Topic: Nintendo Sales Panic: June 2016 US NPD Group Results

[Shaymin]

The charts giveth, and the charts taketh away.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/43077/nintendo-sales-panic-june-2016-us-npd-group-results

The NPD sales charts for June have some new data, but the Nintendo data remained steady.

In the combined formats top 10, Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens was the #3 best seller combined on all consoles, and the best selling new release of June. Minecraft, which had its WIi U physical release in June, also made the chart at #10. Kirby Planet Robobot was the 4th best selling individual line item according to Nintendo, with sourced numbers placing the game a shade under 200,000 copies sold (physical only) causing a 39% year over year increase in 3DS sales. Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE sold approximately 50,000 copies in just over a week of sale.

This month's chart also included digital sales from the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live for eight publishers: Electronic Arts, Activision, WB Games, Ubisoft, Take 2/2K Games, Deep Silver, Capcom and SquareEnix. The eShop was not mentioned as a source, so the NPD report next month will likely not include digital sales for Monster Hunter Generations. Additionally, the NPD Group email communication has ended the practice of listing the platforms in order of physical sales.

[pokepal148]

Kirby: Planet Robobot is the Game of the Year, no contest whatsoever.

[broodwars]

Kirby: Planet Robobot is the Game of the Year, no contest whatsoever.

I think you'll have quite a few people disagreeing with you on that.

I'm sad, but not surprised, to see Tokyo Mirage Sessions sold so poorly. Questionable localization choices aside, it is one of the best games to hit Wii U and deserved to do better than 50K.

[TOPHATANT123]

This month's chart also included digital sales from the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live for eight publishers: Electronic Arts, Activision, WB Games, Ubisoft, Take 2/2K Games, Deep Silver, Capcom and SquareEnix.

For people without access to the full data the new NPD format this month is far less relevant from the last. You don't make a chart more representative by including different sources willy nilly, for games to be compared properly you either include all digital sales or you don't. It's not just Nintendo even Sony, Mircosoft, Bandai Namco and Bethesda are not included.

The chart is also now based on revenue instead of units sold, while this may be good for investors or stock holders, for the average Joe like you or me who doesn't have full access to the data I'd rather see trends of how popular something is, how much mind share it has, not how much money it is making.

[Luigi Dude]

I'm sad, but not surprised, to see Tokyo Mirage Sessions sold so poorly. Questionable localization choices aside, it is one of the best games to hit Wii U and deserved to do better than 50K.

50k for this kind of game in North America in about a week is pretty good.  The game was always meant to be a niche title for the most hardcore fans so I doubt either company is crying over the results.  Especially with it's Jpop idol themes and setting, that was always going to be a hard sell in the West, even if the Wii U had a userbase 10 time bigger. Hell, Atlus is normally being jumping for joy to have these kind of sales, especially since the majority of games they publish themselves don't even hit 50k in their entire lifetime.  Plus it's not like NOA was expecting higher numbers either since they didn't bother advertising it and making it Sub only was a cost saving measure as well. 

[Enner]

Yay for Kirby.


Without knowing the budget that went in to it, TMS#FE's sales seems to be a fair number. I think that's about the average one could hope for what the game is.

[Soren]

The chart is also now based on revenue instead of units sold, while this may be good for investors or stock holders, for the average Joe like you or me who doesn't have full access to the data I'd rather see trends of how popular something is, how much mind share it has, not how much money it is making.

I don't think NPD Data has ever been made for public consumption.

[Khushrenada]

Isn't that still 5x the sales it did the first week TMS was released in Japan? And that was actually built around Japanese culture.

[Ninferno]

50K a week for a niche game on an unsuccessful console, seems about right to me. Not great, but not terrible either. I really like the game, especially the gameplay mechanics; I want it to have sold more, but given the reality, I would say this number is more or less expected. I just hope Nintendo/Atlus is realistically content with this and will continue to have projects like this in the future.

[Shaymin]

Isn't that still 5x the sales it did the first week TMS was released in Japan? And that was actually built around Japanese culture.

A little over 2x (~50k v 23k).

[Khushrenada]

Ah, for some reason, I thought it had done about 10k.

[Mop it up]

Yeah, considering the circumstances 50k sounded good to me also, though I'm certainly no expert on these things.

[Oedo]

That's solid for Kirby. I've been trying to hold off on buying Planet Robobot until there was a sale or some sort of "buy one, get one..." promotion popped up at a retailer, but I don't think I can wait that long and might just have to end up paying full price.