@Starless, Crikey, I'm going to start calling you The Assassin, man! You comment and 65 bucks gets taken out of this bad boy. Or is that just the weight of Starless coming into play?
I think that the combination of good reviews, good Japanese sales trends, and the name gave such a large estimate for 6 days of sales. I personally didn't think that 1.4 million was out of reach, but then again I love Zelda. That being said, I think there's a lot of people out there like me, who are going to pick up the game within the first 6 days. I think that 1.4 is high, but not high enough to justify dropping the bottom totally out of the future.
I think Zelda IS that popular. I'm not sure what else to compare the game to, though. I don't know what other games have gone from less successful console to wildly successful handheld game.
I will buy as many as you're willing to sell at 60DKP, my friend. ; )
Is everyone aware that this game is being released on October 1? This means the future is predicting Phantom Hourglass to sell 1.4 Million copies in six days.
This future strikes me as being very overvalued, but with no else appearing to agree with me (the future rising in value), I'm starting to doubt myself. Is Zelda really that big in the US? With the game using a new control system, I'd expect first week sales to be less than that of a "normal" Zelda game. Positive reviews will help offset this, but I suspect many people will wait for friends' opinions and for more reviews (perhaps some user reviews from sites like GameFAQs) to come in before purchasing the game, thus pushing their purchase out of our future's time frame. When I first saw this future, I though at max it would be worth 60DKP, however as I do not live in the US, I don't know what type of hype and exposure this game is getting or is expected to get.
This week's Media Create charts (Japanese software charts) has the game dropping a notch to 2nd spot with around 137k units sold. It lost only to a new PS2 game. Total lifetime sales in Japan is now around 439k. This game is showing good legs and will no doubt stick around in the charts not unlike other big DS titles.
What's continually interesting to me about games like this is their incredible potential for future sales bursts after the first millions have been sold. The greatest potential for this is the inevitable, but long time away, price cut as the game becomes a platinum hit or whatever the ds equivalent is. Once this happens, the game will see a momentary resurgence in all spheres.
The other thing to keep in mind is that unlike many systems, the ds is constantly in a state of growth and shows no sign of slowing down. The sales figures for this game should also be adjusted to incorporate the inevitable growth of the market in which it is sold. All and all, I'd peg this, over a lifetime, at 8 million sold. This may seem slightly high, but take into account that the ds is, over time, going to reach and probably surpass over a 100 million units sold. That' s one hundred million nintendo ds's. There are certain games that are and will become integral to that experience, nintendogs, pokemon, super mario, and I think, the legend of zelda.
Over the course of two or three years, which is a long lifetime but not at all unjustified, this game has no where to go but up.
310k in first week in japan? very good. looking at the graphs on VGChartz for most of the big zelda games, american sales are about 2.5-3 times as much as japan and european sales are around 1.5-2 times as much as japan. Japan looks like it could clear one million. Europe would then be 1.5-2M and US would be around 2.5-3M
Total them up and we get between 5-6 M. This doesn't even take into account the fact that this is on DS which is outdoing even the GameBoy Advance for total worldwide sales for the same weeks released.
You know, I've been in on this stock for awhile now and I always felt strongly that it would do well, but never over invested in it. Well now I'm sort of kicking myself that I didn't start earlier; though I'm glad that I haven't started too late.
I was just looking at sales figures for the new super mario brothers as well as previous zelda games and it suddenly re-occured to me how much of a smash hit this game is destined to be. Link is popular everywhere, the ds is popular everywhere and the game will be released, you guessed it, everywhere. Now I'll admit, 400 is a solid place for this to cap out at for the moment, but given the incredible potential this has and the fact that that number is respresentative of lifetime sales, I think it could easily end up doubling with time - and not too much time at that.
Mark my words, six months or so from now, the people who got in early will be reaping the benefits of a veritable cash-crop.
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Crikey, I'm going to start calling you The Assassin, man! You comment and 65 bucks gets taken out of this bad boy. Or is that just the weight of Starless coming into play?
I think that the combination of good reviews, good Japanese sales trends, and the name gave such a large estimate for 6 days of sales. I personally didn't think that 1.4 million was out of reach, but then again I love Zelda. That being said, I think there's a lot of people out there like me, who are going to pick up the game within the first 6 days. I think that 1.4 is high, but not high enough to justify dropping the bottom totally out of the future.
I think Zelda IS that popular. I'm not sure what else to compare the game to, though. I don't know what other games have gone from less successful console to wildly successful handheld game.
I will buy as many as you're willing to sell at 60DKP, my friend. ; )