According to the year end fiscal press release from Nintendo (referred to elsewhere on this site) this title has sold 2.62 million copies WW as of Mar 31 2007
This forecast of 4.34 million seems to assume this game will follow a normal sales trajectory.
It is doing anything but.
In Japan, it has sold 20K copies every week of its release (vgchartz.com), a trend which is unlikely to stop anytime soon. In the US, it was the top selling Wii game in its first two months of release, beating hardware sales both times (NPD), and could actually sell more in April than March with higher hardware shipments. In the UK, it recently jumped back up to #3 on the all-format charts (http://vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=1451).
Fairly old numbers from Vgchartz.com have it at 2.8 million shipments already. I think theres a great chance it does 2 million in each Japan, NA and PAL by the end of the year, and stays on the charts for several years.
There's been a lot of discussion on other boards that Wii play is "ruining the industry." Apparently a lot of people are surprised that Wii Play is topping the Wii charts. Sharing my thoughts on this...
Wii Play was always expected to be a huge seller before it was even released. Wii Play's game stock has always been trading above a 4 million global sales prediction . Why? Because it is basically buying an extra controller (which most Wii players will do), then shelling out a mere $10 for some minigames that show you more of what the Wii-mote can do. Most of these buyers are likely just wanting another controller to play with their friends but then think, some minigames for $10? Why not?
Wii Play sales likely have no impact as a substitute for other games--so I think it would be incorrect to conclude that the product will take away sales from "real" games and that "casual gamers will ruin the industry."
Wii Play had a huge 371,000 copies debut in February according to NPD. That's a 11.67 P/FMS ratio not including the Japanese and PAL sales already.
Combine this with the 1,023,000 copies already sold in Japan according to VGCharts and Wii Play stock is looking pretty good. VGcharts also estimates 1.99 million copies shipped worldwide already. Note the VGcharts numbers only has 320,000 copies shipped for N.A., which is quite a bit of error.
It's hard to complain about a $10 game, but after reading some reviews, I think I'm going to pick up a Classic Controller and get Super Mario World on the Virtual Console instead.
we dont talk about players who buy it because the old one broke. we talk about parents who need a gift for b-day/religious/otherwise events. They usualy have NO idea what games are played at the kids partys or similar occasions. But deals like this are almost guarantied to make the kid happy (if it likes the game its cool, if not it at least is happy with that weird nukku-thingy, whatever it could be ). So they buy.
Monkspider's post on Lost Planet ratings also shows some pretty poor ratings for Wii Play...averaging 57% right now on gamerankings.com. I don't know how much ratings matter for a product like this but it may deter some people into just saving $10 with the regular Wii-mote package.
8
The breakdown is 1.21 Japan and 1.41 non-Japan.