With the Summer well underway — and with the UK currently enduring a heat wave — it's been a quieter week of game sales in the country, with a drop of 14% in revenue for game sales last week. Nintendo has bucked the trend however, with Mario Kart 8 and discounted DS games enjoying terrific weeks in the charts.
To start with the Wii U exclusive, its sales jumped by 31%, perhaps helped by another flash sale from GAME; it moved up six places to secure 10th place in the all-format results, which converts to a pleasing 3rd place (up three spots) in the single format chart.
Tomodachi Life on 3DS has seen an all-format drop in the latest results, down from 9th to 14th, though it actually retains 5th spot in the single format stakes, continuing its solid momentum. Pokémon X sneaks into 37th place (all formats), though Y misses out.
The biggest Pokémon success stories are actually Pokémon Black and White on DS. Courtesy of discount deals and impulse buys both versions enjoyed sales jumps of over 100%; Black won the battle over White in securing 21st place in the all-format charts, though White is in 22nd. If single format results are your preference the results are even more impressive, with Pokémon Black in 14th and White in 19th.
A good week for Nintendo in the UK, then, which also demonstrates the impact that good deals can have on popular brands; Pokémon never fails to amaze in its sales power.
[source chart-track.co.uk]
Comments 50
@BLPs Not really, some retailers have been offering it for around a tenner, so it would of outsold XY regardless of whether it was better or worse. Why pay £30 for a brand new game when you can pay just a 3rd for the previous one that's only a couple years old?
@BLPs nooooooo way!
I had to actually tell GAME how the charizard promotion worked. My local GAME store doesn't have Nintendo Zone so when I told them they give out a code they didn't even know.
See I'm guessing these Mario Kart 8 sales aren't really moving more consoles and are just people buying more copies to get more free games and selling MK8 to CEX for £29 will be interesting to see what sales are like after the promotion has ended.
Mario Kart 8 is doing good so far. It's got a long life ahead of it. Now all they need to do is put DLC! (That Benz does not count. Lol)
@Jazzer94 Yeah... if you could do that it would be great... but you cant. Nice troll....
@ben- You can do it. Loads have people have been doing it. You just have to create a new Club Nintendo account to register another MK8, and if you have gmail you can even use the same email address for them all, just place a period in different spots.
Pokemon Black and White were £7.99 at Argos, so picked up a copy of them both myself this week They've been doing loads of great clearance deals for Nintendo stuff lately. Also got Layton and the Spectre's Call for £6.99 and Pilot Wings Resort for £4.99.
@BLPs I agree, except that spirtes are better than graphics in 6th generation pokemon IMO.
@MeWario Yesssss way!
@Superstick Well, let it sit for itself for a bit longer. Well timed late DLC can give a game a good boost and second wind, to bring it back up and make it profitable for a longer time span.
When it comes to this, i fondly look back at Resident Evil 5 (if you like dthe game itself is not relevant). The game was out for quite a while and was slowly fading into oblivion and then poof new DLC chapters, and the game was interesting again for a little while longer
The more you oversaturate people, the longer the gap will be that they dont want to play the game again. If you let them drown it out, give them a little pause and then release interesting, content rich DLC, you can hook them right back in. Its all about the timing. Blowing out every bit of DLC on day one for instance, has quite the opposite effect
@Einherjar The way people do that though is release games with nowhere near enough content or challenge (NSMBU even with the DLC never really got any contentment) vs a complete game (3D World - Finished it no desire to play any more which is what I want).
@unrandomsam To be honest, NSMBU had more than enough content for what it was. And to be fair, its "DLC" was more or less a standalone game really.
But why do you want a game that ends and gives you no desire to play it again ? For me, a good game is a game, i want to play over and over again. With pauses in between of cause, but a game that i finish and dont feel the need to do it again sometime later is a really bad game in my book.
But you are certainly right in that many games these days get purposly released with less content than planned, just to sell it as extra DLC. But i wasnt talking about that in particular.
What i meant was more in the lines of good old expansion packs. Have a finished and content rich game, let people finish it and observe their reactions to find out what could enhance this game even more and then, sometime later, release said things as DLC / expansions.
Say, for instance, MK8s battle mode. People hate it, i really dont care, but releasing a pack of classic battle stages would give this game a huge boost in online replayability.
It wouldnt be something that was cut on purpose (As they planned from the beginning to try something new) and people seem to prefer the older maps.
DLC, if done right, can greatly enhance a games longlivety. But for it to work, you need to listen to fans.
