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[Miburou]

IIRC, the Yugioh games were released in several flavors, and MB used to track them as individual games, and none of them passed a million, which is why they're not on the list.

 

[jarrod]

IIRC, the Yugioh games were released in several flavors, and MB used to track them as individual games, and none of them passed a million, which is why they're not on the list.

These are US sales and here 2 YGO's have crossed a million iirc (Dark Duel Stories GBC and Eternal Duelist Soul GBA). A 3rd (The Sacred Cards GBA) was around 800k iirc.

Also, there's only one SKU per YGO release (unlike Pokemon or MMBN).

 

[sonycowboy]

Not offhand... I'm going off memory for everything really (which is why I'm giving ranges). I do remeber Square targeting sales of 10 million lifetime for FFX before release though.

Here's some numbers I've found, although I haven't found a real link to FFVII sales yet. I did find one blog saying 9.5M, but no news site yet, so I wouldn't be surprised, although, ~10M units out of 33M units total were directly related to FFVII. That's amazing if it's true.


http://www.square-enix.com/na/company/press/2004/20012004/

January 20, 2004

Released on November 18, 2003, FINAL FANTASY X-2 is the sequel to FINAL FANTASY X, one of the best selling PlayStation 2 titles with a total of 6.6 million units shipped worldwide. In Japan, FINAL FANTASY X-2 was released in March 2003 and has shipped over two million units to date. The life-to-date units shipped for both FINAL FANTASY X and FINAL FANTASY X-2 combined reached an astounding 10 million units worldwide.

http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/rpg/finalfantasy10/news_2782828.html

SquareSoft discusses FFX sales forecasts


According to the company's forecasts, Final Fantasy X could become one of the best selling games ever.

SquareSoft has announced its worldwide sales expectations for its upcoming PlayStation 2 role-playing game Final Fantasy X. The company expects to ship 2 million copies of the game when it launches on July 19 in Japan, Hiroshi Suzuki, president of SquareSoft, told Bloomberg Japan. Total sales in that territory, according to company forecasts, is expected to surpass 4 million units, while worldwide sales is expected to reach 10 million units. Previous games in the series have combined to sell over 33 million copies worldwide through March 31 of this year.

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=54318

21/01/2004 10:52
FFX-2 sales top 3m worldwide (not including Europe)

 

[Mr. Blonde]

The current gen numbers are from December 2004 by the way.

And with Vice City selling 7 million (including Double Pack), is it the best selling videogame in the US since, what, Super Mario Bros. 3?

About the previous gen sales:
Those N64 software sales are amazingly high. I don't see how people could say the console bombed. Mario 64, GoldenEye, Mario Kart, and Ocarina of Time outsold all of the PSX library! Donkey Kong 64, Diddy Kong Racing, and Star Fox also have incredible sales.

Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow sold a ridiculous amount of copies...nearly 5 million each! Not surprising of course. Pretty much every single kid in the country had a Pokemon game back in the late 90s.

I thought Final Fantasy VII sold more than 2.5 million. I think Final Fantasy X and Kingdom Hearts have almost surpassed it by now.

N64 didn't bomb, but PSX outsold it by far. There were also a lack of games for N64 the first couple of years, so that helped sales of some games too.

 

[sonycowboy]

N64 didn't bomb, but PSX outsold it by far. There were also a lack of games for N64 the first couple of years, so that helped sales of some games too.

I didnt' get a chance to research Nintendo's profits pre-1998, but they must have been absolutely insane in 1996 & 1997. All those first party titles selling many multiples of millions of dollars at $59 with no royalty at all to pay.

Wowzers.

 

[sonycowboy]

Stolen from a post by SantaCruZer, but it seemed appropriate

In addition to surpassing the million-unit mark in North America, FF8 has sold over six million units worldwide including Japan, Europe, and the United States

http://psx.ign.com/articles/073/073032p1.html

And this was 6 years ago.

 

[jarrod]

I didnt' get a chance to research Nintendo's profits pre-1998, but they must have been absolutely insane in 1996 & 1997. All those first party titles selling many multiples of millions of dollars at $59 with no royalty at all to pay.

Wowzers.

Well, profit was probably lessed a bit with those $10-20 silicon ROM carts.

 

[AniHawk]

I also figured that SSBM had higher sell through numbers.

It does. These look like they're from the beginning of the year.

