I feel it's a fully valid prediction, given that the other three generations of Pokemon (Red/Blue, Gold/Silver, Ruby/Sapphire) reached 31m, 23m, and 15m respectively. (I'm discounting Fire Red/Leaf Green as they're effectively remakes of the originals and thus not their own generation.) The current estimate may be a tad high, I'd admit, but I still feel some strength to this stock, especially with so many improvements being made to the games themselves. This pair is very close to Ruby/Sapphire in Japan after only 3 months, so I suspect it will perform better than that duo and in line with or better than the current price.
Citing VGChartz and the wired.com article from Feb. 1 on this.
Another thing to note. You have to see what the price is saying compared to other games. Being the highest priced game on the whole site, you're saying it's selling more than Halo 3. Both previous games have not only won game of the year awards, but are also much more popular,(Halo 2 selling over 5 million on opening day.)Halo 3 is expected to do much better than the previous ones, especially now that it's on one of the best new consoles both in terms of power and amount sold.
I just need to check if you guys have this in perspective. The DS is predicted to sell 85.44M units (according to the Simexchange). and This single game is predicted to sell 16.56M copies. are you saying that almost 1 in every 5 people who own a DS are going to buy this?
It's fine if you do believe this, but the problem of selling too many games compared to the console is common around the site.
My rational is that I personally think the DS will get to around 33 million copies sold in America; then I thought that this game won't have the attachment rate of the first two generations of pokemon games (but would have a greater attachment rate than the third generation on the GBA) because the fad effect from the 90s has worn off a bit--though not on people like me;). But I thought because this game would be on the DS and Nintendo seems to be more in the public light lately, they might be able to get around a 18% attachment rate, or about 1/5 DS owners in America would have Pokemon Diamond/Pearl. This 18% of 33 million would give 5.94 million copies sold, which I rounded up to a nice 6 million.
Since as you stated before the attachment rate for pokemon games for the GB was around 20-25% and for the GBA around 14%. So I used historical data, but tried to add in the possibility that this game will have a higher attachment rate for the DS than for the GBA but less so for the GB to give me the attachment rate of 18%.
Ack, my bad. I was only thinking of comparing it to the GBA ones, I forgot about the 2 massive selling originals on the GB from like a decade ago.
What would make you predict 6 million copies in America? The only original GBA games had attachment of 14% while the GB versions had 20-25% (no successive version have had nearly that high). 6 million American sales would have an assumption of over 40 million DS units in America alone. While the DS is selling amazingly well right now, I have doubts about Diamond/Pearl being able to sell consistently well for the several years needed to get the number you're predicting at with the historical attachment.
Maybe I'm just being a horrible cynic and I'll change my mind once I buy the game this week ;) That being said, with this stock being so volatile and the high price, I see this as a bad place to invest in for the months necessary to determine how sales will go after launch. Better return on investment elsewhere, regardless of which of us is correct.
Laoldar, the site is currently not predicting this game to be the best selling Pokemon ever, not by a long shot. Pokemon Gold/Silver has nearly 23 million copies sold while Blue/Red has around 30 million copies sold. This site is currently predicting about 16.4 million copies sold, which is much lower than the other two best selling Pokemon games.
When I read up more about the attachment rate between Japan and America, I think the game might sell around 6 million copies in America, but it depends on how fast the DS continues to sell, if this is marketed right, this will be the DSs huge AAA title going into the summer. Maybe they would have got more sales if they had launched it during the holiday season.
Yes America had huge sales....America also had 24 million MORE GBA units sold than Japan, therefore the attachment rate in America was less than Japan. The game sold better in America likely because America always had more GB handhelds out, and I doubt that all the GBA Pokemon fans have converted.
Personally, while I think it'll be a huge seller, this site is predicting it to be the best-selling Pokemon game ever, but with a much smaller install base than the GBA had (currently simexchange is predicting about 30 million fewer DS' than GBAs). The numbers just don't add up when you consider the number of handheld systems.
jayen, no you can not assume that. All higher pre-orders mean is that there's a lot of early demand for it and it says nothing about how many will sell 3, 6, 12 months from now.
Laoldar, I tend to disagree with that idea, I think this game will be huge in America anyways, as if you look at historical data, the Pokemon games have always sold more games in America than in Japan. America has a little under 12 million DSs sold already, Japan has a little over 16 million, but considering that historically this game has always sold better in America, the game will be huge anyways despite the apparent loss of sales due to less DSs sold in America.
Also, we are looking at lifetime sales, so why say that the game won't be huge for several years then revise downward the lifetime sales? This game might not get the 1 million sales explosive start that some may be expecting, but still expect this game to have a huge long tail that will eventually give this game a large amount of copies sold. I think Pokemon Diamond/Pearl can sell 17 million copies, it just might take awhile to do so.
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Citing VGChartz and the wired.com article from Feb. 1 on this.