No More Heroes - Another Wii Flop?

Regular readers of NintendoLife would be forgiven for thinking that we’ve been getting out of the wrong side of the bed for the past week or so. The number of downbeat and negative news stories appearing is on the rise and sadly we’re about to add yet another.

Although we’re a bit on the late side with this news it appears that Grasshopper Manufacture’s (Killer 7) highly anticipated No More Heroes has flopped badly in Japan. According to reports the launch event, which took place in December, was a complete and utter failure and it took more than twenty minutes for anyone to purchase a copy of the game (and even then it was a videogame journalist). First day sales figures in Japan are thought to have been around 10,000. Not exactly the mega hit many people were predicting it would be, then.

After the similarly disappointing retail performance of Capcom’s Zack and Wiki, this comes as thoroughly depressing news as No More Heroes has received generally positive reviews from those who purchased the game on Japanese import. It also supports Jon Hare’s recent theory that third party publishers are losing out when it comes to supporting the Wii, with Nintendo’s titles being the only games that consumers seem even slightly interested in.

No More Heroes is due for release in the US on 22nd January (via Ubisoft) and in Europe on 29th February (thanks to Rising Star Games).