 

[Dupy]

So do system bundled games count towards these sales tallies? I never found the answer to that.

 

[AniHawk]

So do system bundled games count towards these sales tallies? I never found the answer to that.

They're separate.

 

[bycha]

FFVII is still selling 5,000 -- 10,000 a month and it was realesed when? Eight years ago! They gotta be over 10M now.

About Pokemon, I agree, they releasing the same thing years and years. But sales are still strong. FR, LG have good legs.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

The most striking numbers to me are the Gamecube vs N64 numbers. The Gamecube million seller list is now 8 titles as Animal Crossing just reached the million barrier.

There's only two current GCN titles that look like they have a realistic shot at 1M.

SONIC MEGA COLLECTION SEGA OF AMERICA Nov-02 923,025
POKEMON COLOSSEUM NINTENDO OF AMERICA Mar-04 877,205

And for future titles, there's Zelda & ???

Maybe Pokemon, but it's been getting slapped around by the media a bit. So, we're looking at ~11-13 GCN titles that will hit a million vs 28 N64 titles. And none of the GCN titles even come close to approaching the N64's massive successes.

It's quite a difference, but considering that GameCube hasn't been out as long, has sold about half as much hardware in this region and yet there are already 50% more games than were ever released for N64, something's got to give in terms of sales for individual titles.

EDIT: To make a really simple extrapolation, if we imagined the N64 selling half as many hardware units, and yet the tie ratio for each game being exactly the same, sales for each game would be halved. That would cut the list of N64 million sellers to 9.

 

[sonycowboy]

It's quite a difference, but considering that GameCube hasn't been out as long, has sold about half as much hardware in this region and yet there are already 50% more games than were ever released for N64, something's got to give in terms of sales for individual titles.

EDIT: To make a really simple extrapolation, if we imagined the N64 selling half as many hardware units, and yet the tie ratio for each game being exactly the same, sales for each game would be halved. That would cut the list of N64 million sellers to 9.

That extrapolation might work if the Gamecube was only halfway through it's life, but I think looking at sales, it's probably closer to 75-85% through it's lifecycle (based on distribution of sales). (It's a 9.5M units sold, and I'd be suprised if it could even come close to squeezing out another 2M units)

 

[Oblivion]

Yeah, those N64 numbers are amazing. Fuck all the haters who called the N64 a failure. It was a helluva lot better console than the GC was (Nintendo quality wise).

 

[ziran]

I'm not so sure. Square Enix looks to do SIGNIFICANTLY better this generation than last. Of course, that's by spreading it's reliance away from just Final Fantasy. With Final Fantasy X,X-2, XI, XII, Dragon Quest VIII, Kingdom Hearts, KH 2, they are far ahead of where they were last generation.

It will be interesting to see what the delay does to FFXII's sales. It ~should have been likely the best selling FF of all time given the PS2's performance and the time since the last FF. I know the FF VII was a seminal event in FF history, but the market is quite a bit larger and the PS2 in 2004 and 2005 is a stronger market than the PSOne ever had, IMO.

i was really talking about the final fantasy series and how its sales are down from last gen, not the overall profitability of square-enix.

i don't doubt nintendo is concerned about the decline of pokemon, but, i think they realise it's now stabilised. each new version set [like ruby, sapphire & emerald] has the potential to sell 18-20 million worldwide. the same thing has happened to square enix, each final fantasy main rpg set [full price, platinum and japan international] looks to potentially sell around 6 million worldwide.

however, square enix is faced with a franchise that has high development costs. if half life 2 cost $40 million to make, ffxii must be around $15-$20 million. so, assuming the series is a stable 6 million seller, it follows:

current gen ff cost @ $15-$20 million = 6 million sales
next gen ff cost @ $30-$40 million = 6 million sales

this probable downturn in ff profits must be of concern to square enix.

 

[Particle Physicist]

N64 didn't bomb, but PSX outsold it by far. There were also a lack of games for N64 the first couple of years, so that helped sales of some games too.

the ps2 is currently outselling the xbox by far more than the psx outsold the n64.. yet, the xbox is not considered a failure. i think it just boils down to peoples hate for nintendo.

 

[AniHawk]

the ps2 is currently outselling the xbox by far more than the psx outsold the n64.. yet, the xbox is not considered a failure. i think it just boils down to peoples hate for nintendo.

