shams said:
The publishers are the ones talking to the retailers. They know how many units retailers will order. If they order 100k, they will NOT have "expectations" for 500k lifetime sales. If they do, its up to the publisher to convince the retailer to take more units - cheaper per-unit price, or some other deal. ... Obviously, sell-through rate does not determine success/failure on its own (ship 1 unit, sell 1 unit...). But you can't expect the title to sell more units than its shipment figure in the first week (unless a second shipment comes in). From the look of it, the retailer order figures were pretty close to right (based on sales). ... Just because its an RPG, doesn't mean its going to "sell well" in Japan. Its a new IP, and the Wii has had less RPG love than the other consoles. The RPG market is becoming rather segmented - and you need a big name to sell heaps of units. |
I think what Louie was trying to say is that the initial expectation of sale comes WELL before shipment numbers are confirmed via retailer's order. Every game has to have a budget and an expectation to sell enough copy of the game to make profit over the said budget.
Given that Fragile was a fairly high budget wii game by the developer's own admission, it is very unlikely that they began the project with the expectation of selling such a tiny figure.
