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Blue Dragon Outsells Zelda in Japan At Launch

Posted by Zonk on Thu Dec 14, 2006 05:01 PM
from the wii60-users-buy-both dept.
XBox (Games) Wii (Games)
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.
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  • Wait (Score:2, Interesting)

    by nbehary (140745)
    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?

  • I am excited for this game. I loved Chrono Trigger. I think I've played it in it's entirety about 10 times.
      • 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.

  • The trend is shaping up (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Shados (741919) on Thursday December 14 2006, @05:10PM (#17245220)
    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.
    • .. 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. Yes, it's innovative, but since when has innovation paid off in the games industry of late?

      • Re:I don't know - I'd like to be optimistic but... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Gothic_Walrus (692125) on Thursday December 14 2006, @05:41PM (#17245826) Journal
        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.
      • .. 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. Yes, it's innovative, but since when has innovation paid off in the games industry of late?

        Yeah, but it is similar to the Gap between the Nintendo DS and Sony's PSP (which happens to be when innovation paid off in the games industry of late).

        In general though, I think that it is way too early to make any conclusions on the performance o
      • .. 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 f

            • So far, when you actually look at the Wii and PS3 and xBox360 titles available in the US, it looks like the Wii has a stable of 4 and 5 rated games, the xBox360 is middle of the road (with barely as many total 4 and 5 games as the just-released Wii), and the PS3 is well, just not up to it, with only one decent game to speak of, and a lot of really glitchy but nice-looking games to round it out.

              Ehh, I hate to shoot you down so easily, but you should really check your facts first: http://www.metacritic.com/ga [metacritic.com]

    • It seems like the ages where a single console could be sufficient if you picked well...are over.

      The Wii (or the Wii controller) seems perfect for casual social gaming.

      If you crave the depth, the intensity, and opportunities for customization to be found in other genres, you will probably be looking at the PC, the XBox 360 and the PS3. Perhaps it is time to admit that one size doesn't fit all.

    • Only if you ignore the DS, which is outselling all other systems combined. I suppose Microsoft can claim all Windows PC's as "their" platform as well.

      Personally, I'll be getting a DS or GBA by Christmas time. All the old classic JRPGS (FF, Zelda, DQ, PS), plus the best collection of platformers...

      And give the Wii some time. If Nintendo can leverage their handheld market dominance with good integration/crossover titles, and they have a good collection of old titles to download, they could grab most of the "c
      • Yeah, I specificaly ignored the DS. While in my opinion, a console is a console is a console, and that includes handheld (I don't give a flying duck about handhelds being "hand held", I just like the games on them, since they are a bit more retro, in general, like 2d games, etc), the industry until very very recently have been pushing them in a different category, so they were not "competing" with the main consoles.

        Obviously, the DS is totally annihilating everything else for the time being, and is most def
    • I disagree.

      The forces that shape the console industry are unstable, and I mean that in the physics sense. Success breeds success, failure breeds failure.

      At this phase it's anybody's game. Maybe at this point in the previous cycles the winner was obvious (though I'd question that), but the structure of the competition means that three years from now there will almost certainly be an obvious winner. One of these consoles is going to rise up as the go-to console for the biggest, most popular games, and it's go
      • I see what you mean, and it makes sense. but I thought about that. Here is my logic:

        Consoles dominate when they have incredible 3rd party support. When the developers put all their eggs in the same basket. Nintendo mistreated developers as soon as it got an advantage, back in the SNES days. Sony did the same during the PS2 days. The whole "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" thing comes into play. Developers got burnt, went to a promise of greener pasture, and got burnt again.

        I don't thi

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Jerf (17166)
          Interesting logic.

          The evidence I'd want to see for that are statements from publishers and developers to the effect that they don't want a single console to dominate. And while I can't link them up, I'm pretty sure Square is playing the field for this very reason and that they've said some stuff to that effect, and Ubisoft seems to want diversity enough to put some money behind it.

          Good argument.

          And the best part is, now no matter what happens, we've got it covered! Ain't prognostication fun?
          • Actualy, just to be safe and have EVERYTHING covered... we need to shape up a theory as to what the gaming world will be if a 3rd world war shapes up and the HQs of all 3 main players get blown up. You know, because when 90% of human population is gone, gaming will STILL matter, hell yeah.