No.

It's all relative.

Nintendo was coming off the SNES, a system that faced fierce competition, but was still #1 in the video game market by a fair margin.

Then the N64 comes. Overall it sells about 16-17 million less than the SNES ever did, there's less than (or not very few over) 200 games on the system total, and they had alienated several big key developers, namely Square and Enix. And though the cart format has very VERY short load times, especially when compared to the PSX, most games hold less memory- something crucial in an era of FMVs and long cutscenes featuring voice acting.

By comparison, many had written Microsoft off in early 2001. The Xbox had a shitty showing at E3, and it was pretty obvious Sony and Nintendo would be duking it out. Then in its first month it outsells the veteran Nintendo's system. And it doesn't stop outselling it for nearly 4 years running save for a couple months in the US and Japan entirely. What more, they are able to set up a major franchise that people feel they need the system for. This really happened somewhat out of the blue.

And now look at them. They're leaving the GC behind, and will be in a comfy second place when the end of the generation is over. They're the up and coming console makers now. That wasn't the case with the N64.

 

[Particle Physicist]

No.

It's all relative.

Nintendo was coming off the SNES, a system that faced fierce competition, but was still #1 in the video game market by a fair margin.

Then the N64 comes. Overall it sells about 16-17 million less than the SNES ever did, there's less than (or not very few over) 200 games on the system total, and they had alienated several big key developers, namely Square and Enix. And though the cart format has very VERY short load times, especially when compared to the PSX, most games hold less memory- something crucial in an era of FMVs and long cutscenes featuring voice acting.

By comparison, many had written Microsoft off in early 2001. The Xbox had a shitty showing at E3, and it was pretty obvious Sony and Nintendo would be duking it out. Then in its first month it outsells the veteran Nintendo's system. And it doesn't stop outselling it for nearly 4 years running save for a couple months in the US and Japan entirely. What more, they are able to set up a major franchise that people feel they need the system for. This really happened somewhat out of the blue.

And now look at them. They're leaving the GC behind, and will be in a comfy second place when the end of the generation is over. They're the up and coming console makers now. That wasn't the case with the N64.

By comparison: Microsoft, the largest software company in the world, barely outsells a fallen videogame giant and loses billions in the process.



"This really happened somewhat out of the blue."

im actually surprised they didnt do better. the way people talk about them you'd think they were directly competing with sony this gen. Microsoft is a huge company.. they have extensive experience with computer games, software, and technology.. yet, they have barely edged out nintendo (who's sales have been dropping since the 32/64 bit wars).. and have been in the red since the beginning of this endeavor (not as a company, but as a project/product).

has the xbox even reached n64 sales figures?

if this were any other market, the xbox would have been considered a colossal failure.

 

[DarienA]

i was really talking about the final fantasy series and how its sales are down from last gen, not the overall profitability of square-enix.

i don't doubt nintendo is concerned about the decline of pokemon, but, i think they realise it's now stabilised. each new version set [like ruby, sapphire & emerald] has the potential to sell 18-20 million worldwide. the same thing has happened to square enix, each final fantasy main rpg set [full price, platinum and japan international] looks to potentially sell around 6 million worldwide.

however, square enix is faced with a franchise that has high development costs. if half life 2 cost $40 million to make, ffxii must be around $15-$20 million. so, assuming the series is a stable 6 million seller, it follows:

current gen ff cost @ $15-$20 million = 6 million sales
next gen ff cost @ $30-$40 million = 6 million sales

this probable downturn in ff profits must be of concern to square enix.

Except that with the merger with Enix they now have two profitable franchises that they can now stagger to help keep profitability up on each.

 

[SolidSnakex]

however, square enix is faced with a franchise that has high development costs. if half life 2 cost $40 million to make, ffxii must be around $15-$20 million. so, assuming the series is a stable 6 million seller, it follows:

current gen ff cost @ $15-$20 million = 6 million sales
next gen ff cost @ $30-$40 million = 6 million sales

this probable downturn in ff profits must be of concern to square enix.

That's assuming FF remains FMV heavy. If they can really get graphics to look like the FF7 tech demo on the PS3, and Kitase seems very confident that they will, then will the FMV be as important? They could use higher end real time models in the cutscenes and I doubt many would complain. We're now to the point where in game models and animation can compare to really good CG. The FF7 demo doesn't look as good as AC, but its not so far off like FF7's in game was to its CG, or FF8's to its CG.

