Weekly Japanese Sales Charts - Nintendo Have Five Titles In Top 10 Including Two For Wii U

[sknygy]

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Weekly Japanese Sales Charts - Nintendo Have Five Titles In Top 10 Including Two For Wii U

No new releases on Nintendo platforms this week in Japan but that doesn't mean much as Nintendo still occupy half of the top ten. Level-5's Yo-kai Watch 2 i still holding into the top spot with another 77,000 units to add to it's run. Except Namco Bandai's Dragon Ball Heroes on the 3DS the rest of the titles are Nintendo's own including Mario Kart 8 and Hyrule Warriors for the Wii U. Despite these two strong performances sales of the console have dropped back to...

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[Wanderlei]

Mario Kart has legs, even the old 3DS version is still charting.

 

[Odo]

Do those japanese numbers include digital copies?

 

[Shoulder]

Do those japanese numbers include digital copies?

Sales charts only account for physical sales, so no. I don't exactly know why companies don't release that information is it could also be relevant for developers who might be considering making games for specific platforms.

 

[Odo]

Sales charts only account for physical sales, so no. I don't exactly know why companies don't release that information is it could also be relevant for developers who might be considering making games for specific platforms.

It's a shame. Physical games soon will be a thing of the past.

 

[Shoulder]

It's a shame. Physical games soon will be a thing of the past.

What's interesting about that is I would not be surprised if the 3DS successor forgoes physical media and goes exclusively digital. The system could be smaller as it would only need a micro SD at this point (as the New 3DS has micro sd), and probably not use as much power, so battery life could be increased. The Wii U successor will likely still have physical media, but then again, Nintendo loves to change up the game, so perhaps this is how they can do that.

Nintendo loves to be in control of their own software and hardware, so imagine if they controlled everything on their systems, including prices, release dates, and the works? And similar to regular eShop games, they supply their own release dates, and marketing towards their games, which is increasing becoming more internet-based compared to traditional advertisements.

The only issue would be how Nintendo could market their own hardware to sell to vendors, which is why I think at least for now physical media is here to stay. Once Nintendo figures out a cost-effective and successful way of launching their own software and hardware without a middle man, the sky's the limit for them. Maybe Nintendo plan on expanding their horizons by building more World Stores throughout the US and the rest of the world, ala Apple?

 

[Koenig]

It's a shame. Physical games soon will be a thing of the past.

That is something I am NOT looking forward to.

 

[Odo]

That is something I am NOT looking forward to.

I've been against digital for some time, but I gave up and I'm getting over it. I'm slightly going to the digital world.

What's interesting about that is I would not be surprised if the 3DS successor forgoes physical media and goes exclusively digital. The system could be smaller as it would only need a micro SD at this point (as the New 3DS has micro sd), and probably not use as much power, so battery life could be increased. The Wii U successor will likely still have physical media, but then again, Nintendo loves to change up the game, so perhaps this is how they can do that.

Nintendo loves to be in control of their own software and hardware, so imagine if they controlled everything on their systems, including prices, release dates, and the works? And similar to regular eShop games, they supply their own release dates, and marketing towards their games, which is increasing becoming more internet-based compared to traditional advertisements.

The only issue would be how Nintendo could market their own hardware to sell to vendors, which is why I think at least for now physical media is here to stay. Once Nintendo figures out a cost-effective and successful way of launching their own software and hardware without a middle man, the sky's the limit for them. Maybe Nintendo plan on expanding their horizons by building more World Stores throughout the US and the rest of the world, ala Apple?

I believe next generation Nintendo consoles will be the last ones with physical copies. 3DS/U successor might allow physical copies, but digital will be a bigger market I guess. I think digital came to stay and Nintendo usually is very excited about it and about its digital figures.

 

[Koenig]

Not to turn this in to a physical vs digital thread, but until digital games get ironed out in terms of ownership rights and pricing they will remain a bad deal for the consumer.

 

[Shoulder]

Not to turn this in to a physical vs digital thread, but until digital games get ironed out in terms of ownership rights and pricing they will remain a bad deal for the consumer.

Well, this business of providing licenses has been going on for decades for the digital world, technically speaking. Any video, photo, music, 3D design, etc program out there only provides you with a license to use the software for its intended purposes. You cannot use it for other means other than it was designed to be used for. And like video games, those programs are also interactive, although via different means.

But as far as games are concerned, prices for digital titles need to come down below what physical prices are, and once you buy the game, you own it and can use it for whatever you need. But if that happens for video games, then the same must apply for music, movies, and TV shows. And there's no way in hell that'll happen for music, especially music.

The fact that in terms of music, even though you bought an album and can listen to the music, you can only listen to the music yourself (technically speaking), and not share it with others, or broadcast it over the internet for everyone to listen to. My argument over this though is it's providing exposure for the artist, and thus will more than likely garner more interest. When I see people make videos with someone else's music, in my mind they are using the music because they love the music, and want to share that with everyone. It is also giving that artist exposure, and chances are it'll also create more buzz towards that person. More buzz = more interest = more $$$

My opinion of course.

