FFIII day one..

[darkblu]

well, fellas, seems like FFIII sold a few copies on day one...

http://www.jeux-france.com/news17164.html

(google translation)

 

[Darkon]

well, fellas, seems like FFIII sold a few copies on day one...

http://www.jeux-france.com/news17164.html

(google translation)

That’s not bad , but i kind of expected more.

 

[StefanS]

That’s not bad , but i kind of expected more.

You expected more than 309.000 copies sold the first day? FFIII is a remake, getting that much attention is pretty amazing in my opinion.

 

[darkblu]

That’s not bad , but i kind of expected more.

more? like what more? - maybe 100% stock depletion on day one? call me a disillusioned minimalist, but a high-print title that sells 68% ot its stock on day one is a freaking jackpot in this industry. oh, and it accidentally moved 21K themed DS units too. on a single bloody day, outside of the shopping spree season. quite a trick for a 'dreaded 3rd party title', i'd say ; )

 

[Hardknock]

Excellent news! It's funny that the DS is the first Nintendo system to get a numbered FF in like 12 years or something right? GC could only manage to get Crystal Chronicles (Not that I'm complaining ). Just goes to show how much of a phenomenon this system is in Japan. What is the US release date for this bad boy??

 

[darkblu]

What is the US release date for this bad boy??

nov 14th, IIRC

 

[Guden Oden]

That’s not bad , but i kind of expected more.

300.000 copies is more than many titles sell in japan, EVER, over their entire shelf-life...

 

[StefanS]

Excellent news! It's funny that the DS is the first Nintendo system to get a numbered FF in like 12 years or something right

Nope, there's FFI&II (single catridge) and FFIV for GBA.

 

[Guden Oden]

FFIV on SNES was the best damn FF I ever played. It was just great, story was good and gripping, environments varied, characters interesting, and the music amazing. If square would update the game for the DS, make it 3D and enlarge the world to make it a bit bigger, add more bosses and phat lewt etc, then they could have the best damn RPG they ever made.

In FFIV, you could have up to 5 guys in your party, that rocked. I hated FFVII and onwards where you only got 3 guys max, that sucks. It just felt like a totally artificial limitation. Besides, many of the extra characters they added so you could customize your group(s) didn't interest me at all. Most of them were boring as hell, and had lame special skills/attacks.

 

[StefanS]

http://ds.ign.com/articles/728/728959p1.html

Japan's biggest game is, once again, Final Fantasy. According to a report on the entertainment page of Japan's Mainichi Interactive news site, Square Enix's Final Fantasy III topped the 500,000 mark in its first week of sales. The title was released for the DS on 8/24.

The site reports that Square Enix was originally expecting first week sales to cap off at 350,000 units.

 

[ban25]

In FFIV, you could have up to 5 guys in your party, that rocked. I hated FFVII and onwards where you only got 3 guys max, that sucks. It just felt like a totally artificial limitation. Besides, many of the extra characters they added so you could customize your group(s) didn't interest me at all. Most of them were boring as hell, and had lame special skills/attacks.

FFIX had 4 characters per party

 

[darkblu]

http://ds.ign.com/articles/728/728959p1.html
'..The site reports that Square Enix was originally expecting first week sales to cap off at 350,000 units.'

'unfortunately we could not get any comments from the team behind the title as all members were in hawaii at this moment, enjoying a deserved vacation' ; )

wait, something is not right - didn't SE actually have production premises in hawaii?.. : )

 

[darkblu]

man, i wish i had bought a truckload of ffIII/DSL bundles.. or at least one ; )

http://www.akibablog.net/archives/2006/08/50ff35.html

(google translation)

'After the selling medieval times were happened to see for the first time. Unused item approximately 2.3 times that price 52,290 Yen'

that's ~$450 for the DSlite bundle.

 

[Arwin]

more? like what more? - maybe 100% stock depletion on day one? call me a disillusioned minimalist, but a high-print title that sells 68% ot its stock on day one is a freaking jackpot in this industry. oh, and it accidentally moved 21K themed DS units too. on a single bloody day, outside of the shopping spree season. quite a trick for a 'dreaded 3rd party title', i'd say ; )

It's certainly not bad. It's just that some people are going to remember this kind of thing:

http://www.gamespot.com/ps/rpg/finalfantasy8/news.html?sid=2452305

... and then it seems so little. But this of course was on a console and much later in the life cycle. Compared to the total sales of the top DS games so far FFIII is certainly no slouch.

