1. Not sure why you think that. Call of Duty is a series that is currently declining from its peak. Its most recent game has lifetime sales of about twice its opening week. Decent legs, but it isn't getting more popular. How can that be? Well, it's simply that not everyone buys their games at launch for full price.

2. All? Come now. How many would you like me to name to prove you wrong? One of Sony's main franchises this generation was new IP introduced at launch, and the first Resistance sold far more with far better legs than either of the other two.

3. The initial sales of the PSP were mostly due to brand enthusiasm for the Playstation that is no longer there. For a while it was simply the hottest thing to have. Lots of people bought it simply for the promise and cool factor of a Playstation in your hand. After that wore off, the PSP started to tank but was saved by a beautiful angel named Monster Hunter... and the fact that, much like the PS3, publishers were already too invested in the system tech wise to completely drop it. This is when it recovered in Japan, all on the back of software.

So hardware sales like the early days of the PSP wasn't really possible, but the active, software buying audience of the PSP's later life was. The strange thing is that those software buying people want software that they want to buy, and the Vita doesn't have that. Oops.

1.  Not sure how the most recent call of duty game is relevent... since it's neither a retail game, and is a series so popular that their is going to be sevre supply contraints on production.

Either way if the argumenet that monster hunter 4 would leg out it's way to where it would be via bargain sales isn't exactly inspiring.

2.  Has it?  First off, you are forgetting Vgchartz numbers include bundles.  Which resistance was heavily bundled throught the entire first half of the PS3's life.  Way more so then any temporary bundles MH has gotten.  At some points you essentially couldn't buy a PS3 without being given a copy of Resistance and Motorstorm.

Secondly, Resistance was popular in two specific regions,  North American and Europe.   Where it topped 1.6 Million a piece... with the ridiculious bundling.

So... 1.8 Million for a launch monster hunter?  Seems fair.

3.  and yet again, that doesn't reconcile the fact that those people who put their consoles away later pulled them out again.  There is no gurantee those same people would buy the vita, and if anything... almost definitly wouldn't have.  Hence why Capcom left and decided to lead development on the 3DS.  It doesn't make logical sense to move to the vita and pray things work out when it seems  pretty obvious it wouldn't.

If you'll notice back with systems that struggle in sales, publisher push back release dates.  Are they all wrong?  They want the userbase to already be their before they release the game, because they know if the userbase isn't already their, it won't get the sales it should.   For Publishers it's an accepted fact that hardware sales do effect software sales, quite a bit, as the rest of your optimium userbase won't just magically appear the day your game drops. 

In otherwords, Monster Hunter didn't go to vita, because the requisite userbase wasn't going to be there to maximize sales, because there wasn't the same hype selling it like their was for the PSP.   This is also why Launch games are pretty much New Ip's and trash more often then not.

4) additionally, while you say you aren't saying that Monster Hunter 4 would of sold as well on the Vita now... doesn't that disprove your thesis?  Since it it wouldn't sell as well it does show that there is quite a bit of sales that do require userbase.  Hardware requires quality software at launch for sales, while Software requires enough of a userbase to get it's maxium sales.  One has to sacrifice for the other, outside of some sort of special situation.  (Like the PSP's brand name push.)

1. Neither a retail game? I'm not sure I understand. Do you mean not only a retail game, as in it's also downloadable?

2. Haha, no. Fair enough about the Resistance bundles, but that was just one example off the top of my head. There's often one or two per console that become early life touchstones and even evergreens. Mario 64 and Halo (which was only bundled briefly long after it was a big hit) and RIIIIIIIIIDGE RACERRRRRRRRR and Rayman and Tekken Tag Tournament... being a launch title is as much an opportunity as a liability. Most launch window flops would have flopped any other time, too, while on the flip side there are plenty of games that had surprisingly good sales as launch titles but their sequels wilted when released against stiffer competition (like my beloved Kessen).

It's a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy to say, "We'll just throw this piece of shit at this new console because it won't sell anyway." Which it doesn't because it's a piece of shit. I suspect there's a little more to it than that, though. A lot of teams are still coming to grips with the new hardware at that point, so it makes more sense to make a quickie game that is as much a learning experience as it is a commercial endeavor rather than to try and bang out a new classic on unfamiliar hardware on a tight deadline.

3. Well, that's a chicken and egg problem. No, they're not wrong to want a user base to be there before releasing games. But if they don't release games. there will never be a user base. That's not their responsibility, of course. It's the responsibility of the first party. Only the first party has a bird's eye view of what the software situation is looking like, so only they can detect gaps in the line-up and fill them so as to create the kind of critical mass of software that makes for a compelling product.

For most titles I'd agree that you want to target as large a user base as possible. It doesn't always make a difference, as in the recent case of Rayman Legends where Ubi could hardly have done worse releasing on just the Wii U way back when. But it's a good rule of thumb, sure. However, at any given time there are a very few mega powered franchises which can command the rapt attention of their audiences, and for them I don't really think it matters a great deal. I think Monster Hunter is one of those franchises right now, and it's far from obvious to me that it wouldn't have worked out had it been on the Vita.

Capcom made a smart move regardless. Whatever incentives Nintendo did or didn't offer, at the very least they weren't showing them the back of their hand like SCEA did. The ugly mutation that is the Circle Pad Pro is a testament to Nintendo's willingness to be a partner to them, and I'm sure they're not crying over 2 million in sales this week, either.

Vita's price cut means nothing at this point.

You're using global numbers, which is throwing off the legs ratio. For instance, Portable 2 had a 40k launch week in the US and sold over 320k lifetime there... 8 times its first-week sales.

