About a year ago I had been regularly making posts with a "sales of the day" theme. Because of a lack of time and a decrease in participation I stopped making those threads. I would really like to see more discussion of sales here on vgchartz/gamerconnect, so I'm going to try to start doing these threads occasionally, if there seems to be much interest in the first 1-2, I start doing the regularly once or twice a week. 

Look at Those Legs Game of the Day

Description: In the "Look at Those Legs" series we look at the sales of a game that has been released for at least 12 months, and compare first month sales to current total sales to determine if a game's sales were front-loaded or if it exhibited strong "legs".

Final Fantasy XIII

This Chart is based off a random sample of games from all platforms and genres.

Based on the criteria here, Final Fantasy XII has had very weak legs. You can see that removing the Japanese sales of the PS3 version, puts its legs right in line with the 360 version, but it is still extremely front-loaded. So why do you think this game did not have strong legs?

It's basically one of those games that a hardcore gamer or a fan of the series would buy, most people who were going to buy the game would have bought it in the first week or month, the game had a lot of hype around launch too. This was actually the first game I have ever pre-ordered.

The heavy criticism didn't help sales either, many un-satisfied fans traded the game back in, anybody who bought the game after the first month would have bought a really cheap trade-in.

Because it was crap. The people who brought it got it because it was a FF game. when the more casual fans realised how crap it was, they never bothered picking it up.

Unless there aint no Sakaguchi and Nobue Uematsu, FF will always stay as it is, a decent j-rpg, nothing special. With Sakaguchi the FF games were magic, too bad he went after FFX, last good FF game.

There was so much potential with the game and expectation brought forward from the previous FF titles and when this game never delivered on both fronts the legs just never happened. FF has never been the same since X (for the reasons Turkish stated) and also each previous FF game has been on only the one console, now the game is on 2 consoles the userbase is split so taking that into account (alot of PS2 FF gamers will now be 360 owners) the total for both consoles should be compared to the sales of the previous ones as this gives a better comparison of the overall title strength (which is still lackluster compared to VII, VIII and X sales).

Here's hoping that Versus XIII will bring back the aspects of the game which really made FF previously and if not then the inevitable XV should (if SE want the game to survive)

I personally loved the game, but I hesitated for months before buying due to me originally not liking its aesthethic and due to the very harsh critics.
If word of mouth can help sales of a game as Demon's Souls, it can also hurt them. This is the case.

It sucked that's why.

The game was recieved poorly by fans, and its been in the bargain bin for probabily about a year. for the Japanese version even longer. no one i've met has anything good to say about this game, the only people who keep telling other people its good only seem to exist online, and even then its debatable whether they're trying to convince other people or themselves.

in a nutshell word of mouth has been so poor, to the point where even the bargain bin couldnt salvage the sales - new people wont by something this badly recieved.

the marketing strategy was abysimal as well. the UK tv spot showed no gameplay at all. only in game cutscenes. do you think when your marketing a game to a new auidence you should only show cutscenes - of course not. when games are advertised like say the Kevin Butler adverts, the man clearly identifies what gameplay elements in the game are extraordianry - case in point Uncharted 2. which seemed to have a really good marketing buzz!

there was no demo avaliable in the west. seriously Sqaure Enix want to make this game appeal to people who've never played RPGs at all - well it helps if you show them what your selling at least. the tv spots didnt do that. loads of games get a good rap when people download the free demo from PSN or Xbox Live.

the service is so accessible, you log on, you see a new demo, you see it has an average rating of 4.5, rated by 1000 people. Square thought instead it would be more useful hiring Leonia Lewis for the theme song.

the game was marketed using Leonia Lewis. they just didnt get that this is not what gamers want when being shown a game for the first time. its a magic trick, to hide behind pretty graphics and nice music. it dosent show people what they actually want to see. some people fell for the magic trick - most people wernt even smiling by the time they saw how bad the game was.

and laslty, for seme reason Sqaure thought it would be a good idea to put Lightning on the front cover. new gamers who've never played an RPG are going to see it and think its some sort of feminist game or some type of fan service. either way it dosent send the right message to propestive fans.

it wouldve been perfectly acceptable to have Lightning and other characters on the front, or like FF7's front cover with Cloud looking up at the Shinra building - it sends the right kind of message. you have a woman on a white background, with a substantial amount of leg flesh for show. completely the wrong message you want to send. not to mention mums (moms or parents) might not want to get this game for their kids if they get the wrong idea about a too attractive women on the front cover in this type of pose - think Bayonetta!

Seems to be the other way around for me, a good amount of online people dislike it but people outside of the net that i have met loved it. Also jrpgs usually dont have great legs.