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jarrod on 05 October 2010
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Yakuzaice said:
jarrod said:
Yakuzaice said:
GooseGaws said:
Yakuzaice said:

Monster Hunter Tri - Japanese sales weren't very good, and it doesn't look like it will have the legs of the PSP games.  Western sales have been fairly strong.

Uh... what?  This is the only third-party million-seller on the Wii in Japan, and one of only two million-sellers not published by Nintendo on ANY console this generation (the other being FFXIII).  How is that not very good, again?

Because it is a franchise where the last iteration had higher sales than any Final Fantasy ever.  FFXIII, a franchise which peaked below Monster Hunter, and had its peak 13 years ago, outsold MH3 by nearly 80%.  Not to say that was exactly unexpected considering it found its fame and fortune on portables with local play.  That doesn't make the sales good though, especially when you take into consideration the budget was much higher than the PSP games.

If Dragon Quest X were to come out tomorrow and sell 1 million copies lifetime that would be very poor as well even if it is only the third 3rd party million seller on consoles.

Problem is, the last console DQ sold 3.6m while the last console MH sold 650k.  The differences extend past just console/handheld for MH too, as MH3 carries a subscription fee for multiplayer (and indeed it's the best selling subscription based game EVER in Japan).

Tri met Capcom's Japanese sales targets (and actually exceeded their subscription targets).  You can't really call that anything but a success.

If this were something like Animal crossing where it did about 1 million on GC, 5.3 million on the DS, and then 1.3 million on the Wii I'd be more inclined to agree with you.  It is pretty clear cut there that just the switch to portables allowed the franchise to explode.

I'm trying to find the article about their subscription targets, does it actually have any hard numbers or just general comments like they were "happy" with them?  I'm guessing if people are still paying for it they haven't done a very good job of convincing their friends considering 2G outsold Tri almost 7 to 1 this year.

Tri had its reasons for underperforming, but that doesn't make it a success.  It also had plenty of things going for it.  Higher budget, plenty of advertising, a big push from both Capcom and Nintendo, and of course coming off of the massive hit that was 2G.

Actually, Monster Hunter is almost exactly like Animal Crossing in sales patterns.  The two are really very comparable, only console AC didn't have the same sort of impediment console MH does (ie: you don't have to pay $8 a month to play with your friends).  I'm curious why exactly you think the switch to handheld would allow AC "to explode" and not MH, when the core thrust of MH is local multiplayer?  If anything, I'd say AC is less naturally suited to handhelds than MH is (as it's really a less social game), despite the comparably explosive sales both have seen on the formats.

There's no article about subscription targets, Capcom mentioned it in one of their quarterly reports so you'll have to go digging on their IR site (it's all in english).  They basically said subscription revenues exceeded expectations, no hard numbers were given.

And I don't think you quite get it, there's no "reasons for underperforming" when it comes to MH3, because it quite literally did not underperform.  It's an unqualified success, it met it's sales targets, exceeded subscription targets, broke sales records in Japan for a subscription based game, and sits as one of the few series this generation than claim to have sold more on a current home console than it did on PS2.  It's Capcom's best selling console exclusive this gen, and the only one that's going to pass 2m worldwide... if that's not "success", what is?