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Blue Dragon Outsells Zelda in Japan At Launch
Computer and Videogames is carrying the news that the 360's new JRPG Blue Dragon has outsold Zelda (and all other Wii software) since the game launched last month. This can mean only good things for Microsoft, as by all account the Wii's software lineup didn't do too shabby a job of selling either. From the article: "The latest Media Create Japanese chart puts the Mistwalker RPG at number four in the top selling titles in Japan for December 4 through 10, which has managed to shift a respectable 80,000 copies in the country giving it the number two all-time 360 sales record behind Dead or Alive 4. Blue Dragon has received a considerable level of hype in Japan, largely thanks to the fanbase surrounding Dragon Ball Z artist Akira Toriyama who designed the characters in the game, and a special edition Japanese Blue Dragon 360 bundle which some Japanese retailers reported to have sold out of within minutes of opening pre-order." Update: 12/15 01:10 GMT by Z : As Chris Kohler points out, the game outsold Zelda the week of its launch.
Can't get to the article from work, but....Game was released last month. The Wii was released 12 days ago in Japan. Are they just comparing those 12 days, or the whole time the former has been out?
Its looking more and more like no console will dominate this generation. All of the consoles made mistakes, all of the consoles have good points and bad points, and none totally overwhelm the others, with good games of all categories hitting all 3.
It seems like the ages where a single console could be sufficient if you picked well(unless you just HAD to have that ONE game...) are over.
Why would the Japanese buy a 360 out of frustration? They aren't exactly known to love microsoft's consoles, so I highly doubt that people would've bought one for those reasons. It's been said constantly that the guy who worked on the game has a huge following in Japan, so those sales increases might just happen to be because there's a game, on Microsoft's Xbox360, that the Japanese want.
Would you kindly mod me +1 insightful?
It's for a single 1 week period. Not overall
That's exactly what it means. There's two sub-types of RPGs... console RPGs (eg. JRPGs) and computer RPGs) (eg. western style). JPRG's are more linear and scripted, don't allow the player as much choice in terms of what character(s) they are, but this allows them to tell strong story as the player progresses. Computer RPG's on the other hand give you a lot of control of what characters to play, where you want to go, but as a result, it's not possible for the game authors to tell a strong story... the world doesn't usually dramatically change throughout the game.
As the article notes, this game was developed by Mistwalker Studios, not "Squaresoft". Further, I can only assume you meant Squaresoft as in the same square that makes Final Fantasy. In which case, Square merged with Enix about five or six years ago, and is now called "Square Enix".
FanFictionRecs.net
Yes, it's innovative, but since when has innovation paid off in the games industry of late?
The Nintendo DS? Guitar Hero? Katamari Damacy? Geometry Wars?
Say what you will about the definition of innovation (and I know that this will probably lead to arguing about just that), but the DS and the games listed were all significant departures from most of what's being churned out today...and they all sold remarkably well because of it.
Goo goo g'joob.
1. More people have xBox360 systems in Japan today, thus the market for new Japan-friendly games (which have been in short supply until recently) is much much bigger than the only just-released Wii console users (only 400,000 sold on release week in Japan, all they could ship, not a one left).
2. There aren't any RPG games to speak of for the Wii yet - all the cool Japan-friendly game releases for these won't be around until late this year or in first quarter of 2007 - thus, while one could "call" Zelda an RPG, it isn't. You only get to play Link, just to start.
3. As the market share of Wii consoles continues growing rapidly, the number of copies of Zelda - and the eventual Japan-friendly RPGs - will skyrocket. Hard to play a game when you don't have the console yet. As Japan market share goes past 1 million Wiis by January, they will sell more games.
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.. the fact that the gap between the Wii's graphics and the 360 and PS3's graphics is even greater than that between the PS2 and X-Box 1 makes me think it'll be left behind.
While this might matter in Japan, where HDTV is standard in most households, in the US only 5 percent of households have an HDTV, and in most cases Dad won't let the kids play games on it, because he bought it to watch sports and pr0n.
The xBox360 doesn't have many games on a standard 480p normal TV that look that much different, and so far all the game reviews I've seen say that most of the games aren't that great.
Give it about six months, and we'll see what the real numbers are. Everyone I know (dads) is buying Nintendo Wii consoles for their kids.
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That's an unfair stereotype of Asian men.
Akira Toriyama, Nobuo Uematsu, and Hironobu Sakaguchi are all involved in Blue Dragon's development. The last time they all collaborated AFAIK was Chrono Trigger. I'm not sure how similar the actual games are, though.
Indeed, Blue Dragon did outsell Zelda during Blue Dragon's launch week. According to the numbers at GAF, Blue Dragon placed 4th overall in Japan with 80,348 units sold during the week of 12/04 - 12/10. Zelda did not even make the top 10. However, Zelda launched the week before (11/27 - 12/03). In that week, Zelda placed 4th overall with 139,011 units sold. Furthermore, Zelda launched on 12/02 so that means it sold 139K+ units in just two days, whereas Blue Dragon launched on 12/07, giving it four days to amass its 80K+ sales.