            And you got it. The statements by Square and Ubi were what I had in mind when I wrote that.

  • I call FUD (Score:3, Informative)

    by austinpoet (789122) on Thursday December 14 2006, @05:12PM (#17245280) Homepage
    It's for a single 1 week period. Not overall
    • It's not so much FUD as it is "Holy crap, hell must have frozen over"
    • Zelda:TP sold 139,011 units the first two days in Japan.

      http://blog.wired.com/games/2006/12/wii_sports_top s.html [wired.com]

    • Agreed. This whole thing is a bit ridiculous. I'm a X360 fanboy and all, and it'd rock for the 360 to succeed in Japan. But really, to pretend that the 360 is anything but a gigantic failure in Japan is just delusional thinking. If MS can release a Blue Dragon equivalent every month, maybe they'd have a chance of getting a minority market share, but at this rate it's just going to be a lot of money wasted for almost no gain in market share.

      Come on, 80K units? How many units of 360's are actually in Japan?

      • If MS can release a Blue Dragon equivalent every month, maybe they'd have a chance of getting a minority market share, but at this rate it's just going to be a lot of money wasted for almost no gain in market share.

        If MS can hit the mark with games which sell well in both Japan and the West, the money won't be wasted.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by p0tat03 (985078)

          If MS can hit the mark with games which sell well in both Japan and the West, the money won't be wasted.

          Except 80K units in the first week is pretty low for a game with both Toriyama and Uematsu's names attached ot it (art and music, respectively). This is like a Spielberg movie grossing $10M on the opening weekend - sure, not bad for your average *movie*, but it's still completely below par given the talent associated.

          I really do hope MS can make the 360 work in Japan, at least as a 2nd-place contend

  • You could speculate that perhaps quantaties of the game - and especially the Wii hardware - have become near-impossible to secure in Japan...

    Speculate? Unless Japan's love of Nintendo has fallen off a cliff, that's exactly what's happening. You don't buy the game if you don't have a Wii. There aren't any Wiis to buy. Therefore, people aren't going to buy the game.

    Personally, I'm amazed there are enough 360s in Japan for the game to sell that well, going from Microsoft's abysmal track record there thus f

  • Three market reasons why meaningless (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WillAffleckUW (858324) on Thursday December 14 2006, @05:42PM (#17245834) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • I agree. The numbers, by themselves, are interesting. But comparing to anything else, such as "outsells Zelda" is not. It's not particularly fair, for all the reasons you've mentioned.

      Now, a couple weeks from now, it'll be more interesting to see how many 360 units Blue Dragon will help sell. Having a one-time spike from Sakaguchi/Toriyama/Uematsu fans is nice, but what MS and Mistwalker really would like is for word-of-mouth to take over and convince more mainstream gamers to pick up the title and a 360. I
      • Still, I'm wondering what's going on with Zelda. Getting outsold by Wii Sports and Wii Play either means the series is out of favour, people are waiting for the Cube version, Nintendo didn't make enough discs (are they stupid?) or perhaps even that more casual gamers represent a much bigger demand and most Zelda fans can't find a Wii to buy. You'd expect the Zelda folk to be the ones camping out though.

        In another one of my posts, I point out that Zelda isn't that big of a title in Japan:

        http://games.slashdo [slashdot.org]

      • Still, I'm wondering what's going on with Zelda. Getting outsold by Wii Sports and Wii Play either means the series is out of favour, people are waiting for the Cube version, Nintendo didn't make enough discs (are they stupid?) or perhaps even that more casual gamers represent a much bigger demand and most Zelda fans can't find a Wii to buy. You'd expect the Zelda folk to be the ones camping out though.

        You get Wii Sports with the console, and you get Wii Play when you buy a second controller. That in and o

  • Nintendo is sold out of wii. There are very few fanatics who'd buy a game without owning a console to run it on. So it would be really odd if Zelda outsold Wii, and Wii sales are currently capped by supply, not by demand. If you look at the figures, great most of current happy Wii owners already have the Zelda. What percent of Japaneese XBOX 360 owners bought Blue Ghost though?

