February 12, 2009 @ 07:10 PM EST
It's no shocker to long-time series fans that Namco-Bandai has been releasing Tales of games left and right lately. Last year had Tales of Destiny: Director's Cut (PS2), Tales of Rebirth (PSP), Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World (Wii), Tales of Vesperia (X360) and Tales of Hearts (NDS), with Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2 being the last currently released game (January 2009). That's five games in one series in one year (six if you consider Radiant Mythology 2 because it was announced in 2008). One would think releasing so many games in such a short time span would hurt the main franchise (new games, not ports or revamps like Director's Cut).
Well, it seems like that is starting to happen. According to VG Chartz.com's data for Tales of Hearts, on the game's first week of sales, it sold about 140,000 copies. The second week nosedived to about 34,000 copies, and two weeks after that it was in the mid-thousands. Now, according to VG Chartz.com's data for Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2, the game sold over 200,000 copies in its first week, and Kotaku is reporting that the game sold around 45,000 copies in its second week, still ranking #1 in the Japanese charts.
Radiant Mythology 2, a spin-off game in the franchise, and for the PlayStation Portable, which lags behind the Nintendo DS in system sales, sold more on its first and second week than a main series game. One could attribute that to the game having characters from the previous games, so fans of the older games would enjoy seeing characters they remember, unlike a new game with brand new characters.