 

[Odo]

I embraced digital world for music, TV programs and books. I've got a lot of physical books. I love them, but you must keep them clean, they require a lot of space. I don't want it any more. All my books now are on my iPhone. I can read then wherever I am without taking a physical and sometimes heavy book with me.

Music, of course, Spotify and iTunes. I used to have many CDs in the past. Buying a song that I love for $.99 and have it on my iPhone and my smart lists on iTunes or finding new songs and artists out on Spotify is priceless.

For games, well, I used to be absolutely against digital gaming, but I'm changing my mind very fast. New titles I've been getting digital. I've got a 64GB SD on my 3DS and 2TB external drive for my Wii U.

I know that it's got a lot of cons, but "the winter is coming" and all the "walkers" are going to be digital.

 

[Koenig]

@imthesoldier
@Odo

My main complaint against digital distribution is not the concept itself but rather how publishers exploit it to get more money out of the customer.
Physical games can be re-sold, traded, lent, and collected, essentially raising their value to the consumer. Digital games on the other hand of no such benefits other than convenience. More importantly however is how they are distributed:

In most cases, the high prices of a physical game can be justified either by the factors I mentioned before or the amount of money distributed to the middle man as illustrated in the image above. Digital games essentially cut out the vast majority of money spent on the middleman and there prices should reflect that; However this is simply not the case for most publishers, who instead to choose to unethically charge the exact same price for both their physical and digital games.

Any publisher that chooses to sell the digital version of their game for the exact same price as their physical version are blatantly stealing money from the consumer. At least, that is my stance on the matter. I flat out refuse to support such business practices and as such I have yet to buy any "Fully Price" digital game, nor to I ever intend to. It is no surprise either then that I consider the subsequent constant push to a digital only market a disgusting affront to the interests of the consumer. Once again, I am not against the idea of digital games but rather how publishers will undoubtedly charge the same excessive price for digital games in a digital only market as they do now.

 

[Odo]

My main complaint against digital distribution is not the concept itself but rather how publishers exploit it to get more money out of the customer.
Physical games can be re-sold, traded, lent, and collected, essentially raising their value to the consumer. Digital games on the other hand of no such benefits other than convenience.

I agree. This is true, physical games can go back to market and the user can use this to recover money.

Digital is just a matter of convenience.

Digital games essentially cut out the vast majority of money spent on the middleman and there prices should reflect that; However this is simply not the case for most publishers, who instead to choose to unethically charge the exact same price for both their physical and digital games.
(...)
Any publisher that chooses to sell the digital version of their game for the exact same price as their physical version are blatantly stealing money from the consumer.

I see, however that's not how market and economy work. Product price is defined by product value and not by the sum of all product production costs.

There are two shirts: a cheap one and a famous branded one. Both are made in China, so they've got almost the same cost. They may have a difference in costs because the branded one has some quality level (the company demands some quality from China manufacturers) however they've got almost the same production cost. So what does make the famous branded one much more expensive? The value that market sees. The product value is the difference between the cheap's and expensive's profit margin.


The thing is, publishers have understood that digital copies have the same product value as physical copies, so they priced them so. Then it was confirmed by the user adoption: digital market is growing, people are buying it, people want to download everything.

Plus, I think that publishers have some important deals with retail shops, so they can't just stop selling retail copies and move to digital world.

So, price is a matter of marketing and business.

 

[Koenig]

The problem with that is ,as we established, Physical copies do have more inherent value than digital versions. The simple fact is when you buy a digital game you are essentially paying the same price for less value. That to me, is fundamentally bad business. This is why I have a lot more respect for digital markets like Steam and GoG than I do for most others; since they frequently offer a large number of their games at a massively discounted price.

On a hypothetical note: If a publisher chose to sell all their digital games for 25% less than a physical copy, I would still probably pay the extra 25% and take the former of the to. This is why I despise the idea of a digital only market as it removes the power of choice from a consumers perspective and eliminate even hypothetical situations like the one I mentioned.

There have already been situations where I was left with no choice but to buy a digital copy because the publisher chose not to make physical variant. (In this case I am talking about Ace Attorney 5) I own all other Ace Attorney games, and I payed full price for each of them. I felt good about buying them, confident that my money was well spent and that these games were now part of collection. However with the newest game in the series I did not have the option to buy a physical copy, instead I had to buy a digital version. To put it simply, I did not feel good about this purchase, nor do I even now. The option had been taken away from me and I was left with something inferior. To me, it feels like my collection will never be complete because of this, and I resent the publisher greatly for.

 

[Odo]

I understand how you feel, but you're going to have to get over it The value you see, and a lot of people see as well, publishers (include Nintendo) don't. They want to deliver a new understanding of value for digital content.

I think it's going to be the standard in a few years. The new Dragon Quest X for 3DS in Japan was also only digital. The physical release included a code for download the digital copy. I know that DQX is MMO, but Wii U version had a disc.

 

[Koenig]

Which I guess leads to another thing that I has been on my mind.

Hopefully the legal system catches up to the digital market soon. As is the digital market has grown exponentially faster than law makers can keep up with. I don't want to see the digital market "restricted" per-say, however I do want to see some systems put in place to make sure that publishers don't exploit the system. If given the chance there will always be at least one greed filled company that will abuse any loophole they can find.