The Japanese sure do love Final Fantasy (attach ratio/sales/and prediction)

[saicho]

Gilgamesh said:

FaRmLaNd said:

Gilgamesh said:

mike_intellivision said:
I had always heard that the Dragon Quest series was even more well-received in Japan than Final Fantasy.

Any idea how those numbers compare?

According to VG Chartz the highest selling Dragon Quest game is Dragon Quest VIII, and it sold 4.69 worlwide or 3.62 in Japan alone, and had a huge first week of 2.2 million and this is out of 2 days. There was 17 million PS2's already sold so thats a attach ratio of about 1 in 8 PS2 owners in Japan bought DQVIII first week. The PS2 also went and sold 125K that week.

The closest Dragon Quest game that came close to DQVIII is DQ VI for the SNES and it sold 3.19 million in Japan only, and it had 1.5 million first week. So it's still a huge game in Japan but obviously Final Fantasy is bigger.

Final Fantasy isn't as big as dragon quest is in Japan, numbers don't lie.

1		Final Fantasy VIII	Square	3,629,271
2		Final Fantasy VII	Square	3,276,026
3		Final Fantasy IX	Square	2,776,215
4		Final Fantasy X	Square	2,734,784
5		Final Fantasy VI	Square	2,546,398

 

1		Dragon Quest VII: Eden no Senshi-tachi	Enix	4,100,608
2		Dragon Quest VIII: Sora to Umi to Daichi to Norowareshi Himegimi	Enix	3,609,295
3		Dragon Quest VI	Enix	3,187,222
4		Dragon Quest IV: Michibikareshi Monotachi	Enix	3,027,563
5		Dragon Quest V	Enix	2,780,942

Damn I knew I forgot VII (I tried searching for it but it wouldn't come up in the database, then I realized I had to filter it to Japan). Alright let's do the numbers for it, Dragon Quest VII sold 4.12 million LTD in Japan and 1.8 million first week for Japan. There was 17 million PS2's out at the time so thats an attach ratio of 1 in 9 PS owners bought DQVII first week. Oddly enough it didn't seem to move very many consoles at all, it peaked at 52K the week after it was released?.

Now one more (I might do the rest later but I have to leave now), at the time Dragon Quest VI was realeased there was about 15 million SNES sold in Japan. It sold 1.5 million first week, that's an attach ratio of about 1 in 10 SNES owners bought it first week, and the game went and sold 3.19 million LTD in Japan. The hardware sales had a small jump but it's hard to say how much of an influence on sales DQVI was because it around the holidays.

It seems as though Final Fantasy is the fastest selling game in Japan and has a much higher attach ratio, but Dragon Quest sells the most LTD for Japan.

When you said a "much high attach rate", I think you might have meant "much higher first week attach rate" since higher LTD sales would mean higher attach rate.

Also, DQ games usually have a much better hold for the second week sale.

Final Fantasy VII   01/31/97
Week 1    2,025,834   
Week 2    328,209

Final Fantasy VIII   02/11/99
Week 1    2,592,405
Week 2    280,589   

Final Fantasy IX 07/07/00
Week 1    2,031,207
Week 2    341,273

Dragon Quest VII   08/26/00
Week 1    1,821,450
Week 2    1,167,184

Final Fantasy X 07/19/01
Week 1    1,906,152
Week 2    254,290

Dragon Quest VIII 11/27/04
Week 1    2,267,827
Week 2    549,813

Final Fantasy XII   03/16/06
Week 1    1,819,872
Week 2    242,040

On topic, I do think FF XIII would open very close to the number you predicted but I don't think it will sell much more than 2.5 million copies.