Andy787 said:
So stuff like Castlevania, Advance Wars, Lost in Blue, etc bomb, while Brain Training continues to mop up. :/
Shit, even much more Japanese-centric, traditional games like Naruto 2, Bleach, MMBN, and Fullmetal Alchemist have bombed (as far as I know), and from the looks of it, JSS hasn't performed as Earth-shatteringly as expected either.
I'm actually starting to really like the DS, and it's mainly a bunch of quirky off-beat games that I'm looking forward to on it, but goddamnit, if Brain Training and Nintendogs set the precendent (as much as I actually like Nintendogs) as the only things that sell for the DS, I really don't know if I like the direction it's games will likely be taking.. :/
Not to belabour the point here, but everyone must keep context in mind. Naruto 1 DS is just under 200,000 sold, Naruto 2 DS is just about 75,000 sold. Not bad numbers. The new Naruto game for the PS2 is only at 130,000 after 2 weeks, and it has a vastly superior userbase than the DS.
As Anihawk pointed out, Advance Wars is not a popular series in Japan, and Advance Wars DS will keep pretty much on par with the latest Japanese releases in the series.
Full Metal Alchemist 3: Kami o Tsugu Shoujo (Square-Enix) for the PS2 only sold 46,954 total through July 31/05 (Famitsu). Even going back to 2004, Fullmetal Alchemist: Meisou no Rondo (Bandai) for the GBA sold 135,637, and Fullmetal Alchemist: Akaki Elixir no Akuma (Square-Enix) for the PS2 sold 135,361 through all of 2004. So, anyone expecting big sales for a FMA game on the DS was deluding themselves. The series hasn't put up huge numbers on the PS2 or GBA lately, so it wasn't going to happen on the DS either.
As CVXFreak showed a few posts ago, the DS Castlevania also sold on par with the last three GBA Castlevania titles.
Expecting games to magically begin outselling their GBA or PS2 brethen by huge margins are just not being realistic. These series have all sold poorly in their past few iterations, and the DS has sold on par with their past sales numbers. Expecting something different is just silly.
As for Jump Superstars, I fully expect it to keep selling about 20,000 per week, and it will easily top 500,000 by the end of the year. Probably closer to 600,000 or 700,000 with a good XMas. Believe me, the number of games that will sell that many copies in Japan in 2005 will be a small handful of titles. So - trying to say that Jump Superstars is selling poorly is also not really being realistic.
