| Final-Fan said: FUN WITH NUMBERS |
It depends on the game. Games that tend to be hard-core usually have higher first week sales, and then fall off massively afterwards. Casuals games start off slow but sell forever. Mixed games have decent first weeks and long legs. Here are som examples:
Hardcore: FFX in Japan 1.9 million first week; 3.02 million lifetime; percent of lifetime sold first week: 62% (this is one of the best examples I know of... DQVIII is another good example. We're also missing a lot of non-Japanese data, so it's hard to find solid examples)
Casual: Nintendogs in NA 250k first week; a scary 6.59 million lifetime; percent of lifetime sold first week: 3% (the best example of legs EVER). Others is worse (167k first week, 9.08 million LT; only 1% sold first week)
Mixed: Halo 3 in NA 2.84 million first week; 5.29 million LT (and still selling); 53% of LT total in first week
Another mixed: SSB:M in Japan 360k first week; 1.44 million LT; 25% of LT sales in first week
As you can see, I believe SSB:B falls in the "mixed" category, meaning that it'll have (and in Japan, has) good first week sales, and then long legs. I think 85% drop first week is really steep, but it may not be. If it doesn't hit a million next week though I'll be so surprised. It's important to remember that the GC was dying fast and hard in Japan (it sold a million in 2001, 2002, and 2003, then died), so not only did it not have the userbase to support a good opening week, it didn't have the continuing growing userbase to support the casual legs (Nintendogs wouldn't sell so well if the DS died tomorrow, for example). I think it'll be more like this:
1st week: 840k
2nd week: at least 300k (64% decrease)
3rd week: 150k (50% decrease)
4th week: 100k (33% decrease)
5th week: 75k (25% decrease)
6th week and beyond: 45k or so
This means it should pass SSB:M in it's 5th week or so. I also think it'll sit at 15k or so for about... as long as the Wii keeps selling. Japanese don't seem to have any love for 3d platformers (or so I've heard) so I think it'll do much better than SMG in the first few weeks, and especially beyond week 6, probably leveling off 15-25k a week as long as the Wii continues to sell. We'll have to see though. SSB:M sold nearly 95% of it's total sales in Japan in its first 14 weeks, but I think that's more because the GC didn't bring in many more people, so it didn't have anyone to sell to. I would almost say 2 million in Japan by the end of the year.. but that might be pushing it. And I also believe SMG will reach 1.5, even though that's nearly 2x the number of "Mariofans" that are living in Japan, because we all know that if you aren't a fan before SMG, you can't/won't buy the game. Because it's impossible to become a fan (as I have become, with SMG being my first platformer ever).
Edit: I had all the links to the graphs that show this stuff... but I forgot to add them. They aren't hard to look up though, if anyone doesn't trust me.
