia should have been a hint. Sure, Abyss was a better game than Legendia and was more like Symphonia, but those are just more reasons why it should have been multiplatform.

Tales sold better on PS2 in Japan, because of the higher install base. Same was true in the West, it's not outlandish to assume that the GC Tales success would translate to even higher success on PS2.

But it didn't, Symphonia turned out to be the exception, not a rule.
You're right that Symphonia clearly was a special case, its sales are probably like twice that of any other Tales game in the US, but why do you think that another Gamecube Tales game wouldn't have sold? I mean, as I said, do Abyss as GC/PS2, on both systems. Only a Japanese company would be so likely to pass up the easy sales they'd have had on the GC had they ported it, simply because so many of them prefer to make each game exclusive to one system...

I mean, even if Soul Calibur III and Tales of the Abyss probably wouldn't have sold as well on GC as SCII and Symphonia did, I have a very hard time imagining that they wouldn't have sold more than well enough to easily justify the ports, and make profit on top of that as well.

Tales simply doesn't sell that well in the West.
Usually not, but it looks like Xillia is doing pretty decently... still well behind Symphonia, but it seems to have done better than most US Tales games, anyway. That's good.
 

Spiegel

Member
I was surprised with your first stament since it seemed Pokemon rised at charts really fast.

Media Create had estimated MH4 first week digital sales at 100k (without including download cards). Pokemon is at least > 200k now. Maybe we'll have a new opening record.

I'm not following your logic here. Can you explain it?

How are you getting that both Pokemon have sold >100k each already?
 
Where you fail hard with this simplistic vision is that, not making a decision doesn't mean it's a wrong decision. It just means no decision was taken. And that can change. And the reason it can change is because of system sellers. The product can be good, yet need software to convince the mass market. When Sony launched the PS3, they said it could release with no game and sell 5 millions, remember that? That was wrong. The product was good but that's not enough, software is key. Price is key. Value is a rather complex equation.

You don't want Wii U to take off, why not... But it's not written in stone it won't, whatever the passion you put in saying it will, every single day. And the product is fine, you should have one to see if it makes you change your mind.
Firstly, that post was about failing products in general, not just the Wii U. The part you bolded, was largely in reference to the irrational expectation from owners of support despite cues prior to the contrary, and the rage incurred upon those [publishers] that do not fulfill such expectation, although in retrospect should have been worded better.

The idea that the product has been out on the market for 10 months for the Wii U or two years for the Vita, and people en masse are simply undecided about whether they want it or not is nonsense. People either have decided not to get the product, or the product doesn't even enter contemplation. The latter does not imply indecision, it implies disinterest.

Can that change? It's possible, in the fatuous "anything is possible" way. But the sales we're seeing aren't of products that have some interest being held back by restrictive pricing; fire sales in the UK for the Wii U doing nothing and a return to sub-5K for the Vita in Japan would count against that. No US console has gone from selling below Dreamcast levels and made meaningful recovery as far as I'm aware, the last one to sell that way was the Dreamcast. A single title isn't going to change that, unless it's some anomalous phenomenon; and expectation of anomaly is counter-intuitive. Magic titles that you've made up in your head conversing with the Ghost of Steve Jobs that convert all of the 3DS owners into Wii U owners aren't a predictable circumstance, and they aren't going to materialise through the power of positive thinking.

When Sony launched the PS3 the product wasn't a good product for the market. The product was a mess. It was ridiculously expensive. And horrible to develop for for developers. It was, however, not intrinsically flawed like something like the Vita is, where there simply isn't a large market for the product. Nor was it intrinsically flawed like the Wii U with a USP that by and large the general public do not care about, and without an easily discernible generational shift to provide any impetus for transition; an unfocused product with no target market.

And as bad a product as it was at launch, it still managed to sell half a million more units in the US, the same number of units in Japan and the same number of units in Europe in a week that the Wii U did in 8 months, without any substantive software and at that ridiculous price. The Vita comes off even worse under comparison.

