Japan Sales Thread *renamed

How does the brand make that less true (or more untrue, if you like)? Yes of course the brand is an advantage for Sony and a disadvantage for Microsoft, but that's how it is. When Blue Dragon comes out for the 360, that's how it is, when Lost Planet comes out for the 360, that's how it is, and when Sony is the favored brand, that's how it is. We see the results of all influences in the sales numbers. It all counts. You don't get to dismiss the brand because it already affects reality, just like nobody else gets to say "These sales don't count because that's just because of Lost Planet". It's childishness.
Nobody is discounting sales. People are simply saying that XB360 has no business approaching 30% of PS3 sales in Japan. The PS2 demolished XB by a factor of 40:1 over its lifetime. Moreover, XB360 has none of the initial demand that the PS3 does. PS2 didn't need games to sell like mad.

Is that so hard to see? I don't think even the biggest XB fan could have honestly thought 6 months ago that XB360 sales would approach such a high fraction of PS3 sales.
 
Well, it is the brand name that keeps the PS3 afloat. It sells relatively (RELATIVELY) well considering its price and the weak launch line up. Sony needs a system mover...Kind of Final Fantasy, GT...to get really started. Maybe with Virtua Fighter (A bundle would be great !)...
 
Hopefully VF5 will push some good h/w numbers. I am hoping VF5 will sell around 75-100k units, we'll know by next week!
 
I was looking for intelligent theories why the 360 can maintain sales of over 6000 units a week for 3 months straight, well beyond the holiday season

The Xbox 360 have obtained enough mass of good/great games, including a big system seller like Blue Dragon, to maintain 6K weekly sales. Before the release of Blue Dragon most Japanese had serious doubts of its viability/future even as niche console.

I don't think that the current line up prior Lost Odyssey release is good enough to prevent weekly sales slowly going down but in any case I doubt that they will ever go below 2K this year.
 
Hey, 32000 sold the first day isn't anything cataclysmic. ;)

Still sets it up for a solid week, and already guarantees a place on the Top 20 list next Media Create go-around (which was my *own* prediction).

Granted we'll see if it comes with an associated hardware sales boost. Guess we'll know more in six days as to how the first 'big' game for PS3 affected sales.
 
Why is Virtua Fighter pronounced Baacha faitaa in Japanese?

Because there's only 2 W-syllables "Wo" & "Wa" and "Wa" doesn't sound quite right right for the translation. So there's basically two options "Ua" or "Ba" for the english words starting with "W" and following letters sounding like "a" - to the Japanese. The following "rt" can't transcribed that well in J so r turns into a long vowel and tua is contracted to "cha". Making it "Baacha". :p

EDIT: Transcribing names is a very complicated process. You don't wanna see the transcription of my complete name.
 
Because there's only 2 W-syllables "Wo" & "Wa" and "Wa" doesn't sound quite right right for the translation. So there's basically two options "Ua" or "Ba" for the english words starting with "W" and following letters sounding like "a" - to the Japanese. The following "rt" can't transcribed that well in J so r turns into a long vowel and tua is contracted to "cha". Making it "Baacha". :p

EDIT: Transcribing names is a very complicated process. You don't wanna see the transcription of my complete name.

I was thinking along the lines of wi or vi with the modified katakana syllabary the same way for example famitsu is created, but is it so that those modifications are only used with Katakana? and the name of the game is for some reason supposed to be written in hiragana only?
 
I was thinking along the lines of wi or vi with the modified katakana syllabary the same way for example famitsu is created, but is it so that those modifications are only used with Katakana? and the name of the game is for some reason supposed to be written in hiragana only?

There are certain conventions you follow. V sounding words are replaced with the ba because they involve similar actions of closing the front part of the mouth. It is supposed to be written in katakana. Your suggested method would cause it to sound like Bitchaa.
 
I feel bad for sega the VF series is pretty cool I was hoping for a few more sales. I guess the evidence just keeps mounting that if a developer wants to make money on hd games it has to be in the west. Sega must of saw it coming hence the port to the xbox 360 in the west. This really has to be alarming to sony not only is the hardware selling slow the software is selling even slower. I can only hope other devs learn from this and start porting over some of those AAA games to the 360.
 
I feel bad for sega the VF series is pretty cool I was hoping for a few more sales. I guess the evidence just keeps mounting that if a developer wants to make money on hd games it has to be in the west. Sega must of saw it coming hence the port to the xbox 360 in the west. This really has to be alarming to sony not only is the hardware selling slow the software is selling even slower. I can only hope other devs learn from this and start porting over some of those AAA games to the 360.

First day sales are not bad for a franchise that has been selling less and less
 
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First day sales are not bad for a franchise that has been selling less and less


For one of the first exclusive eastern oriented games I would say the sales are very disapointing. It is not like there are all these japan centric games for the PS3. Also this follows the trend of lower than expected sales of every other ps3 and 360 game in japan. I think DoA 4 sold something like 120k copies in japan on the 360.
 
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Wow VF5 only sold 32K copies on first day? That's pretty bad for a platform that has very few games. Looks like PS3 owners in Japan are not buying many games at all even a AAA franchise that normally sells well. I feel bad for SEGA since I'm sure they thought it would sell well.
 
For sales comparisons, we're going to have to wait a couple of more days - it's just day 1 at this point. Once the MediaCreate numbers come out that include it (next week), we'll be able to more readily compare it to Ridge Racer and all other quasi-large PS3 titles' first-week@retail performances.
 
For comparison, VF4 sold 367k in the first week Japan according to vgcharts. I'm guessing the publisher wish they had stayed with the PS2. They would have gotten PS2 owners, and PS3 owners (due to the lack of competition from PS3 games).
 
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