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Goodnightmoon on 13 June 2015
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Mummelmann said:
Fusioncode said:

Thing is, I think a game like Splatoon is built more for a Western audience than an Eastern one. It's a competitive, multiplayer-centric, third person shooter. This isn't the sort of thing Japan usually goes crazy over. Which is why I find it surprising it's doing so much better in Japan than the US. Sales are sales regardless but it kind of flipped my expectations.


I'm not that surprised, it seems like exactly the kind of concept and play that would get Japanese gamers more excited about shooters. If traditional shooters don't do it for them, then something different and kind of cooky could. Every week when I look at Japanese best seller lists, I find myself struggling to recognize the franchises that are on the list, the market is just vastly different.

I think the fact that the West is so obsessed with these traditional shooters is the very reason why Splatoon was never going to be as big here; gamers already found the titles they enjoy and Splatoon was different enough that these people would likely never enjoy it much at any rate. Like the outrage at lacking content and voice chat, poor customization, no adjusting round times, map changes etc; these are things that most regular gamers would find and do find unacceptable and unappealing and these are also the hallmarks of most great online, competitive shooters that have done well in the past and present market.

For me, it was obvious that Japan would be Splatoon's best market, the price in the US is also a huge drawback. 1. This is why I told users like tbone to wait for global numbers before jumping on the ceiling, it seemed fairly likely that the other regions would present far weaker performances. Especially the 2 .complete lack of hardware boost in the US in the launch week and month is very telling of the game's impact compared to Japan.

1. Tbone was predicting 1 million shipped in 1 month, specifically something close to 700k (with digital) sold in a month. Now we know that Splatoon is:

   - 145k Japan fw (almost 200k counting digital and 70K on 2nd week)
   - 135k on 2 days on US (that´s +150 on the whole week for sure, and more if we count Canada, and digital is +20k minimun)
   -  25k on France (same as bloodborne) + 21k on UK (germany is expected to be around 20k too) all FW

So Tbone was talking about 700k in 4/5 weeks and Splatoon has already done something between 400k - 500k in just a single week. He was not overoptimistic at all, he was right. The game is still beasting on Amazon europe (even Nº 1 on my country , spain,since it was released, ant this is an awfull territory for WiiU) and Japan legs looks big.

2. Wait until the next NPD to have a clear picture of that, the game was hyped for the innerbase, but once was out, everyone spoke about it. Just because the game didn´t boost the hardware in 2 days being a new IP, it doesn´t mean it will not do something for the console in the future, maybe right now. And don´t underrate the success this game can have on Europe, here people loves shooters and Splatoon was very cheap, that´s why is beasting on Amazon, it could be a decent system seller here, we still don´t know.