| Kayanator said: This isn't only true for video games, but is also true for movies and music. So why did we start making first day and week sales the indicator of how successful a certain product is? Shouldn't overall sales be the truth? |
First weekend results became important for the likes of movies when competition within the marketplace meant that movies rarely had "long legs", that is they were making a greater percentage of their income in the first or second weekend. As a result movies became more heavily marketed for the first weekend to maximise income before competition took away its sales in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc weekends.
This trend exists to some extent in videogames. Games in Japan for example tend to not, on average, have long legs and therefore first week sales are hugely important to a games success. At the same time there is a far greater capacity for videogames to sell well even into their second or third years of release than there is for films. With films there are a limited number of screens and competition for those screens becomes more hotly contested with each passing year. Furthermore its desirable for films to move to DVD quickly to maximse sales in that format so they will not stay in the cinema that long, again increasing the importance of first week sales.
Ultimately the videogame market is rather dissimilar to the film market in this regard. I believe everyone considers final sales as the true measure of a games success, only a "straw man" suggests otherwise. The same applies to films, of course, but first week sales are often incredibly important for that market given the time restraints that exist to make money in that format.
