by Vinnk - 12.10.07
Yet again the report is both late and long. Between planning for a wedding and the release of No More Heroes, I have been very busy. Still, there was some very interesting sales stuff this week. Thank you for the excellent feedback from last week’s report, so I hope you enjoy this one as well.
The current Media Create sales numbers (to compare) can be found here. If you are new to these reports please click here for a short overview.
Remember, you can skip the numbers, the best stuff is at the bottom.
This week I was asked to look for Wii, PS3, No More Heroes, and WiiFit. I visited the stores on Thursday, December 6th, 2007.
Jusco
Wii: 2
PS3: 8
No More Heroes: Sold out or not ordered
Wii Fit: 3
Youme Town
Wii: 2
PS3: 14
No More Heroes: Sold out or not ordered
Wii Fit: 6
Mr. Max
Wii: Sold out
PS3: Sold out
No More Heroes: Sold out or never ordered
Wii Fit: Sold out
Book-Net
Wii: 3
PS3: 8
No More Heroes: 1
Wii Fit: Sold Out
Goody
Wii: 1
PS3: 3
No More Heroes: Sold out or never ordered
Wii Fit: Sold out
Best Denki
Wii: 6
PS3: 17
No More Heroes: 1
Wii Fit: 5
Wanpaku
Wii: 3
PS3: 6
No More Heroes: Sold out
Wii Fit: 3
Famicom Dojo
Wii: Sold out
PS3: 3
No More Heroes: Sold out (2 copies were pre-ordered)
Wii Fit: 1
Yamada Denki
Wii: 4
PS3: 19
No More Heroes: Sold out or never ordered
Wii Fit: 8
TOTALS:
Wii: 21 (last week 20)
PS3: 78 (last week 71)
No More Heroes: 2
Wii Fit: 26
NOTES:
1. Wii supply is stable, most stores have them, but based in sales numbers, the Wii systems don’t have a very long shelf life. No stock really builds up.
2. The PS3 on the other hand is starting to retain a lot of stock. It seems retailers are still getting big orders of the system coming in but aren’t fully selling off their previous orders. However with the holidays around the corner a big stock might pay off. If there is not another sales drop that is.
3. DS and PSP are everywhere. Both used and new in every color of the rainbow. Santa will have no problem finding either of these systems. The stores are making sure of this. These systems are the first things you see when you enter the store. In a few stores they have moved the PSP into the “best spot” where the PS3 was last week and Wii was a few months ago. It amazes me how often game stores move their displays around. I think it would confuse a customer much more than help sales, but maybe that’s just me.
4. A lot of the used systems I talked about last week are no longer there. Looks like some people re-bought to play Lost Odyssey or simply wanted one for over the holidays.
5. WiiFit is still not being pushed as much as I thought it would be but a few stores have small kiosks and one store is running a video. It seems in my town that the TV ads and word of mouth are what is being used to sell the game.
6. Dragon Quest supplies look a bit lower this week, but it is still available in most stores. A few used copies are also appearing which is often a bad sigh for front-loaded games. But the same thing happened with DQM:Joker so I’ll wait to see how it plays out.
7. There are used copies of Ace Combat 6, Winning Eleven PS3 and Musou 5 available. I didn’t see any used copies of Super Mario Galaxy but I know people who are trading it in. It just seems that the used copies don’t stay on the shelf long. A good thing for getting lots of people to play Mario, a bad thing for sales numbers.
8. Super Mario Galaxy and Ratchet & Clank have both had “price collapses”. At several stores R&C has dropped to 4000yen (new). Mario so far has only dropped at Best Denki (to 4000 yen) but if it dropped at one store, others will soon follow. Thus, Mario and R6C might see sales spikes, but they are not necessarily a good sign. It might be retailers unloading the games.
9. Biohazard: Umbrella Chronicles is back in stock, but there are very few copies available. This means the re-stock was limited or the game is still selling very well and those copies are all that was left. Hard to tell.
10. There are ample supplies of Sengoku Basara Wii still on the shelves. It is clear that retailers and Capcom expected this game to sell a lot better than it did. I asked a few game sellers why they though the Wii version sold so bad and the common answer was “too expensive”.
