As a reminder, this title has just recently been released in Europe after a long wait and will be reflected in the upcoming sales charts.
Oddly enough, the title is only ranked at 133 on Amazon UK currently, but I imagine sales will be solid across the continent. That being said -- even if the title shocked and sold somewhat poorly, the price is still too low given the sales from the US and Japan alone IMO.
Nintendo has stamped a European release date of 22nd June on Kirby Mouse Attack.
It's a platform game for DS that does away with almost all of the fancy touch-screen input, instead falling back on more traditional d-pad controls. However, it will still make strong use of both screens and feature wireless multiplayer.
This has an especially large signifigance because the week was a holiday (where software in general sells more).
The titles that recieve a sales boost so large that they actually move up the chart are ones with legs. Games like New SMB, Pokemon, Animal Crossing and Brain Training moved way up the chart along with Kirby.
This means that in Japan, Kirby will continue selling steadily, recieve a xmas/new years boost, and then continue to sell some more steadily.
So basically the 1.06M (of which only about 80k are still unsold - see my post below for link) that Nintendo has shipped to Japan will not be enough.
It will go on to sell about 1.25M. Which means worldwide it will sell about 2.7M. (assuming 1.5M in western markets like I did in my post below.)
The president of Nintendo himself said that Brain Age is selling 10k/week in America, and it was the 8th best selling NDS game. So in March (5 weeks), K:SS sold >50k (a likely guess would be 65k - which is very good for a 4th month). http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/library/events/070427qa/02.html
Continued high sales are to be expected. All previous Kirby handheld platformers have sold >1M in America alone according to VGchartz (the last sold 1.12M). And this one is on track for about 1M.
So just between Japan and America it will sell about 2M.
And then there is Europe, where the game will soon be released. So this game should sell 2.5M.
And lucky for us, the next Nintendo report will definitely tell us exactly where itīs at (since itīs a worldwide million seller).
As for VGchartz, itīs generally accurate for old data where financial reports or official sales data can be used, but the new data is based on such a small sampling that it is currently terribly inaccurate. It is usefull for getting a general idea, but always stick to Media Create, NPD, and other reliable data sources where possible.
Not only that, but vgchartz is undertracking it in North America. According to NPD Kirby was the 5th best selling NDS game or March, just after Mario Kart http://www.gamespot.com/news/6169937.html?action=convert&om_clk=latestnews&tag=latestnews;title;0 but vgcharts had it below Brain Age, which according to NPD was only the 8th best selling NDS game. Obviously the fact that vgchartz is undertracking it is a big reason why the stock is so undervalued.
Furthermore, itīs coming out in Europe in June, and should go on to eventually sell nearly one million in that region. Nintendoīs annual report next year will almost certainly show Kirby at over 2.5 million worldwide.
On April 9th, I indicated I felt the title had already sold it's 1.6 million target -- that was confirmed as Nintendo's corporate financials [1] indicate sales of that amount as of March 31st, 2007.
As far as sales targets go, it's hard to peg where this will end up. 2 million is the next assured milestone, however.
@MiyazakiFan, you can't see from the current chart, but notice the high on this stock was 178 DKP.
Looking back through the forum, this stock had risen big time after at November and December sales. However, VGcharts had really low January numbers for this game and people sold it off. VGcharts then reported even weaker February numbers.
Badapple posted February NPD numbers that were much stronger higher than VGCharts and then there was discussion that the numbers VGcharts had were actually wrong (VGcharts has since revised their numbers) and the stock rose a little bit, but hasn't seen much activity ever since the plunge following January numbers.
I guess people never looked back at this stock after VGcharts claimed really low numbers. Needless to say, VGcharts is now a bit tarnished as a source here. Either way, people should take their data with a grain of sale...don't go crazy shorting or buying based on their data as it may be completely "revised" the next day.
My point is that GTA IV will take literally years until it sells 7 million copies, while a title like this has already sold 1.6 million yet has a sales target of that amount.
I would agree with you about this stock price but not about the GTA IV. GTA was a system seller in the US for the PS2 and likely will be for the PS3 and the 360 as well, so its not out of the question to expect a fairly high number of sales for that game, which is reflected in the stock price.
2