Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution Sales Numbers

According the console charts on the Magic Box Evo has sold 69,373 copies to date. I'm just curious if this is in line with how VF4 sold in Japan or worse?

I figured the most popular fighting game in Japan would sell boku copies? Or did everyone get distracted by FFX-2 /versus/images/graemlins/frown.gif

http://www.the-magicbox.com/topten.htm

 

Well compared to ffx 10-2 it didnt sell shit, but thats sega's fault for releasing the game on the same day. I dont see it doing much better in europe becuase sega dont even bother with advertising.

 

I just had a friend come back from Japan and he said he saw copies of Evo selling for 2,000 yen. He also said it's still wildly popular in the arcades, which leads me to believe there's just no good reason for the Japanese audience to buy this game. They should've waited; unless of course they made this game to sell in the foreign markets, which given the uncertain future of Evo in America might not have been the smartest move either.

 

At todays exchange rate that's 16.56, crap Evo is in the bargain bin already. No wonder they announced the PAL release. /versus/images/graemlins/frown.gif

 

Those are second hand.
real sales are well over 100k(dengeki and famitsu numbers dont track online sales amongst others, online sales are Sega´s forte thanks to DDirect and the freebies they include with DDirect sales).
Regardles tough sales are dissapointing and well below the previous VF4 for PS2.
Too big in arcades still.

 

[ QUOTE ]
real sales are well over 100k(dengeki and famitsu numbers dont track online sales amongst others, online sales are Sega´s forte thanks to DDirect and the freebies they include with DDirect sales).

[/ QUOTE ]

Only 75% or so of the stores I've been to are tracked by those companies. They do miss a lot of sales since they only track at a limited retail level.

You'd be surprised at how many VF4E players don't even HAVE a PS2.

It HAS sold more than Metroid Prime, though.

(BTW folks, I must warn you against taking most ANYTHING off Magic Box too seriously...)

 

Ok so then I guess that begs the question how much has it sold?

And yeah I know to take the stuff from magic box with a grain of salt, but I figured the sales charts were at least accurate. I'm going to keep looking in the mean time.

 

One thing to keep in mind.. most games that sell in Japan are considered a success if sold between 100,000-350,000. There are just so many gamers that are released in Japan compared to the states. In the states, numbers of copies sold to equal "success" is higher for the most part.

 

That and Japan has less than half the US population.

So, if a game sells 2 million copies... more than 1 in every 100 households has it. That's a lot.

 

One thing that I've discovered is that 100,000-350,000 copies in the U.S. isn't all that bad in the post-PS2 console era. Before I worked in the industry I assumed sales regularly reached into the millions - oh how wrong I was. Until Hitman 2 (which has currently sold approximately 550,000 copies), Eidos' best selling game on the PS2 had sold around 200,000 copies (Legacy of Kain 2), and it took over two years to get to that point. Compare those numbers with the 1.8mil sales of both Tomb Raider 1 and 2 and you have a steep drop off. Devil May Cry is considered a smash hit, but it has yet to sell a million copies. And still, it is Capcom's best selling game on the PS2 to date, after scoring 3 million-sellers on the PSX with a trio of Resident Evils.

For fighting games, it's not much better. Tekken Tag Tournament, which was a PS2 launch title and is currently a Greatest Hits title, has sold 1.1 million copies, compared to Tekken 3's 2.7 million on the PSX. Dragon Ball Z: Budokai and Mortal Kombat Dealy Alliance battle it out for 2nd best-selling fighting game on the PS2 at 990k and 800k respectively. The battle for third, between Tekken 4 and VF4, happens almost 400k copies down the road, with TK4 having just over 600k copies sold, with VF4's sales tapering off at around 538k after a boost from the Greatest Hits designation.

On average, selling 200k these days is good enough to warrant a sequel, and that's what most companies are after these days - that franchise that you can build upon with an installed user base. I'm not sure how well Shinobi did worldwide, but it's a great example of a game that's getting a sequel and has yet to sell more than 200k copies here in the states. I'd be curious to hear what the market's doing in other regions, but it seems like hitting a home run has taken a back seat to just getting on base.

 

i thought onimusha 1 sold a million for capcom

 

I thought for greatest hits it had to sell over a certain amount right???

 

Onimusha 1 & 2 both sold over a million copies each in Japan, but have only sold over a million copies in the US combined. Last figures showed that worldwide Onimusha was over 2 million copies and Onimusha 2 was over 2.5 million copies. Capcom is still doing great in the console arena, but still losing money in the arcade.

 

U.S. Greatest Hits is defined by 2 things.
1. Game must have sold over 400,000 units. Not shipped, but actually sold.
2. Game has to have been on the market for no less than 9 months.

 

sixtwo i'd be very interested to know where you got all that info from. since people here aren't exactly putting faith in magicbox's credibility, could some of you here point me to some websites where i can get reliable sales figures for fighting games and stuff like that??

btw i'd have to agree with the assessment that a lot of people who play VF (and even tekken for that matter), don't have ps2's. i'm one of them and my entire tekken and VF game has been developed playing at arcades and gatherings (both console and arcade). i try and test out stuff as much as i can but with the help of the net, widespread framedata release for fighting games and a zillion match vids, not having a ps2 to practice on isn't that much of a hindrance anymore (though there's no substitute for solid hardcore practice).

 

I get my sales data from a document known as the TRSTS (Toy Retail Sales Tracking Service). It comes in a handy spreadsheet form, but unfortunately I have no idea where the damn thing comes from - a friend and co-worker of mine always seems to get a hold of them, and he's nice enough to pass it along to me. I imagine they're not completely impossible to find on the 'net somewhere, but I've tried to find them myself with no luck.

I've said this before, but if anyone's interested in any sales figures from the N64/PSX/DC era to present (including GameBoy Color and Advance) don't hesitate to ask.

 

They are meant for internal industry use, not meant to be made public and cost like 15k a year.