11. The 2nd Layton game is not sold out but it seems to be selling well. It has more kiosks devoted to it than any other game this week. The first game is usually in stock right next to it. Used copies of the first game sell for only about 1000 yen less than new copies, which usually indicates that shops know they can sell them easily.
12. No More Heroes is hard to gauge. Several store didn’t have any copies but I am not sure if they are sold out or never bought it in the first place. I have friends working at the game stores but at the department stores I have no one to ask if they ever had any to begin with. Both Wanpaku and Famicom Dojo both ordered it and sold out, but Famicom Dojo only ordered 2 copies and Wanpaku, only 4. So significantly less copies than even small titles like Super Swing Golf 2.
13. On Monday WiiFit was sold out all over my town, by Thursday it had been restocked. This leads me to believe the Nintendo, possibly still shell-shocked from SMG, release a “test batch” to see how it would do. When that sold well, they had tons more waiting in the wings. They were able to restock quickly and didn’t suffer lost sales like DQ:Swords and Biohazard.
14. This week I didn’t see many of the local otaku (the cold weather keeps a lot of them indoors). I asked the few I saw what they thought of GT5:P. One guy that is really into building models is very hyped for it. The others, not so much. This is, in general more of a mainstream game and not of high otaku interest. This is kind of a mean remark, but the fact is, most of these guys and gals don’t drive in real life and have little interest in cars. I didn’t run into the guys that were hyped for No More Heroes so I am not sure what they think of it. I will try to ask next week.
15. There are plenty of copies of Tales of Innocence. They can be found new to the brand new, 980 yen copies of Tales of Tempest that stores have been trying to get rid of since last year. None of the Otaku gamers that I talk to had bought it (but as I said, I didn’t talk to very many this week). I think the taste of ToT is still lingering. As for me, I skipped ToT and I am thinking of picking up ToI, it looks really good. I’ll try to get some impressions from the 2 Tales fanboys in my town, but I haven’t seen them for a while.
Previous Reports on 4cr:
November 29th, 2007
November 22nd, 2007
November 15th, 2007
October 25th, 2007
September 6th, 2007
August 30th, 2007
looks like poor NMH crashed: http://tinyurl.com/3dg2nk
N Rumas - 12.10.07 9:22 am
It has outsold Killer 7 already, and it has only been out a few days…
It’s not selling well, but it’s still selling better than any previous Suda51 game.
From NeoGaf:
Flower, Sun, and Rain: 5.9K first week and disappeared.
Michigan: 15.2K first week and disappeared.
Killer 7 GCN: 4.5K first week and disappeared
Killer 7 PS2: 13.7 first week
Contact: 6.1K first week and disappeared
No More Heroes 10K FIRST DAY.
Crappy compared to WiiFit, but great compared to all the other Suda51 games.
Vinnk - 12.10.07 9:36 am
its lame that kotaku blames this on wii, as many do, when as you point out vinnk, and as we should all know by now, sudas games barely sell and he knows it.
i am sure he would have liked to actually get some customers at the event and that was a letdown, but honestly, the game was never expected to be a hot seller if history is any indication, and that has nothing to do with wii,
even the ps2 version of no killer 7 only did 13k first week, and thats also considered a bomb for most games.
even harvest moon only has a niche base.
anybody saying no more heroes is doing bad is simply uneducated. unique games rarely do good numbers period.
look at okami, and even katamari got lots of noise and a sequel yet did poorly in sales for all its hype.
waltermh - 12.10.07 2:25 pm
Eek…I honestly don’t understand how anyone has the money to sell a system then rebuy it for one game. The manager at the local EB has owned like 3 Wii units…unbelievable.
9th_Sage - 12.11.07 12:42 am
Wow, nice post… This is actually the first Anecdotal Report I’ve read, so I think I’ll have to check out the other ones.:) Hmmm, I don’t know what to think, it seems product wasn’t really selling to well for this week. I thought for sure WiiFit would be sold out everywhere, maybe sales will pick up. The PS3 also seems to be selling quite well, but how’s the software doing? Anyway, great post!
Matthew - 12.12.07 10:24 pm