Disney Magic World Sells Half A Million Units In Japan

The only other company I can think of that has this many beloved and enduring characters, or at least comes close, is Nintendo.

Edit: Yup, I know there are a few others too, as covered below by other posters, but there's no doubt these are two of the main/big ones and especially relative to their chosen fields.

@SavantSupreme
Maybe kirk should've implied interesting or family focused characters (sorry, Savant, you kinda lost credibility with me once you brought in Hanna-Barbera).

True Hannah-Barbera sorta resonates with kids what with cereal ads and all, but their mostly based or more adult centric live-action shows like Honeymooners.

@SavantSupreme
Edit: Well if Disney owns Marvel and Warner Bros owns DC, as the guy below mentioned, then it still probably comes down to Disney, Warner Bros and Nintendo as the big 3.

I mean obviously Nintendo doesn't come close to those guys in terms of the sheer number of characters they have to choose from, considering those companies span far wider than just video game characters, but after those two multi-media entertainment giants I can't really think of many other companies with so many characters that are as popular and beloved as Nintendo.

Will this game hit Europe?

Disney own Marvel and WB own DC - WB kinda gets close, but with the huge amount of stuff Disney own (Star Wars, Winnie the Pooh and all their own stuff), I don't think anyone else really gets that close with possibly 1000 characters that sell like hot cakes.

@MadAdam81
So, we probably have Disney, Warner Bros and then Nintendo...?

@Kirk Don't forget Fox, but I don't know what they own and what they just publish.

@MadAdam81 Yeah Disney do own Marvel now. But I still don't get why Warner Bros. published Lego Marvel instead of Disney.

Glad to see my boy Alladin in here, but I'll pass on this game.

@SavantSupreme: To be fair, a lot of those companies haven't done much with their characters in almost a decade. Outside of literature and theme parks anyways.

On topic, my daughter saw the picture and squealed with delight - my 4 year old son will want it too - hopefully it will allow at least 3 different save files, preferably 4 as my wife will also want to play and when my youngest son gets older he will want to play it & if I want to have a go no-one will let me play theirs.

@MadAdam81
I can't think of any characters that immediately spring to mind when I think of Fox, although to be fair I don't really know what characters they own...

Simpsons spring to mind

Most Fox animations come from Seth Macfarlane who's material I'm not a personal fan of.

To bring us a bit back on topic, I'm surprised Disney has yet to have characters like Spider-Man, Yoda, and Mickey mingle in one universe.

@SavantSupreme

Well, in terms of DC and Marvel, it's basically just a list of comic book super heroes/villains. There's just a lot of them because there's literally hundreds-thousands of different comic books these days obviously.

A Mario platform game is nothing like a Pokemon game, for example (not in terms of gameplay, characters, plot or whatever), and the Brawl fighting games are nothing like the Star Fox flying/shooting games, as another example. Professor Layton is nothing like Wave Race, in any way, shape or form...but pretty much all of DC's or Marvel's stuff is about some superheroes fighting some villains. So, the numbers of "beloved" characters is really just a list of DC or Marvel characters in general, if that's how you're looking at it (as in raw numbers).

It's like the X-Men has hundreds of characters alone but that's like saying there's also hundreds of unique characters in the Mario universe too, if you want to get like that about it.

Then there's Pokemon that has over 700 unique monsters and that's not counting all the trainers or other recurring NPC characters...

If you want to get like that about it then Nintendo probably wins actually because it literally has hundreds of different and recurring characters in each of it's franchises/universes. I mean there's even around 30 unique and well defined "main" characters in a racing game like F-Zero for example, with back stories and everything.

Although, doing a quick Wiki search it says there are 7,000+ characters in Marvel's library and growing, and the numbers are similar with DC too, so who knows

But how many of all those characters are truly "beloved" (that have genuine "pulling power" and can and do sell movies, games, cartoons, toys etc, in their multi-millions and are generally recognizable around the world) as I was getting at in my original post...?

Without knowing when it was released its hard to know what to make of these numbers.

@Emblem

It was released last August, so you can say it took about half a year to reach these numbers.

@Kirk Yeah no. Marvel has more memorable characters then Disney then DC.

This game is looking more and more appealing by the day. My Mii is TOTALLY getting that Minnie costume.

Half a million in half a year certainly isn't as impressive as the numbers usually seen for big titles like MH and Pokemon but it's still a good haul. I can see this doing bigger business in the West given the power of the Disney brand here and I've already seen more non-Nintendo centric websites reporting the initial announcement than I thought I would.

Should be more fun than the Kinect version...uh that thing was ridiculously awful, good thing I didn't have to pay for it haha!

@SavantSupreme

Ok...Let me put it slightly differently...

1. Disney is the leader in it's field, feature films (that's what it's universally most famous/known for), in terms of having more truly beloved and enduring characters than any other animation company.

2. Nintendo is the leader in it's filed, video games, in terms of having more truly beloved and enduring characters than any other video game company.

When you think of companies with a really strong library of beloved and enduring characters to count on, that most of it's current entertainment properties and ventures still take advantage of and will do for years to come, you immediately think of Disney and Nintendo as two of the very top examples in the world.

That's kinda what I was really getting at in my original post.

Sure, there's other companies with massive libraries of hugely popular characters too; DC, Marvel, Hanna-Barbera etc...

Marvel is however owned by Disney, so that still fits into point 1. and Warner Bros would be up there too, especially now that it owns DC, but you don't think of Warner Bros in the same way as it's more well known as one of the major movie studios and not really as a company that's all about it's beloved and enduring characters, even though it most certainly has them in abundance and especially with DC now under it's belt. Hanna-Barbera has a few enduring characters that are still popular in the mainstream for sure but not like Disney or Nintendo imo and it doesn't even pop up on most people's radars these days, in terms of it's name immediately coming to mind when you think of the most popular, beloved and enduring characters, so it's really not the same thing. Same goes for Fox, who I don't even know any "characters" you really associate with it as a brand other than maybe Aliens, if that's even a Fox owned brand (something tells me it probably is though based on the logo always popping up at the start of any Aliens games as I recall).

So, I still go back to Disney and Nintendo for the main point about having these almost untouchable collections of beloved and enduring characters, all things being relative.

Does that make sense to you now in terms of what I'm saying?

I will get this game and die from kawaii overdose.

Off topic: Now that you mention Kingdom Hearts, I'd really like to see a Nintendo RPG.

Edit: Nvm, nobody mentioned KH..

@Player4 dont worry. Nintendo will got Kingdom Hearts again... Only on 3ds.
I've finished the kh 3d, now I just need kh 3 on ps4

Can't wait for this game to hit the States. My two favorite things, Disney and Nintendo!

@divinelite Yeah. Lol. Can't wait for KH 3! My most anticipated game for the PS4

@brandonbwii Mate, Bob's Burgers is great! Not McFarlance, but still Fox.

Nintendo + Disney = My Childhood

This will be a blast, hopefully.

Can't wait for this! Ive had my eyes on this and Fantasy Life a longtime. We get Disney Now Level 5 it's your turn. April seems so far off.

I really can't wait for this. Oh my gosh.