Portable launched with 123k in Japan and sold 1.03 million in the end, about 8.4 times its launch.

MHP2 launched with 742k in Japan and had lifetime sales there of 1.75 million, about 2.36 times its launch week.

Portable 2nd G actually legged out to almost 5 times its launch week sales in Japan, so I wonder why you didn't bring that one up. It illustrates your point best.

Portable 3rd was never released in the West, which is why your numbers showed it being closer to lifetime being 2x launch week than the other games -- but it's actually the opposite when you isolate Japan.

Tri for Wii sold 561k first week and 1.05 lifetime -- under 2x its first-week sales.

3 Ultimate sold 987k first week and so far has sold 1.93 million, also just under 2x, but of course that hasn't quite finished selling yet.

Also, using Japanese numbers should eliminate your skepticism about their accuracy, since VGChartz's figures usually reflect Famitsu and Media Create reports.

So I would say that modern Monster Hunter games will tend to have very strong launches, and then leg out to about 2 to 2.5 times their launch week sales. Their legs could also be dependent on the strength of the platform, in which case a Vita MH game would be lucky to achieve 2 times its launch week sales.

I'm not sure how I missed MHP2G. Didn't count Tri because I was just looking at portables.

True enough about isolating the Japanese numbers. I don't know whether to think of the western releases as being old enough to have been brought into line with what Capcom has reported in its financials or just old enough for VGChartz to have kept adding 1000 or so every week until it's way out of whack with reality as is their wont with such games.

My God, reading through this thread nearly put me into a coma. How about we forget about this Monster Hunter game and focus on more important things.... like getting hyped about Gravity Rush 2!!!.!!..!!.!.. no? Ok well carry on.

1) Meant to say launch.

2)  Tekken Tag tournament launched to about 250K.  It ended up at about 500K In Japan.   

Ride Racer... Not sure which one your talking about here.   If you mean   Either way, the ones i've looked at all seem to follow the same 2/2.5 trend.

Mario 64 and Halo are good points... but also mega franchises with near universal appeal, something you've admitted MH is not.

So ok, every case except for the biggest franchises (which still lose sales) and then, i don't know, maybe there's a case of games that sell very low numbers early on legging out to like half a million 3/4ths of a million?

Still supports my point.

3) Again, there is no such thing as a franchise that big that has s 100% cult following.    Hell, even in the US where you'd expect there to be nothing BUT cult audience there are a lot of casual users, like Khan and Amp.

I mean, lets go over two arguements you've made here and show how they conflict.

A) Monster Hunter is a powerful  franchise that focuses the attention of all it's fans on in.  

B)  Monster Hunter will leg to mega sales on the vita, because not everyone wants to pay full price for the game.

Say what?   Clearly the game doesn't have 100% of it's buyers entranced if over half of them buy the game long after release, long after it's cheap.

These people who buy Monster Hunter when it's cheap.  They're supposed to have bought the system because of Monster Hunter?  Why are these people on Vita then?  (They mostly won't be.)

That's actually where a huge console base helps the best.  

Of the 5 million or so MH fans out there, at best you could probably say 1.5 million fit the descirption of a hardcore fan that would follow the game onto a TI-85 calculator.

Oh, and as for Rayman, outside the fact that they did it in the douchiest right before release way possible... it's not like the Wii U hardware situation has exactly improved much.

You are right that the Vita doesn't really have the exclusive software to bring people in... and that's why Monster Hunter wouldn't of did well there, and why Hardware sells Software in the same way Software sells hardware.

Monster Hunter wouldn't of sold well (compaired to other monster hunters) because IT would of needed to have been that sacrifice. (Plus it's not really enough to be that kind of game.)

Sales of either are directly proportional, hardware sales directly effect software sales and software indirectly effects hardware sales. 

If you see several games you want to play on a console you don't have, you're more inclined to buy the console than the opposite.

For example if you see several games you want to play for a console you DO have, very rarely would you buy all of them at once, so in this instance software sells hardware but not necesrrilly itself as a result, but the sale of hardware then increases the number of people to potentially buy a piece of software.

In truth though the argument is as silly as debating if the chicken or egg came first, they're mutually linked.

If the hardware doesn't appeal directly (like the wii did) and there's little in the way if software options then you basically end up with a wiiu.

Well, shit. I had a masterpiece of a reply all typed up which remorselessly eviscerated your every utterance with a deftness that was terrifying to behold. It is no exaggeration to say that you would have handed me your sword and administered a swift self-permban. Alas, but luckily for you when I pressed submit the AT&T man ate it, having shown up earlier than expected and cut my phone line already. In the face of this setback my interest in this topic wanes, doubly so with my newly acquired ability to download big titties at the speed of light.

Suffice to say I remain unconvinced that the loss of key software can't have a cascade effect far beyond the sales of that one franchise. It's difficult to imagine the 360 ever recovering in the eyes of consumers and publishers if Bungie had split from Microsoft prior to launch and took the Halo IP with them to make it PS3 exclusive. What happened to the Vita was just that drastic, and was exacerbated by coming at a time when publishers were already becoming increasingly skeptical of the traditional handheld. Even the rather successful 3DS has seen much lower third party investment than the DS received. The damage to the more precariously positioned Vita, while impossible to calculate, has been grave, and I don't believe that its present numbers or ability to host a franchise like Monster Hunter can be analyzed in a vacuum given the sequence of events that led up to it.

But I think I understand to my own satisfaction the opposing point of view now.