@BLPs Gen V is by far the worst. Almost every new Pokemon was awful and they shoved them down your throat by not allowing you to catch old pokemon until you beat the Elite 4. Not to mention the Unova region is just completely uninspiring, and it lacks anything to really set it apart from the other Pokemon games on DS. It is by far the least memorable Pokemon generation. At least Gen VI added some cool or useful things like Mega Evolution and Fairy types.
@bizcuthammer
It had nice music...
@ZenTurtle - dat bike theme..
It appears that the greatness of Mario Kart 8 is grasping the attention of UK gamers. Please diminish my belief that gamers there are mostly FIFA and FPS dude-bros.
@Peach64 Did you get a WiiU yet? I told you to buy one weeks ago! J/K
@Superstick baby baby park PLEASE
@BLPs well sure it is for now. Once Batman Arkham Knights releases though....
I'm sure theres absolutely no way to find out, but I wonder how many of those DS Pokemon games are actually being played on a DS? I still dont see too many reasons to get a PS4 yet and I could understand people not upgrading from Wii to Wii U for any number of reasons, but if you're into handheld games at all the 3DS has a very complete library at this point. BC is a very good thing.
I do prefer gen V to gen VI. Less grinding thanks to Audino and the battle experience distribution and in the first game it was fresher to just see new Pokémon and the regional Dex can be completed.
@tom this is a nice "picture"
Like the picture Tom! Excellent news too on MK8's increase. I suspect the GAME offers have led to this as suggested in the article.
@ben- Research before you call someone a troll, you can do it buy the game make a new CN account register the game code sell the game at CEX for £29 maybe you should learn to be more polite next time.
@Peach64 You personify intelligence. Well done for telling Nintendo how you go about getting extra games from their promotion and then sell the extra copies of MK8 to CEX or some other shop.....WINNING...NOT....lol.
@Superstick DLC? Only if free. Nintendo's paid dlcs are a rip off (Fire Emblem: Awakening and New Super Mario Bros. 2 come to mind).
@Einherjar
Very good points.
@Peach64 ...Great job. I hope you don't mind when Nintendo deletes all your Club Nintendo games when they find out about your scheme. Way to cheat the system.
Wow, so most of these Mario kart 8 sales are scams?
I'm glad, because it would really make me mad to learn that Nintendo has a legitimate sales success on the Wii U...
@DarkCoolEdge The Fire Emblem Awakening DLC isn't a ripoff, I'd say it's the best DLC any game has had outside of music games (Rock Band, Guitar Hero, Rocksmith, Theatrhythm, etc). Sure, most of the packs require your team to be very high levelled but if you want to get the most out of the main game your team will be levelled up enough.
@BLPs
Not really, gen 5 bored the crap out of me. Gen 6 also wasn't great, but it does make training and breeding pokemon easier.
hmmm I didn't realise it might be possible to create different CN accounts on the one console. It's only interesting from an academic standpoint because scamming is wrong and I would never do that. None of us should, now let us never speak of this again lest Nintendo catch wind of this and close the loophole in their next system update. Good day.
@Action51
Of course it is a scam, it is not like Mario Kart games are million sellers anyway. Oh wait....
only sad acts with no perspective in life would try and scam nintendo x
Better sales won't make MK8 a better, balanced game. Nintendo probably won't fix the item balancing through a DLC or something. They're too cocky for that. After playing it for weeks I realized they missed a perfect opportunity to make the ultimate kart racing game... it's so chaotic and frustrating.
Mario Kart is a beast... fantastic game.
Great news
@brewsky There's really no need for you to 'white knight' for Nintendo, lol. They won't thank you for it, or even care.
I already had physical copies of all the games on offer in the promotion asides from Wii U Party which I'm really not bothered about, so I let my young 9 year old nephew (who also has a Wii U and Mario Kart 8) pick a game he wanted and donated my free code to him.
Do you think that Nintendo should delete all of his downloads just because technically we 'cheated' the system and he got more than one free download game for his console? Grow up.
I'm pretty sure Nintendo already realised the implications of this promotion when they launched it, otherwise they would've had some kind of system in place to associate each specific download code only with the Club Nintendo account that registered each specific copy of Mario Kart 8.
@ToxieDogg Get your facts straight before you try to correct me. You messed with the wrong person.
I am by no means a "White Knight" for Nintendo. I'm not going to email Nintendo saying "This person did X and Y, delete his account". That's asinine.
You did not technically cheat the system, it states clearly in the terms that you can put your free download code on ANY Wii U. You wanted to donate your code, that's fine by Nintendo.
I know Nintendo realized the implications of this promotion, but that doesn't deter from the fact that Nintendo will and has deleted accounts and reward games due to people breaking their rules.
