Japan sales: Media Create, Famitsu and Dengeki - week 24 ( June 10 - June 16 )

[eFKac]

outlawauron said:

eFKac said:

In my opinion they are pretty big, only Sleeping Dogs didn't manage to sell a million copies. Of course on PS3 alone, if we consider X360 versions, the gap only widens, cause Japan barely bought X360 versions of those games.
I listed a few PS3 exclusives in wide variety of genres, all of which sold very poorly. 

Deus Ex did only 400k in America on PS3, it did another 630k on the 360, Japan added 20k on other platform. 

What you consider bombing then? I think every single one of these games bombed in Japan.

Something that bombs, to me, is something that either sells so few copies it doesn't even register on the charts or something that leaves a incredible amount of its shipment unsold. It's highly unlikely the sell through for those titles was any less than 70-85% in its first week. 

A game that had low expectations, high sell through, and modest number doesn't constitute a bomb. There are dozens more that sold far worse, and they had things working for them that these games do not. I think game sales have more to do with advertising, quality, and appeal than country of origin. 

For your specific examples, I'd ask do you think they would have done worse if published by a different company? I do, because of the reasons I listed below. Also considering that company put more advertising behind different projects. Especially with games that are guaranteed to reach a certain threshold.

As for the first paragraph, it's semantics. There are no legal definitions of bombing or selling poorly, although I like your description. Let me then say, that those games sold poorly, sold little numbers of copies.

In the bolded, lies the problem in my opinion. I am arguing that, when it comes to Japanese gamers, the cultural barriers, specific preferences and close-mindedness play bigger roles those things you have listed. 

As for the last paragraph. No, I don't think it would change much, that's also the point. I think, that publishers could have less effect when it comes to Western developed games in Japan, than they could have elsewhere. I only brought up SE as a publisher, because you argued, that the reason why CoD got relatively big in Japan, is because SE have done a good job publishing it in Japan, localisation, advertising, etc. so I wanted to counter that idea, by providing examples of games published by the same company, so I assume published with more less the same effort, that sold relatively poorly, also games that got high notes from reviews.