ya its all good with me

If Microsoft don't heavily advertise this game in the US/EU it will bomb, simple as that. Especially with hyped games like DMC4 and Smash Brawl releasing at the same time period.

Both Blue Dragon and Eternal Sonata have not done well in US/EU and if MS don't correct their mistakes Lost Odyssey will join them.

Game does look interesting though.

I am cautiously optimistic about this game. But after how insipid Blue Dragon was, I'm not taking any chances.

Here's hoping that the game is worth it.

Am I the only one that still thinks Lost Odyssey will do rather well in Japan?!? Atleast from a hardware standpoint.

Lets recap:

The Xbox 360 did ABYSMAL last year. It sold no more than 90,000 units in 2006, up till December. This was despite J-centric games Enchanted Arms, DOA4 (which was released the last week in December), Nintety Nine Nights, Dead Rising and Dead or Alive Xtreme 4.

The most hardware moved EVER last year, before Blue Dragon, was Dead or Alive Xtreme 2, which moved 7,000 units. This was just after the core came out too.

Then Blue Dragon, the game that was hailed as "the game coming from the makers of Lost Odyssey", a throw-together game that was announced AFTER Lost Odyssey, which had far less hype even THEN as Lost Odyssey (although did recieve more hype than any other game for the X360 to that point) came out. Remember, Mistwaker had a working, playable demo of Lost Odyssey released in Japan before Blue Dragon came out

From that day on, the X360 DOUBLED sales in December, a typically bad period for the X360. After Blue Dragon launched, the X360 sold 95,000 units in just 21 days. The only other game responsible for moving anything was Lost Planet, which at most, moved 6,500 units of hardware.

And of course, that doesn't include the fact the X360 did 130% better YOY in the beginning of 07 vs. 06 for January.

It's an absolute fact that Blue Dragon alone moved no less than 125,000 units of hardware.

Also, having said this, it's also fact that many of the people that bought these X360s bought them for Blue Dragon exclusively, and then sold off their systems once they beat the game. I've seen multiple reports from various users that the Blue Dragon Bundles were readily available in used condition almost the entire year.

So what does that mean? There are ALOT of people out there that bought a copy of Blue Dragon + a X360 that don't have it anymore. So when Lost Odyssey comes out, they will need to re-buy a X360 for Lost Odyssey.

Also, unlike last year, the X360 is not facing major compeition from major-brand IPs from Sony, the only other threat to Microsoft selling a buttload of X360s this Christmas. Last year, you had the PS3 launch, and a uber-seller in Yakuza 2 (which sold about 200,000 copies first day, the same day as Blue Dragon's launch).

So with all of those reasons, there's nothing really holding the X360 back from doing really, really well this Christmas. Do I think it'll do better than the PS3 or Wii? Absolutely not. But I do think that it has a fighting chance to match or beat the PS3 for a week or two. You have VF5 and Kingdom Under Fire in the first 2 weeks of December. Both are decently big games, and could move alot of software.

So IMO, we could see something like:

And of course, that doesn't include anything before that day. Blue Dragon allowed a 50% increase the week before it launched. Knowing our current numbers, that could mean a 7,000 unit week before LO launched, with most of those sales being due to LO.

 So using those numbers, and having the X360 only a measly 4 weeks in December, it's entirely feasable that LO could move 250,000+ units (mind you, Blue Dragon moved 130,000 units in the same timeframe), and 135,000 hardware units in the month (with last year's being around 100,000).

How are these numbers impossible? We've seen quite a few X360 games manage 30-45k opening days thus far (TB, H3, OB, AC6). Likewise, last year, those kinds of numbers were impossible: no X360 game did more than 30k opening week (only two games, DOAX2 and DOA4 did that much, the outside those were 20k at max, with n3).

 The X360 is trending 100% better YOY this year, both in hardware and software, versus last year. Is it any problem to think that LO could see 100% more software sold than Blue Dragon? Remember, Blue Dragon still charts a year after it launched.

Yea its only thanks to japan that blue dragon had decent sales

i think this game will sell more in US and europe then those two though, its DEFINITLY more western style, heck even the lip synch is english.

 I didn't think that it looked Western at all. It seems like a standard JRPG to me.

....But that doesn't mean that the West views all JRPGs the same.

Go look at ANY RPG sales chart for the west, you'll find 3 things:

#1. WRPGs do the best (duh). Oblivion, Morrowind, KOTOR, World of Warcraft, Diablo, Two Worlds, ect, do better than their counterparts of similar reviews, easily.

#2. Adult-oriented JRPGs do next best. The best example would be Final Fantasy-type RPGs. No JRPGs sell over 1m units in the US/Can except for Final Fantasy. FFXII has sold more units in the US than every (or nearly every) other JRPG released in the past 2 years here, sans Kingdom Hearts 2.

#3. Traditional, childish JRPGs do the worst. That includes RPGs like Dragon Quest (which never even cracked 500k in the US), and such.


Blue Dragon is #3. Lost Odyssey is #2. It will do better in the West, provided Microsoft actually promotes it. Not only this, launching in Febuary is a pretty good month. I, along with others, advocated that BD/ES be launched in June/July, when software was slow, rather than August/September when the traditional slew of pre-Christmas games starts launching.

I really hope that Microsoft advertises the crap out of lost odyssey. It really is the 360's FF and it just plain looks amazing. They should highlight the drastically increasing diversity of their line-up.

I really like Microsofts strategy in Japan and it's great to follow your coverage of the X360 on the Japanese market, mrstickball.

I remember last year and the happy surprise with the Blue Dragon and X360 hardware sales in Japan, and one could almost feel that Xbox could become a console to reckon with against the PS3 over there. 

Since then though the Japs disappointed me a little not realizing how great of a game Oblivion is (the best game ever made IMO) selling only what, 60-70 K for the X360? I was hoping for at least 120,000 copies. Well, now we know for a fact that they don't care for western RPGs over there, despite quality.

250,000 copies of Lost Odyssey and 135,000 of X360 hardware sold in Japan in Dec '07 would be absolutely fantastic. If that happens, the X360 is back in the game again. I'd be more than happy with 150,000 LO and 100,000 X360's in just one month, but for some reason I'm afraid it will have a hard time reaching 125K (with 75K hardware). Perhaps because there has been no hype, or barely info at all, on our game sites about Lost Odyssey in the past ½ a year. 

To be fair, most games haven't got a ton of press coverage aside from DS games. Look even at SMG - very little hype.

Nevertheless, I am sure with a $20m IP in LO, they'll drop the cash to spend on good LO marketing.

Remember, LO has been in the Famitsu Most Wanted charts for about 1 year, in the top 10. For comparison, Halo 3 was #19 for about 10 weeks, and sold 60k first day.