Kresnik said:
Aside from this looking like it's another victim of VGC's pretty steady overtracking (I'll get onto that later in the post), check the release schedule of the game:
Two versions of the game - Original release + expansion - tracked in one SKU. Sales of DQX individually are probably going to be more like 60% or so of those 200k. In fact, Japanltdrank have it at 80k (84k including the "all in one" pack).
Are you expecting Bayonetta 2 to be a mandatory bundle throughout a significant period of the WiiU's life like Wii Party U was?
This one I'm really struggling with. Japanltdrank have it at 27k. It's pretty impressive that VGC have it at almost double that. On the subject of overtracking - lifetime sales of a game in Japan comes down to how long ioi decides to continue tracking them. Some games get weeks and weeks and weeks of ~ 500-1k sales charting at 50-75 in VGC's Japan sales, when we haven't seen them in either Media Create or Dengeki's top 50's for months. Or, they could track the 1st week sales: http://www.vgchartz.com/game/70525/metal-gear-solid-hd-edition/Japan/ And then just randomly throw in some numbers for the remaining sales without any real semblance of tracking to it (more sales in 2013 for the game - 15k - than the 6 months following release including a holiday period - 9k?) Point being, legs are all over the place. And I don't even want to get started on VGChartz pre-orders, in particular with Japanese titles which are horrifically all over the place. |
At the bottom of the page on that japanltdranking site... "The figures in this website are based only on the reports available through their Famitsu magazines and websites since 1996. For that reason, sales information for some games is not available or is incomplete."
In other words, they can only track the data for which numbers are given. And that means that once it drops out of the top 30, it stops tracking. Considering that Wonderful 101 has been tracked as roughly 500 per week more recently, and Famitsu cuts out, currently, at about 1500. Let's use 1500 as a "base point" for a minute. Of course, doing this only gives a total of around 11-12k, so clearly they're getting more than that... except, there's no proper indication of where they're getting their numbers from. And with no details available to compare against (that is, I can't look at their weekly numbers, and compare against available data), I have no idea how accurate the numbers they provide actually are. For all I know, they could be only up to the last update... and if Famitsu only provides updates beyond the top 30 once a year, then you'd expect their numbers to match up with Famitsu's yearly update. Care to guess where VGChartz had W101 at the end of 2013?
By the way, regarding Dragon Quest X... curious how the base package only tracks at 84k, yet the "expansion pack only", where the "only" implies it doesn't come with the base pack, tracks at 130k.
I chose the list I chose because those titles either were relevant comparisons because of developer (W101) or because they had comparable or stronger first weeks (the rest of the list), and weren't Mario, Nintendo Land, or other major first-party titles (with the exception of Wii Party U, which I provided to demonstrate just one thing - it's not just the major franchises, since Wii Party can't really be called a major franchise on its own, when neither Wii Fit U nor Wii Sports Club showed any similar behaviour - but I agree that bundling is an issue).
Meanwhile, the point to be drawn isn't one of direct comparison of actual numbers, but to emphasise that there are more factors than just week 1 sales at play, especially on Nintendo systems where legs tend to be longer (you can argue the exact extent as much as you want, but I've never heard anyone assert otherwise).