 

[darkblu]

It's certainly not bad. It's just that some people are going to remember this kind of thing:

http://www.gamespot.com/ps/rpg/finalfantasy8/news.html?sid=2452305

... and then it seems so little. But this of course was on a console and much later in the life cycle. Compared to the total sales of the top DS games so far FFIII is certainly no slouch.

well, i don't think anybody thought FFIII for the ds was the biggest commercial success in FF history. not to mention it's a redux of an old title. if you do take it in the context of the DS though (which i think is quite natural for any title to be take in) it's outright massive.

a hypotetic queston: would GT4:mobile sales be impressive it they hit, say, 1M copies in the first month after release? in the context of PSP - hell yeah! in the context of the GT series on the ps1/ps2 - not really.

 

[Guden Oden]

FFIX had 4 characters per party

Never bothered with that one. In X, they were back to pathetic 3 chars per group.

 

[Arwin]

well, i don't think anybody thought FFIII for the ds was the biggest commercial success in FF history. not to mention it's a redux of an old title. if you do take it in the context of the DS though (which i think is quite natural for any title to be take in) it's outright massive.

a hypotetic queston: would GT4:mobile sales be impressive it they hit, say, 1M copies in the first month after release? in the context of PSP - hell yeah! in the context of the GT series on the ps1/ps2 - not really.

You did read the two last sentences of my post, right? (I'm just laying bare the psychological reasons of why some people aren't immediately going 'wow' over 300.000 sales on day one).

 

[Tagrineth]

Never bothered with that one. In X, they were back to pathetic 3 chars per group.

You know, that's a really weak reason to hate a game. Really, really weak.

 

[darkblu]

btw, the official MediaCreate's charts for August 21 to 27

titles:

Final Fantasy III - 503,051 (NEW)
NEW Super Mario Bros. - 65,556 (2,901,264)
Rune Factory - 42,210 (NEW)
Brain Age 2 - 41,784 (3,073,195)
Cooking Navi - 37,326 (384,045)
Tamagotchi 2 - 30,504 (430,934)
Mario Basketball 3-on-3 - 30,355 (233,762)
Animal Crossing Wild World - 30,023 (3,149,130)
Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day - 22,866 (2,736,150)
English Training - 17,465 (1,401,669)


and the consoles for completeness:

Nintendo DS Lite - 163,274 (3,967,887)
PlayStation Portable - 29,945 (3,911,800)
PlayStation 2 - 21,829 (19,662,064)
Game Boy Advance SP - 2,719 (5,881,627)
Game Boy Micro - 1,819 (533,249)
Xbox 360 - 1,197 (139,243)
GameCube - 837 (4,156,706)
Nintendo DS - 410 (6,577,160)
Game Boy Advance - 14 (8,822,654)
Xbox - 12 (475,522)

 

[Readykilowatt]

Final Fantasy III - 503,051 (NEW)
NEW Super Mario Bros. - 65,556 (2,901,264)
Rune Factory - 42,210 (NEW)
Brain Age 2 - 41,784 (3,073,195)
Cooking Navi - 37,326 (384,045)
Tamagotchi 2 - 30,504 (430,934)
Mario Basketball 3-on-3 - 30,355 (233,762)
Animal Crossing Wild World - 30,023 (3,149,130)
Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day - 22,866 (2,736,150)
English Training - 17,465 (1,401,669)

Nintendo DS Lite - 163,274 (3,967,887)
PlayStation Portable - 29,945 (3,911,800)
PlayStation 2 - 21,829 (19,662,064)
Game Boy Advance SP - 2,719 (5,881,627)
Game Boy Micro - 1,819 (533,249)
Xbox 360 - 1,197 (139,243)
GameCube - 837 (4,156,706)
Nintendo DS - 410 (6,577,160)
Game Boy Advance - 14 (8,822,654)
Xbox - 12 (475,522)

All DS games in the top 10?

"Those formats don't appear in our planning. It's not a fair comparison; not fair on them, I should stress. That sounds arrogant, maybe, but it's the truth. With the DS, it's fair to say that Nintendo stepped out of the technical race and went for a feature differentiation with the touch screen," Harrison continued. "But I fear that it won't have a lasting impact beyond that of a gimmick - so the long-lasting appeal of the platform is at peril as a direct result of that."

"PSP will elevate portable entertainment out of the handheld gaming ghetto, and Sony is the only company that can do it "

"The idea of a handheld rivalry with Nintendo is an irrelevance; those formats don't appear in our planning. It's not a fair comparison; not fair on them, I should stress. That sounds arrogant, maybe, but it's the truth."