I'm not that surprised, it seems like exactly the kind of concept and play that would get Japanese gamers more excited about shooters. If traditional shooters don't do it for them, then something different and kind of cooky could. Every week when I look at Japanese best seller lists, I find myself struggling to recognize the franchises that are on the list, the market is just vastly different.

I think the fact that the West is so obsessed with these traditional shooters is the very reason why Splatoon was never going to be as big here; gamers already found the titles they enjoy and Splatoon was different enough that these people would likely never enjoy it much at any rate. Like the outrage at lacking content and voice chat, poor customization, no adjusting round times, map changes etc; these are things that most regular gamers would find and do find unacceptable and unappealing and these are also the hallmarks of most great online, competitive shooters that have done well in the past and present market.

For me, it was obvious that Japan would be Splatoon's best market, the price in the US is also a huge drawback. This is why I told users like tbone to wait for global numbers before jumping on the ceiling, it seemed fairly likely that the other regions would present far weaker performances. Especially the complete lack of hardware boost in the US in the launch week and month is very telling of the game's impact compared to Japan.

1. Tbone was predicting 1 million shipped in 1 month, specifically something close to 700k (with digital) sold in a month. Now we know that Splatoon is:

   - 145k Japan fw (almost 200k counting digital and 70K on 2nd week)
   - 135k on 2 days on US (that´s +150 on the whole week for sure, and more if we count Canada, and digital is +20k minimun)
   -  25k on France (same as bloodborne) + 21k on UK (germany is expected to be around 20k too) all FW

So Tbone was talking about 700k in 4/5 weeks and Splatoon has already done something between 400k - 500k in just a single week. He was not overoptimistic at all, he was right. The game is still beasting on Amazon europe (even Nº 1 on my country , spain,since it was released, ant this is an awfull territory for WiiU) and Japan legs looks big.

2. Wait until the next NPD to have a clear picture of that, the game was hyped for the innerbase, but once was out, everyone spoke about it. Just because the game didn´t boost the hardware in 2 days being a new IP, it doesn´t mean it will not do something for the console in the future, maybe right now. And don´t underrate the success this game can have on Europe, here people loves shooters and Splatoon was very cheap, that´s why is beasting on Amazon, it could be a decent system seller here, we still don´t know.

Are you agreeing or disagreeing with the rest though? Why did it perform so much better in Japan? I'm talking about more than numbers, my post is more about appeal and why the sales are divided the way they are.

Oh, tbone also made this thread; http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=203529&page=12

He has had some fairly unrealistic expectations for this game for some time, which is why I told him and others to gauge global impact before getting too carried away, especially after Japan's numbers, there was new life blown into these rather far-fetched predictions and/or "can it sell xx copies?" topics and posts.

It did 145k in 4 days in Japan & 136k in US in 2 days, u consider that "so much better"?

Given the size of the US market, the fact that this game sold really well on pre-orders and the 1.8 million installed base difference between the regions as well as the recently poor performance of home consoles and software in Japan lately, this is more than reasonable to call a lot better imo.

I agree with 

"I'm not that surprised, it seems like exactly the kind of concept and play that would get Japanese gamers more excited about shooters. If traditional shooters don't do it for them, then something different and kind of cooky could. Every week when I look at Japanese best seller lists, I find myself struggling to recognize the franchises that are on the list, the market is just vastly different."

The rest, not so much. We still have to see how big the game can be here, legs can be huge and I´m seeing CoD numbers for the second Splatoon, but that´s too far in time to predict. The lack on content and some missing features ... I dont think they are really a big deal for most of the potential buyers, specially now that Nintendo is delivering everything even faster than we though.

That lifetime prediction is very optimistic, but again, his 1 million prediction looked overoptimisitc, even for you, just a month ago. I´m expecting something around 2.5m lft though

Overall, Splatoon is exceeding  the expectations of the vast majority of the people except some few overoptimistic users, and Tbone is not one of them this time, because he is pretty spot on by now, the game could be performing better in the short term than he though, in the long term is another story.

Idk I just think too many people are jumping to conclusions way too quickly, that goes both ways, for people calling it a huge success and people calling it a disappointment.

It's 2 days and a new IP which many times through word of mouth have strong legs on top of Nintendo games typically not being nearly as front loaded as other games. It kinda reminds me a bit of what we saw last year with Tomodachi Life, it debuted and had very low first month sales but through word of mouth and legs it has gone on to sell over 2 million in the west.

Some other recent example, Tropical Freeze debuted last February to 135k in its opening month, it's now closing in on 500k in the US or Rainbow Curse which had an opening month of 52k and by the next month sales had doubled. People simply jump to conclusions way too fast sometimes.

That's fair enough, but we can probably agree that the initial impression is that what fusion is saying is correct. We don't really have data to support one claim more than the other yet so all we have to go by is the first week of hardware and software for US, with second week added for Japan.

Nope, Fusion originally said it's sales were awful, that I cannot agree with

Now, let's be clear on what I said. If Sony or Microsoft or any publisher had launched a new IP and it only sold 130k in it's launch month in the US we would all agree those numbers are awful correct? But given the circumstances of Splatoon (2 days of tracking, stuck on an unpopular platform, etc.) I think the numbers are just OK. Not good. Not great. Not bad. Decent.