Comments like "the product is fine" are exactly what I was talking about with regard to an inability to separate personal attachment from examination of the market situation.

No. You can be completely satisfied with the product at a personal level. But it is quite clearly not fine for the wider market. The Blackberry phones are not fine. The Lumia is not fine. Zune was not fine. And so on.

And finally, I don't really care whether the Wii U, or the Vita for that matter, ultimately takes off. I have no vested interest in their success nor their failure. It's a discussion board, and it's something to discuss. I do like being right though. And probably will be, in that neither of them will.
 

Road

Member
The recent chart isn't very useful and is already causing confusion. It's like noting XY are the bestselling on Amazon for the past hour :p

Let us know where they are in the alltime chart, since we can at least have an idea of how strong the downloads are.
 
I don't know, I think Capcom has been saving some Monster Hunter 4 copies to ship this weekend, like a new, glorious 500k shipment! Trying to get that Pokemon audience (kids).
Ha!

MH4 got a new shipment for sure:

http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B005MNP140/
http://www.yodobashi.com/ec/product/stock/100000001001772491/index.html
http://www.biccamera.com/bicbic/jsp/w/catalog/detail.jsp?JAN_CODE=4976219051361
http://www.7netshopping.jp/game/detail/-/accd/2110246747/

\o/
 

squall23

Member
You're right that Symphonia clearly was a special case, its sales are probably like twice that of any other Tales game in the US, but why do you think that another Gamecube Tales game wouldn't have sold? I mean, as I said, do Abyss as GC/PS2, on both systems. Only a Japanese company would be so likely to pass up the easy sales they'd have had on the GC had they ported it, simply because so many of them prefer to make each game exclusive to one system...
Because Nintendo was probably unlikely to open their wallet again for another localization. I'm confident that Symphonia was successful only because of 2 factors: it was a big fish in a small pond, and it had Nintendo's backing.

From what I remember, the marketing for Abyss or Legendia wasn't anywhere near as big as Symphonia's. The dub quality for Symphonia was also extremely good, and I'm one of those sub elitists. Both or which were paid for by Nintendo. This is exactly why I'm not completely hyped for the English PS3 version. The standard set by the original dub is going to be very hard to match.
 

casiopao

Member
Nintendo does have stuff lined up for 2014 for 3DS.
There's a new Kirby game, Super Smash Bros, Mario Party Island Tour, Mario Golf World Tour, Yoshi's New Island, and The Legend of Zelda A Link Between Worlds is coming out December 26.

There won't be anything as big as Pokemon X/Y, sure, but they can definitely keep the momentum going.

Not to forget, there are also huge possibilities for third party to go support 3DS more with more 3DS owner now.
 

extralite

Member
The recent chart isn't very useful and is already causing confusion. It's like noting XY are the bestselling on Amazon for the past hour :p

Let us know where they are in the alltime chart, since we can at least have an idea of how strong the downloads are.

Okay, I'll explain the different chart types.

The recent charts are updated instantly and cover an unknown timeframe that is considerably longer than a single week. We can tell that by games which sold well weeks ago holding on to their high position even though they already sell worse now. Or games climbing slowly although they did better in the current week.

The all time charts are also updated instantly and are life to date.

The weekly charts are traditional charts based on one week, beginning on Monday and ending on Sunday, as opposed to the recent one that always ends on the moment you look at them.

The recent chart is in fact quite useful because it tells us MH4 continues to have strong sales digitally.

It's a top 20 and even if you only filter for 3DS exclusives ACNL isn't in it. On the other hand, in the weekly charts ACNL is at #2 after MH4. Which tells us MH4 is currently the only retail game to sell more than the cheaper DD-only games and has been selling considerably better per week than ACNL since its launch.

Comparing Pokemon to MH4: MH4 made #1 on the recent charts within hours of release. By this time it was already in the top 10 of the alltime charts, Pokemon X/Y aren't even close.
 
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