Japan First Day Sales (10/23)

[mrstickball]

trestres said:
Which good games were released in Japan?

I'd say:

• Deca Sports (sold rather well in the states & Europe)
• Tales of Symphonia 2 (IMO, did very well)
• We Ski (eventual million seller thanks to US and PAL data - Still under 150k in Japan)
• Powerful Pro Baseball 15 (PS2 version outsold Wii by 3:1)
• Biohazard 0 (GC version did phenominal in Japan. Even better than RE4)
• Biohazard 4 (sold 1m+ in US + PAL. GC version did 400k in Japan)
• Dragon Quest Swords (sold well in Japan)
• Powerful Pro Baseball 14 (PS2 version outsold Wii version by 2.5:1)
• Powerful Major League 2
  
• Nights 2 (Nights 2 sold 4x as well in the US. Nights 1 for Sat sold 400k)
• Zack & Wiki (totally bombed in Japan. Sold moderately well in the US and PAL markets)
• Soul Calibur Legends
• Trauma Center 2nd Opinion
• Dewey's Adventure
• Red Steel (say what you will about it being an FPS. But lets face it: even Resistance did over 100k)
  

Those are a few 3rd party games I looked at. In almost every example, US and PAL sales vastly outstripped Japanese sales.

The best examples would be Konami's Powerful series, which has sold abysmally on the Wii, and the PS2 version outstripped Wii sales, which shows the series is still relevant.

What I'm getting at is this synopsis of the Wii

Wii Japan:

• Sales driven by lapsed/core Nintendo Gamers
• Casual Gamers
• Minimal 3rd party success with either Core or Casual games. Has 6 titles from 3rd parties to hit 100k on the year. 0 games to hit 250k.
  

Wii US/Europe:

• Sales driven by lapsed/core Nintendo Gamers
• Casual Gamers
• Notable 3rd party success with Casual games on an incredible scale. Struggling with core 3rd party games, most notably sports games. Far better position than Japan.
• Has over 20 different 3rd party games to hit the 250,000 mark in North America for 2008.

And I'd love to go back to see how you'd like to argue Zack & Wiki's sales on the Wii. Last I checked, it was a phenominal game that was supposed to do real well in Japan, and managed decent numbers in the US.