  • Whoa! The numbers are totally misrepresented! (Score:5, Informative)

    by qjereq (443633) on Thursday December 14 2006, @06:21PM (#17246464)
    Indeed, Blue Dragon did outsell Zelda during Blue Dragon's launch week. According to the numbers at GAF [gamesarefun.com], 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.)

  • Producer Hironobu Sakaguchi produced most of the good Final Fantasy games. Designer Akira Toriyama did the Dragon Ball manga and the Dragon Quest games. Composer Nobuo Uematsu's music from Final Fantasy is so popular, it's played at special symphonic concerts.

    Even the XBox's low esteem in the Japanese market can't screw this up.

    Analogy:

    Hey, kids, who wants to see a movie about an archeologist?
    Noooooooo!
    Hey, kids, who wants to see a movie about an archeologist played by Han Solo, directed by the

  • The thing is, the Wii has been out for a few weeks; the XBox 360 has been out for close to a year. More XBoxes means more potential game purchases. Now, if we were comparing sales of the new Zelda game to the sales of some XBox game from a similar place in the XBox's lifecycle, that'd be something. This really is apples and oranges.

    Triv

    • The article is about how two RPG's are selling in Japan...

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by interiot (50685)
      That's exactly what it means. There's two sub-types of RPGs... console RPGs [wikipedia.org] (eg. JRPGs) and computer RPGs [wikipedia.org]) (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 w
      • However, this distinction is becoming less clear as some western-style RPG's make it to console... Oblivion, for example. I think the JRPG name distinguishes it from the other more clearly.
    • Yes, it's a Japanese RPG, developed by Squaresoft. It's worth noting that the J in JRPG doesn't denote the nationality of the creators so much as the style of RPG. Squaresoft's RPG mostly fall under the JRPG heading.

      • Re:JRPG = ? (Score:4, Informative)

        by JordanL (886154) <jordan.ledoux @ g m a i l .com> on Thursday December 14 2006, @05:24PM (#17245484) Homepage
        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".

    • Re:Spot of good news for MS (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Cheapy (809643) on Thursday December 14 2006, @05:11PM (#17245256)
      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.
    • Who knows. However, this still leaves me speechless. Then again this could just be a difference in time.
    • It's nice to see some 360s selling in Japan, but I wonder how many of these people bought a 360 out of frustration, due to limited Wii

      I think that would be more a rationale to buy a PS2, and one of these [teamfremont.com] with the appropriate game title to go with. At least that would be some kind of solution to the problem of a limited Wii.

      • you have to keep in mind though that this is japan that we are talking about here. This is the same place where people will buy a console for a single game and then sell it back once they are done. Given 360 only has shooters, if MS cant come out with other games i supect that is what the fate of most of these blue dragon boxes will be.

    • Re:Spot of good news for MS (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 14 2006, @05:54PM (#17246048)
      but I wonder how many of these people bought a 360 out of frustration, due to limited Wii

      That's an unfair stereotype of Asian men.

    • Re:Zelda Wasn't Even in the Top 10 (Score:5, Informative)

      by HappySqurriel (1010623) on Thursday December 14 2006, @06:31PM (#17246614)
      The Legend of Zelda isn't all that popular in Japan:

      Sales (in Millions)
      • The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time(N64); Sales= 4.08(US) 1.46(Japan)
      • The Legend Of Zelda (NES); Sales= 3.80(US) 1.02(Japan)
      • The Legend Of Zelda: Link To The Past (SNES);Sales= 2.46(US) 1.16 Japan)
      • The Legend Of Zelda: Adventure Of Link (NES);Sales= 2.22(US) 1.61(Japan)
      • The Legend Of Zelda: Wind Waker (GC); Sales= 2.41(US) 0.86(Japan)
      • The Legend Of Zelda: Oracle Of Ages / Seasons(GB); Sales= 1.81(US) 1.03(Japan)
      • The Legend Of Zelda: Links Awakening (GB); Sales= 2.24(US) 0.54(Japan)
      • The Legend Of Zelda: Majoras Mask; Sales= 1.89(US) 0.74(Japan)
      • The Legend Of Zelda: Link To The Past (GBA); Sales= 1.61(US) 0.34(Japan)

      • Re:Zelda Wasn't Even in the Top 10 (Score:4, Informative)

        by edwdig (47888) on Thursday December 14 2006, @07:53PM (#17247636) Homepage
        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.

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