| Mummelmann said: I don't remember what I said in the SSBB thread #100234, but I think I predicted about 150k Wii's in Japan this week, which would sen it about 50k units past last weeks numbers. As I've said before; the amount of gamers (i.e; people who will want SSBB) owning a Wii is probably much higher than people think, so the hardware won't get insane boosts buy it. It could yield a slight but very long boost, however. |
People said similar things about Halo 3. If we look at the Halo bump, 360 sales were up 20% three weeks leading into Halo's launch. 360 moved twice the number of units at launch week as it did one month earlier. 360 units declined from this high at a rate of only 5-10% drops per week.
Given how tepid the Japanese market is on almost all console releases, I think a 1 million first week in Japan is very comparable to a 2.8 million first week in the US for a game.
It's hard to try to predict what a similar bump would look like in Japan for Brawl, because a month ago was holiday season. Also, the Wii hasn't shown the same kind of steady buildup of sales that the 360 showed prior to Halo's launch. This could either be attributed to your assumption that most Brawl buyers will have a Wii already being correct, or the tight Wii supply situation.
In any case, it will be interesting to watch what this title does to the ever mysterious and unpredictable Japanese market.
"The worst part about these reviews is they are [subjective]--and their scores often depend on how drunk you got the media at a Street Fighter event." — Mona Hamilton, Capcom Senior VP of Marketing
*Image indefinitely borrowed from BrainBoxLtd without his consent.
