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Aielyn on 16 December 2012
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Barozi said:
Aielyn said:

So, I was just looking at the Wii U's early game sales numbers according to VGChartz. And there are some oddities I'm noticing.

All smaller selling games have tracking problems at the moment. Many of them aren't even listed (lots of recent Kinect games for example).

First of all, as the title says, there's no data for Madden 13 Wii U. None. Now, I find this somewhat difficult to believe, for a few reasons. First of all, Amazon's Video Game Best Seller's rank for Madden 13 is #1313 as of the time of this posting. Why is this supporting my point? Because FIFA 13 has US sales data (up to 28,000 after three weeks, not great but nonzero) and Amazon has it at #1397. What's more, when you look for availability of the game through GameStop.com, most stores have it marked as "Low Stock", including all of the ones that show up when your "location" is Kansas, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Austin, and all bar a few (which are marked as "In Stock") when you put in New York, Tampa, or Seattle. They also have pre-owned copies in a number of stores. Also note that FIFA is "In Stock" at most stores in the Los Angeles area, New York, Chicago, etc.

So, what's going on? How can Madden 13 be failing to register even as many sales as, say, Game Party: Champions, which sold just 13,000 in the last three weeks, and yet still register higher than FIFA 13 on Amazon and still have low stock at GameStop?

Is Madden being incorrectly tracked by VGChartz? Or are the numbers simply failing to display due to lack of release date data, perhaps? If so, how well is it really performing?

The lack of a release date can be a problem. If it's doesn't have one it might still be tracked in the US pre-order charts. This has happened before. Please contact trunkswd and he will fix them.

It's not the only oddball, though. FIFA 13 itself is odd. The game sold 12,500 copies in week 1 in the US, with another 6500 over the next two weeks. In the first two weeks in Europe, it hasn't even sold 5000 copies. It apparently barely sold 1,000 copies in the UK in its first week, and didn't even break 500 in the second. Doesn't this sound a bit strange, given that FIFA has always performed far better in Europe than America?

There might be several reasons for that:
1. Black Friday deals
2. Much higher WiiU userbase in the US
3. One week less sales in Europe

However many WiiU games are still overtracked in the US launch week according to NPD:

1. New Super Mario Bros. Wii U (243k)
2. ZombiU (~50k)
3. Scribblenauts Unlimited
4. Call of Duty: Black Ops II (~21k)
5. Just Dance 4
6. Nintendo Land (excluding Deluxe set)
7. Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two
8. Batman: Arkham City - Armored Edition
9. Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed
10. Skylanders: Giants ( < 10k)
11. Assassin's Creed III
12. Sing Party
13. Madden NFL 13
14. ESPN Sports Connection
15. Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge

Which means that FIFA 13 should be much lower than 12.5k.

There are other oddities, too. Ninja Gaiden 3 has no data for any region except France... but the game hasn't released in France (it doesn't release anywhere in Europe until January 11th). It hasn't registered at all for either the US or Japan. Not overly surprising for the US, but definitely odd for Japan. Note that the game was in the top 50 according to Media Create, just ahead of Tekken Tag Tournament 3, which VGChartz has at just under 5000 in Japan.

Another game that hasn't registered in Japan is Assassin's Creed III, which is just a couple of places lower on the Media Create chart than Tekken Tag Tournament 3.

NBA 2K13 is much like Madden, in that it hasn't registered any sales whatsoever, despite having released on Wii U launch day in the US according to Amazon. I can accept it selling poorly, but there's no way that it sold badly enough to fail to register.

Darksiders 2 has no data for Europe, despite having released on launch day.

Sonic and Sega All-stars Racing severely underperformed compared with ZombiU in the UK according to VGChartz, but it is higher on the Amazon.co.uk charts, second only to NSMB U on the Wii U chart.

Never extrapolate Amazon data. They are tiny compared to the whole market.

Week 1
Week 2

Also note that ZombiU was bundled in the UK, so it shouldn't be a surprise that it beat Sega AS Racing.

In short, something about the VGChartz data is suspect.

There's a reason why I focused on games that should be performing well enough to be tracked.

Black Friday deals and extra week don't explain the FIFA oddity, as even if you ignore the first week in the US, it still sold more in the US (about 6500) than in Europe (less than 5000). I don't think greater system sales explain it, because FIFA had to compete with Madden in the US, but not in Europe (where Madden hasn't been released for the Wii U).

Also, I find it unlikely that a heap of Wii U games are heavily overtracked, yet Madden fails to show up at all. It seems more likely to me that there are errors in both VGChartz data and NPD data. This isn't to say that everything is higher, or anything like that, but that we just don't have an accurate picture right now.

My reason for using Amazon data was to emphasise that those games ARE selling. If they're selling on Amazon, they'll be selling elsewhere, too. And in the case of Sonic racing, the key was that it was second only to NSMB U, meaning that it should have held its own against most other titles.

Anyway, I'm not really a "regular" here, so I'm not sure who trunkswd is. Perhaps someone else should contact him about that issue (and others like it - there are a few instances of release dates being wrong).