 

[jarrod]

That's assuming FF remains FMV heavy. If they can really get graphics to look like the FF7 tech demo on the PS3, and Kitase seems very confident that they will, then will the FMV be as important? They could use higher end real time models in the cutscenes and I doubt many would complain. We're now to the point where in game models and animation can compare to really good CG. The FF7 demo doesn't look as good as AC, but its not so far off like FF7's in game was to its CG, or FF8's to its CG.

Not really, the costs involved to model and animate FMV level real-time will just accelerate costs up across the board for game development. "FMV heavy" has nothing to do with it, we're talking about making essentially an entire game out of "FMV level" assets in real-time... going realtime doesn't magically cut costs.

 

[SolidSnakex]

I'm not saying that it's not going to be expensive still, i'm saying they can cut back on costs bit if they don't go FMV heavy. Look at MGS2, that's seen as one of the most technically impressive games this gen, has great animation and according to Kojima it cost as much as a Japanese Godzilla film (which is around 10m). FF's are rumored to in the 20m range. This will be the first gen where they don't need FMV as much because real time models are going to become alot more impressive.

 

[sonycowboy]

Not really, the costs involved to model and animate FMV level real-time will just accelerate costs up across the board for game development. "FMV heavy" has nothing to do with it, we're talking about making essentially an entire game out of "FMV level" assets in real-time... going realtime doesn't magically cut costs.

I think SE's in pretty decent position from the artists standpoint.

They've long had one of the largest and most expensive group of artists in the business and guess what expense is going to explode for most developers this generation? And SquareEnix's already got them.

 

[jarrod]

I'm not saying that it's not going to be expensive still, i'm saying they can cut back on costs bit if they don't go FMV heavy. Look at MGS2, that's seen as one of the most technically impressive games this gen, has great animation and according to Kojima it cost as much as a Japanese Godzilla film (which is around 10m). FF's are rumored to in the 20m range. This will be the first gen where they don't need FMV as much because real time models are going to become alot more impressive.

But the effort to make and animate those realtime models is going to be a substantial increase. You can't have FMV level assets without using FMV level resources.

 

[jarrod]

I think SE's in pretty decent position from the artists standpoint.

They've long had one of the largest and most expensive group of artists in the business and guess what expense is going to explode for most developers this generation? And SquareEnix's already got them.

Well, I'd agree with that. Square Enix is actually in a much better position than most of the large publishers even given their inhouse experience with FMV level assets and huge staff of artists. But the idea that costs won't rise as significantly because "they'll just cut FMV" is downright retarded.

 

[SolidSnakex]

But the effort to make and animate those realtime models is going to be a substantial increase. You can't have FMV level assets without using FMV level resources.

So you're going with that if they redid FF7 at the level of the demo but then also went with the same high end FMV that it'd cost the same as if they did the entire game just at the level of that demo but with little to no FMV.

 

[ziran]

the most surprising thing the list shows is the vast majority of games in the top 50 are from last gen!

nearly every major last gen franchise has taken a hit, crash bandicoot, mario, mgs, res evil, zelda, tony hawk, pokemon, spyro, tekken, driver, tomb raider etc, etc.

so even though the market is growing [in the west], people are basically buying gta, ea games and first person shooters!

 

[jarrod]

So you're going with that if they redid FF7 at the level of the demo but then also went with the same high end FMV that it'd cost the same as if they did the entire game just at the level of that demo but with little to no FMV.

Obviously not, but the increase for the realtime elements is still gigantic. Likely exceeding what FMV costs were in the 32bit days proportionately... even without higher end FMV, I don't doubt that development costs would double for Final Fantasy.

 

[Gchaime]

Froggers adventure for the GBA sold 1.3 million units?! Five minutes ago i didn't even know that that game excisted.

 

[bycha]

the most surprising thing the list shows is the vast majority of games in the top 50 are from last gen!

nearly every major last gen franchise has taken a hit, crash bandicoot, mario, mgs, res evil, zelda, tony hawk, pokemon, spyro, tekken, driver, tomb raider etc, etc.

so even though the market is growing [in the west], people are basically buying gta, ea games and first person shooters!

Competition. More great games, more competition. And this gen classics still have 2+ years of health catalogue sales.