Japan Charts Week 16 (04/13/09 - 04/19/09)

[mrstickball]

Gamerace said:

I am ashamed of all of you guys.

Why would anyone, other than a complete VGC noob, expect Deca Sporta 2 to have good 1st day sales? You all know as well as I that that is a game for the casual market and that the casual market does not pay attention to what's coming out. Once they discover it on the shelves, they'll buy it.

And the proof is in the pudding right on the front page -

Godfather 2 - PS3 sold 3,500 (35%) first day
Deca Sporta 2 - Wii sold 2,500 (5%) first day

And yet Deca Sporta ranked 10th for the week, whereas Godfather didn't rank in the top 10 at all. Telling you what? Deca Sporta sold much better over the course of the week than the front loaded Godfather.

I'm suprised a person with over 3,300 posts would be so uninformed to post this.

You see, in Japan, every opening day game has a multiplier within a very well-defined area. RPGs and blockbuster games will never see a 1x multiplier. Most see between 30-70% on most weekends, and sometimes less in very extreme cases due to selling out.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have ultra-casual games, but even then, they usually follow a very predictable formula: most see between a 2x and 3x multiplier on the week.

A few examples:

Game	First Day (First Week)	Multiplier
Animal Crossing Wii	170,000 (306,000)	1.8
Professor Layton	180,000 (356,000)	1.98
Super Mario Galaxy	130,000 (260,000)	2.0
Wagamama Fashion: Girls Mode	27,000 (80,000)	2.96
Rhytmn Tengoku Gold	150,000 (212,000)	1.41
Wii Music	50,000 (99,000)	1.98
Mario & Sonic At The Olympics	15,000 (67,000)	4.47
Deca Sports	30,000 (67,000)	2.23

Now, the point of this exercise is to show various legs for DS and Wii titles. Unlike sales over the course of a game's lifetime, first week sales are usually pretty easy to predict, even for casual games. Very few have over a 3x multiplier.

Because of that, Deca Sports 2 launching at 2.5k was horrendous, regardless if it's casual or not. With Wii Sports being 2 places ahead of it, and selling 10k, it proves that DS2 didn't have phenominal legs to it's first week. With under 10k sold through on it's first week, it still has under 20% of it's entire first shipment sold. That is very bad, regardless if the game is casual or not.

DS2 bombed. Hard. Hudson shipped 50,000 units and sold between 8,000-10,000. That's not good. Most of us knew that having a game like that open to 2,500 was bad, regardless. Sugar coat it in 'oh it's casual' all you want, but casual games' first weeks are predictable, and selling under 10,000 for your first week is NOT where Hudson wants DS to be. It may take months for DS2 to reach the sales of the first week sales of DS. That's horrible.