This game has dropped out of the top 20 in Japan, it's now at 23rd, one spot behind Professor Layton (Media Create)! A train game (Momotarou Dentetsu DS: Tokyo & Japan, not listed on simExchange) that was released on the same day as FFXII:RW is back in the top 10! That is totally not what I expected. Apparently, there are more train lovers than FF fans in Japan.
Unfortunately, I can only see this game falling on the wayside in Japan much sooner than I have expected.
@lassiterb
I agree with you to a certain extend. Yes, US has an immense FF following (and so does Japan, if not more so), but historically, especially on the handheld, FF hasn't done as well as its TV cousins. Looking at the VGC, FFTA on the GBA sold 800K, while FFIII on the DS sold over 500K (and still going) (no data on other GBA games).
Granted, FFXII:RW is not strictly an RPG game (it's more of a RTS game), and US love RTS games. But 1.5M in the US alone? Not impossible, but no likely. As I've mentioned before, America is most likely to sell more copies than in Japan, but I wouldn't bank on it to sell over a million.
In my opinion, this game will easily move 2 million units in all territories combined, as sales will steadily continue in Japan even though it has been bumped from the top 10 already. The US alone has an immense Final Fantasy following, with fans who will rabidly purchase anything with the FF moniker on it. If the game receives decent reviews, I am banking on at least a million to 1.5 mil sold in the first year within the US alone.
As Starless has said, it went down another 6 spots last week.
That's a big drop for an FF game. I expected this game to stay in the top 10 for a while longer than just four weeks.
The way I see it now, sales from Japan will slow down, probably adding another 50-60K or so. America is going to sell more copies than Japan due to it being FF and RTS, both of which are popular in America. So it could sell about 6-700K. Europe is going to sell more or less the same as Japan, maybe a bit less. FF tended to sell less in Europe.
Unless it gets a disastrous review, it will move a decent amount. Even if it does get a bad review, gamers will still buy it for the FF factor. So I'm estimating around 1.6, 1.7 million copies. But 2 million is maybe too much.
In comparison with the other FF game on the DS, FFIII sold over half of its predicted sales in Japan alone. Unfortunately, it's not the same for FFXII:RW at the current pace.
This game definitely doesn't look like it has the legs of games like New Super Mario and Brain Age. I guess Revenant Wings failed to attract the casual DS japanese consumer and was just selling to the same old Final Fantasy fans. Final Fantasy games tend to have massive first week sales, then tail off quickly.
Also, I don't think the simplified RTS gameplay will be very appealing to US and PAL customers. In my opinion, the simplicity of the game was made to attract the casual Japanese customer alone, and it looks like it failed to do that. The difficulty of the game is apparently being tweaked, but I don't that'll be enough.
I'm actually a little bit disappointed in this stock right now. In its fourth week, the game only sold 24K in Japan, bringing the total to about 450K (source from Media Create). Comparing that to FFIII, it has sold 660-670K after four weeks, selling roughly 60K in its fourth week. And comparing it to its predecessor, FFXII already sold over 2M in its fourth week, albeit on a different platform.
The figures for FFXII:RW feels weak. With the popularity of the Final Fantasy brand, and the strong sales of FFIII, I would expect RW to sell like hot cakes.
Maybe it's because of the RTS, I don't know.
Whether it will make 2M seems largely dependent on sales in other regions now, because if this trend continues, it might even struggle to make a million within Japan.
Add me into the chorus of voices thinking this stock is undervalued. According to a Gamestop article its still on top of the Media Create charts in Japan even in the third week, so that implies to me that it has strong momentum there. Looking at charron's data poitn of 383k after two weeks, its probably easily over 500-600k now and if it keeps the momentum up it will get within range of the current estimates just on basis of JP sales alone.
And of the Japanese RPG properties, Final Fantasy has the best name recognition/buzz factor in the states, so given the huge install base of the DS, while it wont probably top the NA charts it should easily be able to sell 1-2M copies (FFXII sold much more). I see this propterty easily going to 3M or more sales.
Apparently, this has sold 383,000 copies in Japan within two weeks. I'm not as strong at statistics as some other users here, but I think that's a pretty good start for the game.
I think those ratings are pretty standard for even the best RPGs. I find that theres a lot of bias against RPGs these days..
As for only selling 2 million copies, I think it'll do a lot better than that... Think of the install base of the DS, think of how many Japanese people love FF and RPGs in general. I think this one is a no brainer.
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Unfortunately, I can only see this game falling on the wayside in Japan much sooner than I have expected.
@lassiterb
I agree with you to a certain extend. Yes, US has an immense FF following (and so does Japan, if not more so), but historically, especially on the handheld, FF hasn't done as well as its TV cousins. Looking at the VGC, FFTA on the GBA sold 800K, while FFIII on the DS sold over 500K (and still going) (no data on other GBA games).
http://vgchartz.com/worldtotals.php?name=final+fantasy&console=&publisher=&sort=Total
http://vgchartz.com/aweekly.php?page=4&date=39236
Granted, FFXII:RW is not strictly an RPG game (it's more of a RTS game), and US love RTS games. But 1.5M in the US alone? Not impossible, but no likely. As I've mentioned before, America is most likely to sell more copies than in Japan, but I wouldn't bank on it to sell over a million.