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XBox (Games) Wii

Blue Dragon Outsells Zelda in Japan At Launch 151

Posted by Zonk from the wii60-users-buy-both dept.
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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Blue Dragon Outsells Zelda in Japan At Launch More

Blue Dragon Outsells Zelda in Japan At Launch

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  • 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 and, to a larger extent, PS3 shipments.

    • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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

        • 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.

          That 5% seems low to me, but I can't find any 2006 reports that cover what it looks like now. What would be interesting, though, is the growth aspect. If the number of households with HDTV is doubling or tripling every year, then it certainly won't be long till HDTV really mat

        • 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.

          Where the hell did you come up with 5%? Did you just pull it out of your ass?

          According to this survey [marketresearch.com] done in June 2005, HDTVs are owned by more than 24% of households in the US.

          HDTV ownership will probably hit 50% before 2008, because of the crash in LCD TV prices.

          The xBox360

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by be-fan ( 61476 )
          HDTV penetration in the US is higher than in Japan (or in Europe), and is around the 25%+ mark now.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by be-fan ( 61476 )
          HDTV penetration is in the mid 20% range right now in the US, higher than in Japan or Europe.

          And to say that the XBox360's games don't look that much different on 480p TVs is ridiculous. The level of geometric complexity is something completely different from what PS2 or XBox games have.
    • 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

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Shados ( 741919 )
        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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jerf ( 17166 )
      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

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Shados ( 741919 )
        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?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Shados ( 741919 )
            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.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Jerf ( 17166 )
              Are you kidding? Gaming will matter more than ever! And the stakes will be... your life!

              "Two men enter, one man leaves!"

              Personally, I'm betting on Master Blaster, Inc. at 100% market share at that point.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by 7Prime ( 871679 )

          And even the PS2, as well as it did, didn't do that. The numbers are still flying about how all three consoles did world-wide, but the concensus seems to be that the PS2 came in first, world wide, with the XBox and GameCube coming in generally close together (some stats show the XBox leading, some the GameCube, so who knows). But even the gap between those wasn't astronomical. We're talking 40:30:30, or maybe 44:28:28. Even a 50:25:25 is pretty close, when you think about it. The final differences in sales

  • I call FUD (Score:3, Informative)

    by austinpoet ( 789122 ) on Thursday December 14, 2006 @05:12PM (#17245280)
    It's for a single 1 week period. Not overall

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cheapy ( 809643 )
      It's not so much FUD as it is "Holy crap, hell must have frozen over"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by heli0 ( 659560 )
      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]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by p0tat03 ( 985078 )

      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

  • http://www.the-magicbox.com/game20061207.shtml [the-magicbox.com] Nov 27 - Dec 3, Zelda for Wii sold 139,011 copies. But it didn't sell enough to hit the charts during Dec 4 - 10? Or did they just forget to list it?
  • 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

    • You don't buy the game if you don't have a Wii. There aren't any Wiis to buy.

      Doesn't Japan have some sort of WiiBay for people willing to spend 500K yen?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Daetrin ( 576516 )
      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 far.

      According to this [gamesarefun.com] Microsoft has sold just over 142k units of the 360 so far this year. And according to this [gamesarefun.com] they sold 70k units last year, so about 210k units total. Blue Dragon sold 80k units, i believe 30k as the bundle with the console and 50k as just the game. So of the 180k people who had the console before this week 28% of them bought Blue Dragon. So assum

  • 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
      • One of the interesting questions is when will game designers who sell a certain type of game in Japan realize the vast untapped markets in the US for the same kind of game? I've seen tons of reviews on G4 TV for many Japan-only games that I know many many Americans would love to play.

        Even if they were Japanese-spoken with English online help, my guess is the untapped market for such games is vast - and growing.

        But if they just had some local American voice dub talent redub it, even if it were kind of quirk

        • One of the interesting questions is when will game designers who sell a certain type of game in Japan realize the vast untapped markets in the US for the same kind of game? I've seen tons of reviews on G4 TV for many Japan-only games that I know many many Americans would love to play.

          Even if they were Japanese-spoken with English online help, my guess is the untapped market for such games is vast - and growing.

          But if they just had some local American voice dub talent redub it, even if it were kind of quirky

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Actually that's probably not true. The 360 sold 80k in 2005 and 100k up to November (last time numbers came out). The Wii has already outsold the 360 in Japan, selling over 280k (based on the highest selling game, so probably more than that). Even if each Blue Dragon was a new console then the 360 wouldn't have as many units out in Japan as the Wii.

      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
      • 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

  • A Blue Dragon comic started running last week on comic magazine Weekly Shonen Jump to coincide with the game release. The fact that the artist for another popular series, Death Note, is creating the comic is drawing just as much attention as the game's Toriyama-based characters.
  • 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?
  • The Wii was only out there for a couple weeks of the time measured. This sounds to me like an attempt to make the 360 look better in Japan. Fact is its doing terrible. Latest news shows that total 360 shipments are less in the last year than the Wii or PS3 have amounted in their few weeks. Glad the game is doing well as it looks cool. But this kinda stuff just further shows how despirate they are to make it look like they arnt doing so poorly.
  • It's great when Blue Dragon sells 80,000 copies, but when you consider that there's only a grand total of 170,000 xbox 360s in Japan, well... don't expect Blue Dragon sales to hold up. *cough* There's already far more Wiis in Japan than 360s, the only reason Blue Dragon sells so quickly is it's the only game for 360 owners to buy. It's like Halo here, the game practically came with the xbox1.

  • 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.)
    • Oops, perhaps I jumped the gun on the lifetime XBox 360 sales number. According to gamasutra [gamasutra.com], 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?
      • Actually i was just looking into this for another comment on this article, and if you check GAFs hardware sales numbers the 360 is at 142k so far this year as of the last week's reported sales, and according to the last hardware sales article from last year they sold 70k in 2005. So about 210k consoles total.

  • 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

  • Granted I have not read TFA, but this comes a little surprise to me, as it is currently impossible to purchase a Wii, even in the most country of country in Japan.

    I was lucky enough to have a pre-order and get my wii (and zelda) on launch day, but since then, there have been almost no wiis available in any stores (I'm searching for a wii twice a week at about 3 stores, and still have had no luck).

    If no one has the hardware, no one will buy the game.

  • RTFA (Score:2, Informative)

    by Crysalim ( 936188 )
    It outsold Zelda this week. Zelda launched last week. The title is wrong.

    The real story, without falsified title [digitalbattle.com]

    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? :/
  • It's great that Blue Dragon made it into the top ten in it's launch week.

    The bad news is, even with the Blue Dragon/360 Core bundle, it still didn't manage to outsell the PS3, and didn't even come close to matching sales of the Wii for the same week. There are still more Wii's and PS3's in Japan than 360's, and it remains to be seen whether Blue Dragon will have the legs necessary to give 360 a real sales boost, or whether it will fade out after this.

    It's a significant accomplishment (although not qu

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shados ( 741919 )
      Blue Dragon alone cannot launch the 360 to the top in Japan. However, its a start. When 3-4 games of its caliber comes out, then people will be like "you know what? its starting to be worth it...".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rayonic ( 462789 )
      The bad news is, even with the Blue Dragon/360 Core bundle, it still didn't manage to outsell the PS3

      No accounting for taste, I see.

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