We've all seen the countless threads a week after a game launches announcing it's doom because it didn't sell 43,912,081 copies in the first hour and nobody was killed in a stampede at their local Wal-Mart in order to try and get the last copy of the game in discussion. Of course anybody sensible and who follows sales of the Wii just reads the thread, snickers to themself how stupid the topic is. So I thought I'd go ahead and get some interesting numbers to really show how stupid it is. And maybe it will get through to people...but I doubt it.
So these are numbers for various Wii games that have hit that seven figure mark or will very soon along wiith their debut weekly North American numbers.
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games
Week 1- 97,734
LTD- 6.93m
Carnival Games
Week 1- 35,342
LTD- 3.19m
Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga
Week- 140,831
LTD- 2.24m
Sonic and the Secret Rings
Week- 1 50,713
LTD-2.02m
Game Party
Week 1- 7,287!
LTD- 1.94m
Deca Sports
Week 1- 22,769
LTD- 1.72m
Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition
Week 1- 70,880
LTD- 1.66m
Rayman Raving Rabbids 2
Week 1-- 49,094
LTD- 1.62m
Rayman Raving Rabbids
Week 1- 67,716
LTD- 1.50m
MySims
Week 1- 46,178
LTD- 1.42m
We Ski
Week 1- 30,922
LTD- 1.33m
Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles
Week 1- 76,535
LTD-1.26m
Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures
Week 1- 93,611
LTD- 1.13m
Cooking Mama: Cook Off
Week 1- 18,827
LTD- 1.10m
Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip
Week 1- 45,840
LTD-1.03m
Endless Ocean
Week 1- 17,674
LTD- 0.99m
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 All-Play
Week 1- 52,255
LTD- 0.99m
Call of Duty: World at War
Week 1- 44,468
LTD- 0.98m
Mario Super Sluggers
Week 1- 97,401
LTD- 0.98m
The House of the Dead 2 & 3 Return
Week 1- 13,910
LTD-0.94m
Boom Blox
Week 1- 25,738
LTD- 0.90m
Now I left off a few examples as well as games that had huge launches but the above list of games proves that it is hardly neccessary to launch with big numbers in order to do well. All the games above sold under 100,000 in North America with the exception of Lego Star Wars which did a little better but is well over 2 million sold and still on the charts. The same is true for many of those games. Wii games sell well long after they're released. With the user base of the Wii always growing by large numbers, that continues to be true. I know many of the games on the list are party games, family, etc but look at both Resident Evil games along with House of the Dead 2&3, Call of Duty: World At War and some games that are aimed at everyone including hardcore, titles like Shawn White and Sonic, none of them opened with numbers that would knock your socks off but here they are now with a million sold or soon will be.
So once and for all, can we get over the doom and gloom threads everytime there is a new Wii game released?
I'll come up with something better eventually...
