Japan Sales -Media Create/Famitsu/Dengeki week 14 2015 (March 30 - April 5, 2015)

[binary solo]

Materia-Blade said:

Hiku said:

Materia-Blade said:

And as it was already said, Xenoblade chronicles didn't sell poorly and Xeno X has everything to easily outsell the first game.

What points towards XCX easily outselling the original Xenoblade?
Wii had 10.5 million units sold in Japan at the time of Xenoblade Chronicle's release, and Wii U only has 2.2m sold in Japan now in comparison.
That's around 5 times the difference in install base. So what is your reasoning behind XCX easily outselling the original?

As for Xenoblade Chronicles X's impact on the sales of the console, the original Xenoblade sold 82,952 copies at launch, and went on to sell around 180,00 lifetime in Japan. Taking the big install base differnce into consideration, and the fact that WiiU is already selling rather poorly, I'm not expecting any miracles here. It'll certainly spark some interest, but this is just one game. And that's WiiU's main problem.

Actual marketing, awareness of the franchise, XC 3d opening close to the original, XCX being ahead of the original and the 3d version on COMG pre orders, bundle... Installed based isn't that important in this case, just look at XC 3d.

You expect pre-orders and buzz to be greater for any sequel to a game that is generally regarded as a good / great game. That does not automatically translate into massive growth. Examples, the Souls series games are widely regarded as being very good games, yet the only substantial growth in sales came because the series went multiplat. On PS3 the growth between Demon's Souls and Dark Souls was quite modest, and apparently sales decreased in the USA (perhaps because double console owners chose to get the 360 version).

Uncharted 2 was much hyped and anticipated and won more GOTY's than any game before it. The growth between Uncharted 1 and Uncharted 2 was only about 50%.

Can Xenoblade turn from a <200K first game to a >500K second game and become a genuine system selling franchise for Wii U in Japan? Yes it can. Does it deserve to experience that sort of growth? Probably, yes. Will it? That is unknown and far from certain, probably not even the most likely outcome. And people shouldn't count on it being like that until it actually happens.

My impression of the general Nintendo gamer base (which is not represented here or most other forums where the fans do get very excited about the less well known franchises) is that they tend to not like playing outside of the long established franchises.