@Jazzer94
Oh aye, once you filter out people who don't know you can do that, people who won't do it because it contravenes Nintendos T&C's and people who can't be bothered to do itto get a snide download copy of some tat like Mario + Sonic at the Olympics or Game and Wario, that's bound to be the explanation. Far more obvious than, you know, it being a really good game that's selling well.....
@electrolite77 I didn't do it myself but I think you are greatly underestimating the number of people who did and there are companies who brought in bulk and are selling codes on ebay.
http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/mario-kart-8-wii-u-29-99-today-only-game-1945480
http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/mario-kart-8-game-promotion-codes-choose-from-10-digital-games-11-95-cheapest-ebay-1958035
The game is great no one is arguing that and is able to sell on its on merits just fine but its position in the charts is definitely being effected by this scheme no need to get so defensive about it.
Edit: Also notice how many copies are available on CEX's website an absurd amount for a 2 month old game.
https://uk.webuy.com/product.php?sku=045496333164#.U81ksfldW1U
People are still buying pokemon black?Wow.
Yes, those are some pretty costly DLC's... I'd like to have free DLC, but I don't think Nintendo is really going to make all of it free. They got it right with Pikmin 3 though so I'm only hoping Mario Kart 8's DLC isn't too expensive.
@DarkCoolEdge facepalm My last message was supposed to be directed at you but it forget to include your name. Lol. Anyways, I don't think Nintendo would make it too expensive. They got it right with Pikmin 3 and I'm sure they'll get it right again. And about Fire Emblem Awakening, the DLC (at least where I live) is about the same price as a new 3DS game. Yes, it's costly if you plan on buying them all, but for only about 1 or 2 packs, they don't really look as expensive anymore.
@shigulicious I certainly did Picked up a White system, white pro controller, New Super Luigi U, Wonderful 101 and Mario Kart 8.
@brewksy First of all, I haven't done this myself, as I have physical copies of the games that interest me, I'm just letting the guy up there know it's possible, and a whole lot of people are doing it. There's no breaking of any rules. All these games are being bought legitimately, it's just fortunate that a couple of websites are selling the game cheap and another store is paying a high price to take it off you without the Club Nintendo card inside.
Hooray for Black and White!!! Despite the hate Black & White got from so many people, I LOVED THOSE versions SO MUCH!!!! In terms of story, it was WAY BETTER than Pokemon X & Y. I wish I had time to play them all over again. There were so so so GOOD!!!
Thomas. is that picture at the top your Mii in MK8? do you go by Ant? if so, you are the reason I haven't played MK8 in 4 weeks. here is a link to our race together. I thought you hacked the game!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFbfWHEOPJc
There are rumors of people having games revoked by Mario Kart abuse (one person with 5 games had 2 taken away, seems a bit wrong to me and not a way to get good PR). I also hear someone who recieved a phone call regarding it (but I guess this can only happen if you have such details in your CN account). Technically they could ban your Club Nintendo account though (in terms and conditions about one person can only have one account).
A thing to really take note of if Pokmon Gen 5 went from out of the charts to high (Individual formats) by just doubling sales then sales must be pretty low. We are likely back to numver 1`is 10,000 units where we were a few months ago.
@Jazzer94 Look at how many copies of Watch Dogs CeX has. Now thats what I call a lot. Though to be fair Watch dogs is Ubisoft so will be £20 in about 6 months. At the same time it is important that Mairo Kart is unusually high numbers when compared to anything else on the Wii U (on the PS4 other games like killzone also have 1000s).
@sinalefa Gen VI needed grinding? EXP share meant I was getting too much EXP and had to rotate a team of about 30 to keep my levels getting high. If you mean postgame stuff then there are trainers with Audino in Battle Cheteau (and black writ makes them 20 levels higher which can give a max of about 33k EXP a kill). I did like Gen V for trying different things like the dark patches of grass and the general set up of giving you an optional area around most Gyms (which tended to have types that would help).
@Peach64
Cex pay £17 cash for a copy of Mario Kart 8. Anyone attempting to pull off this 'scam' now is in for a shock.
@Peach64 Seems a really stupid way to get games.. The original games on disk would cost a lot less and dont involve all the inconvenience. I mean say you want 3 games. At most you would be paying out £70 for all the originals. The loss you would make on 3 copies of Mk would be around £30, but here's the kicker you would have nothing physical to show for that money. What's more Nintendo got all your money and just gave you a piece of paper with a download code that has no future value. Only really economic morons would do what you are suggesting.
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