Hardware availability had little to do with Blue Dragon outselling Zelda last week. XBox360 has been out for a year in Japan but had barely sold over 100K units before Blue Dragon came out. The Wii sold 350K units in its first two days. (Last week's hardware numbers have not been reported yet.)
Oops, perhaps I jumped the gun on the lifetime XBox 360 sales number. According to gamasutra, 178,069 XBox 360 consoles have sold in Japan during its lifetime as of last week. That's much higher than 100K and I doubt that the extra 78K units were sold just last week. ...or did they?
Sales (in Millions)
The XBox360's superiority in graphics and computing power has nothing to do with HD-TV, its far away from the Wii in SD-TV just as well. What is holding back the XBox360 so far is that a lot of games are still build for multiple platforms. If you see Marvel Ultimate Alliance on the XBox360 it won't look that much different then on a PS2 or Wii, the gameplay is all the same on every console and the much better bump mapping, resolution and light effects on the XBox360 won't change that.
All I know is what I've seen and what people in head-to-head reviews who've played both consoles - as evidenced in reviews at the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal for example, as well as G4 TV, Spike TV, etc - in that, sure, the xBox360 and PS3 have nice graphics, and they look cool close up (less than 4 feet for an HDTV that is more than 40 inches in size), but in the end it's all about the game play.
For most people, in 480p (standard TV), it really isn't that much different. And a lot of the PS3 releases don't even have good game graphics and camera controls - for example, water waves sloshing thru the land in a few, or bouncing into walls in Need for Speed 2, or whatever.
Again, it's all about the games. It's like my sports coupe - in the hands of someone like me, who actually knows the limitations of the vehicle, you can drive up to the ski hill with it, but the average Joe can't even drive their 4WD up to ski hill without getting stuck. Sure, they have more power, more clearance, they should be able to beat me there, but in real life they can't.
Now, the lead article is about first-week sales for the Wii in Japan of Zelda, compared to an already released user base of xBox360 consoles with a game that was released a couple of weeks before. It's like comparing pomegranates to oranges. Pomegranates may be better, but if they only are available right now, and people are used to oranges, you'll sell a lot more oranges.
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Typing "population of japan" into Google gives: 127,417,244
Typing "population of united states" into Google gives: 295,734,134
That's a ratio of 2.32
Ratio of game sales, based on your numbers:
* The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time(N64); Sales= 4.08(US) 1.46(Japan) = 2.79
* The Legend Of Zelda (NES); Sales= 3.80(US) 1.02(Japan) = 3.73
* The Legend Of Zelda: Link To The Past (SNES);Sales= 2.46(US) 1.16 Japan) = 2.12
* The Legend Of Zelda: Adventure Of Link (NES);Sales= 2.22(US) 1.61(Japan) = 1.38
* The Legend Of Zelda: Wind Waker (GC); Sales= 2.41(US) 0.86(Japan) = 2.8
* The Legend Of Zelda: Oracle Of Ages / Seasons(GB); Sales= 1.81(US) 1.03(Japan) = 1.76
* The Legend Of Zelda: Links Awakening (GB); Sales= 2.24(US) 0.54(Japan) = 4.15
* The Legend Of Zelda: Majoras Mask; Sales= 1.89(US) 0.74(Japan) = 2.55
* The Legend Of Zelda: Link To The Past (GBA); Sales= 1.61(US) 0.34(Japan) = 4.74
Total US Sales = 22.52 million
Total Japan Sales = 8.76 million
Ratio = 2.57
Totals ignoring the remake:
US = 20.91
Japan = 8.42
Ratio = 2.48
When you factor in the population differences, there isn't much of a difference in sales. Yes, as a whole, the US likes Zelda slightly more than Japan does. But that varies wildly from title to title, with the biggest difference being Japan really didn't care for the GBA remake of the SNES game.
It outsold Zelda this week. Zelda launched last week. The title is wrong.
:/
The real story, without falsified title
Basically, Zelda sold twice the amount Blue Dragon did in its first week (140,000 to 70,000). Did Zonk even click the link he cited for the story?
Look, I am excited about the Wii as anyone else, but it's a lie to say that the Wii "has a stable of 4 and 5 rated games", when it doesn't. You've got Zelda as probably the only 5-star game, then a few other titles at 4-stars (although many of them are multiplatform), and then a pretty steep drop-off from there. And it's really not fair to compare the 360 library to the Wii, since it's been out a year longer. You would expect to see better games finally coming out for that system. I don't consider that "good news" for MS, as they're doing exactly what's expected of them.
I have no doubt at all that the Wii will get better games. After all, few console launches have that many great games (and the 360 was no exception). It's an amazing feat, actually, to have a Zelda game at launch, and is the one reason why I'm still trying to find a Wii. But I think it's dangerous to start hyping a console more than needed. I would be upset if I bought a boatload of Wii games, expecting them all to be "4 or 5 star" games, when they turned out to be very mediocre. I'd much rather be told which games are outstanding (Zelda, Trauma Center, and Rayman) than end up spending money on Red Steel, Call of Duty 3, DBZ2, etc.
-- jchenx