The Monster Hunter series is massive in Japan. Stupidly massive. The Japanese simply cannot seem to get enough of it...or so we thought.
Latest reports from the Land of the Rising Sun appear to indicate that Monster Hunter 3 - which saw release earlier this month - has stalled at retail.
The game sold a staggering one million copies in its first week and 130,000 in the second, but apparently it's already being discounted by some Japanese stores.
For example, Japanese chain Bic Camera has slashed the price from ¥6,600 ($69) to ¥2,980 ($31) as part of a special promotion.
Now selling 130,000 units in a week is not to be sniffed at, but that's a huge drop from a million. Is Japan finally losing interest in hunting monsters?
[source kotaku.com]
Comments (27)
Nah.
It outsold its other console counterpart and was outsold by the handheld version.
its just kotaku trying to sensationalize so they can get ad click-through.
Maybe the game isn't any good. Or maybe there are only 1,130,000 gamers in Japan.
or maybe everyone bought it and now there isn't anyone with a wii who doesn't have it...... its possible
"kotaku trying to sensationalize"
Too true. A poster there did some research, and found that the sales drop-off (in percentage) was almost perfect in line with every other Monster Hunter game. Another poster brought up how MGS4 on PS3 did almost the same thing.
This kind of "slump" is normal and expected, and would still give over half a million units sold if projected over a full four weeks. The only real news is that 1+ million in the first week is ridiculous.
Edit: One last note. Apparently it's only the stand-alone version that is being discounted, and that's because everyone seems to prefer the more expensive bundled versions instead. So seeing the less popular stand-alone copy marked down for a special sale doesn't tell the whole story.
its just kotaku trying to sensationalize so they can get ad click-through.
Nailed it.
A random online retailer (literilly there are thousands of these in Japan) discounting the non-bundle version (presumebly as the CC Pro bundle is a popular way of buying the game) says just that. It doesn't say everywhere is trying to get rid of it as its been infected with an epidemic drop-off of interest.
Nope. Just everyone who wanted it bought it launch week.
Oh wait, so they sold through the remainder of the 1 million copies shipped?
Or are they only up to a total of 650,000 sold?
I am confuse-ed!!!!
It's normal. Spike and drop. That's how hardcore sales curves look. I bet the unnecessary "Wii is doomed!" slant came from Kotaku? Try not to copy that next time please.
from kotaku eh? that explains it
Why does NintendoLife keep taking the bait from every Kotaku post of this sort?
A good idea: if a news item on Kotaku has absolutely anything at all to do with numbers, sales, profits, etc, completely ignore it. If it has something to do with a game announcement or other exclusive information, by all means we'd like to know about it, but their credibility on handling topics like the one in this article is below zero.
I agree that magazines and websites try to sensationalize any sales drops on the Wii. Just any tiny drop could cause others to declare the Wii as doomed.
I agree with KDR_11k, this often does happen to "hardcore" games: sell like crazy for the first week, and then practically forgotten about the next. (although, I think that the word "hardcore" can only be used on gamers and not the games themselves)
Also, I just love how one of the tags in this article is "Drama". Hehehe.
I can't believe Blood of Bahamut is in that bargain bin! That judt came out a week ago, and it's a awesome game!
Let's wait a while and see what happens.
Maybe it's the fact that people do not like to pay to play online.
I don't think it's slowing down, if anything it just cooling down for a bit and will more than likely pick back up.
must be a slow news day to post this
any game that sales 650 k in 2 weeks is doing great and i don't think it will be 0 next week
Kotaku.com....wow....that site is good for news but the bloody people it has....wow bunch of 360 and ps3 fanboys...all i ****ing hear from them is "wii sucks" or they try to be biased against it without it being obvious...
you know what sucks?...magazines and critics and reviewers...im sick of em all. fanboys can go to hell aswell.
I think that they are over-reacting to this "slump" in sales
or maybe, once everyone already has the damn game theres just nobody left to buy it
Kotaku is not to be trusted. In other news, 130,000 a week is still really good for a 3rd party Wii game.
Didn't they say the same about Smash Bros Brawl when that came out? Seems like game journalism (and I use that term VERY losely) has taken a bit of a nose dive of late. Did you notice that they neglected to mention that it has already outsold it's ps2 counter parts to life sales.
@Sean007 - "magazines and critics and reviewers...im sick of em all. fanboys can go to hell aswell." So... er... who's left?
I think the case is that everyone expected MH3 to be a solid through-seller, boosting hardware past nobody's business - look how many PSPs the MHF series has sold! - so that's where the report comes from. Japan's biggest Wii game in a bargain bin only a few weeks after launch is something worth investigating!
"magazines and critics and reviewers...im sick of em all. fanboys can go to hell aswell." So... er... who's left?
The majority.
Not only Kotaku & most other media sites think the Wii is doomed, they WANT the Wii to be doomed.
checks picture in the article
Hmmmm. Is that Gears of War 2 that I'm seeing alongside Monster Hunter 3 in the bargain bin?
@Kirk: Seconded.
Kotaku is a blog. Regardless of the lack of copy editors (my lord, use a spell checker people), they aren't generally held to the same journalistic standard as a place like 1up or maybe even IGN might hold themselves to. They need eye catching headers and boobs to get those clicks.
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