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Tom3k on 19 May 2013
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Soriku said:
Sal.Paradise said:
Soriku said:
Sal.Paradise said:

So do you know just how long the overtracking has gone on, and crucially do you know which games haven't received corrective adjustments after the fact? Or are you assuming none have like you did just now, incorrectly, with P4G? (Was that another safe assumption on your part? ) 

I definitely don't think that NA overtracking (which we know has been corrected for some games) results in us all assuming that all JRPGS in every country except Japan must be overtracked. 


I just remembered that VGC only shows sales for the first 10 weeks to regular users these days (which shows the 78k sales figure, but that's incomplete), but they have annual unit summaries that show total sales. VGC has P4G at 115,598 units in the US. This is a FAR cry from the NPD sales data we have.

I'm not the first person to mention that VGC sales for JRPGs are wrong. outlaw said it a couple years ago that VGC tends to overtrack JRPGs, and I realized that literally every other JRPG that we get NPD numbers for have sales here on VGC that are much higher.

@ First paragraph

Ok, I'll talk about P4G sales with you, even after showing they've been adjusted... You don't have to rely on the annual unit summaries for the USA data, just use the game comparison charts and set region to USA. To get the game totals, use the cumulative chart. And if we look at the P4G weekly chart here: 

http://www.vgchartz.com/tools/game_comparison.php?reg=USA&ending=Weekly&game%5B%5D=Persona+4%3A+The+Golden+%28PSV%29+%5B62901%5D&game%5B%5D=&game%5B%5D=&game%5B%5D=

We see a regular sales pattern, but then a spike in mid-late March and a steady return to normal afterwards (this is the period, after the 78k sales figure you were ok with, that you think the totals are too high for). Turns out, it had an official discount on the 19th March http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/03/19/fyi-persona-4-golden-on-ps-vita-getting-discounted  for a two week period. Perfect. (And if you want to argue the spike is too big, remember you'd now be dealing in only a handful of thousands of units...and from the NPD info you linked that we have of the game, we only have an estimate of its sales between 50k and 100k, leaning towards 50k...so a handful of thousands of units either way).

Also, don't miss what Tom3k told you about Europeans importing. 

 

@ Second paragraph

You're now telling me that half (assuming "every other" = half) the JRPGS you remember from NPD threads have higher numbers here than you'd expect, that sounds like a reasonable estimate to me and I'm inclined to believe it (But remember, as my response to your first paragraph shows, the vague numbers we get for many games in NPD threads nowadays + things you may not have accounted for..could mean that your assumptions are not going to be accurate on all the games you remember.)

Back to the original point now (phew!), half the JRPGS in NA being maybe overtracked based on NPD threads still is far from enough info for one to reasonably assume that every JRPG in every country execpt Japan must be overtracked. Still veery far from a 'safe assumption'. 


I was OK with the 78k figure because I thought that was the ending sales for P4G in the US. But assuming other regions of NA added like 50k sales for the 130k total in NA would be ridiculous. But I remembered sales cut off after 10 weeks, but we still have totals and the 115k total looks too high. 78k is just the total after 10 weeks. 115k is the final total, which is definitely too high.

Even taking into consideration imports, which really couldn't have been that much, it still looks too high because we'd be assuming tens of thousands of Europeans imported which seems unlikely, doubly so when a EU release was coming.

Btw, by every other I mean...every single one besides P4G lol. Not literally every other one. As of recently I saw VGC had Tales of Graces F and Abyss 3D overtracked, Ninokuni overtracked (got adjusted but still looks too high), Soul Hackers is overtracked, I believe Fire Emblem Awakening was overtracked too but also got adjusted (I don't know how accurate FE sales are now). Devil Survivor on DS is an older game but is overtracked as well.

So... 115k for US is overtracked, and what is then 27k for EU? You realise the EU (soon to be 28) is half a billion big?

The EU version was released 4 months later, and at the time of US release it was actually not certain in what capacity the game will be released here.