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h2ohno on 03 August 2017
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DonFerrari said:
RolStoppable said:

The thread is pretty bad, but Kotaku is worse.

ARMS shipped 1.18m units in June, but that's obviously not sell-through which is the normal measurement to determine the strength of legs. Actual sell-through is much lower than the shipped numbers in the first two weeks, because retail stores want to have copies of a heavily advertised game on shelf, after all. That ARMS launched at the end of a fiscal quarter led to a bigger discrepancy between shipped and sold than usual. I estimate sell-through in June to be ~600k which is only half what was shipped. Most of the remaining stock should sell during this quarter, so LTD shipments will see a slight increase, because once again, retailers keep copies on shelves. The gap between shipments and sell-through will shrink by the time we get Nintendo's next update.

The only sell-through data for July comes from Japan where ARMS is doing decently. Everything else is guesswork at this point, but assuming bad legs when the only evidence contradicts such a conclusion is silly.

I don't think I can disagree with any of your points Rol.

h2ohno said:

When most games don't reach 1 million sales it is a success for a new IP to do so on a system with an install base which is less than 5 million.  While it would be disturbing if sales were to drop off a cliff, let's not pretend that Arms was expected to do Zelda or Mario Kart numbers or to have a 50% attach ratio.  Even if Splatoon and Mario overshadow it, those 2 weeks have established Arms as a viable franchise going forward.

Man... I'm not discussing this point. Sure a 1M sell on a new IP would usually mean it's successfull (we would need if it's making good profit or not to be sure).

But let's say new IP sells 5M on first month and 6M LTD after 3 years... probably a big success, but with weak legs.

Another game sell 1M first month and end up 3M LTD after 3 years... may not be a success, but had very good legs.

I'd consider both a success, though in different ways.  You're right that success and legs are not the same thing, though they're related.  Right now the only thing we have to go on with Arms is the initial succes since there is no information to even start talking about its legs.  Context matters.  A COD game selling 3 million units would be a flop given past success, expectations, being split over at least 3 platforms (XBOX, PS4, PC), and the likely high development and marketing budget for the game.  On the other hand Fire Emblem was considered a big success and a breakout hit when Awakening sold over 1 million after the series saw consistently declining sales.  Nintendo games have less people working on them and smaller budgets that most big AAA games like Mass Effect or GTA, and Arms would have had a smaller budget than other Nintendo games like BOTW and Mario Oddessey.  And it's on a system that still only has an install base of about 5 million.  It's hard to see how it could have possibly been expected to do better,