A few weeks after the Square Enix RPG Dragon Quest IX drove Nintendo DSi sales through the roof in Japan, another third-party game, Capcom's Monster Hunter 3, helped quadruple weekly Wii sales, tracking firm Media Create said Friday.
Japanese sales of the Wii for the week ended August 2 were 95,357, up from about 24,000 units the week prior. Capcom's Monster Hunter franchise is hugely popular in Japan, and previously appeared on PlayStation 2 and PSP. Monster Hunter 3 is the first time the franchise has come to a Nintendo console, and Nintendo appears to be reaping the benefits.
Capcom's website says the Monster Hunter franchise has sold 9.5 million units in total. Monster Hunter 3sold over 520,000 units in just two days.
DSi sales dropped week-on-week to 73,710 from 80,362. While weekly DSi sales continue to recede in recent weeks, they're still 57 percent higher than they were compared to the week just prior to Dragon Quest IX's release. Including sales of the DS Lite, total DS sales were 85,737.
With the Wii rising to the top of the hardware charts, Sony's PSP dropped to third place for the week with 33,049. PS3, PS2, and Xbox 360 rounded out the charts. The full Japanese game hardware charts for the week ended August 2 are as follows:
So they sold around 600k copies of monster hunter but, because the Wii is at such a saturation point, they only generated 95k new Wii hardware sales :)
Using "95k" and "only" in the same sentence is just wrong. The system has been selling between 18-22k for a few months now - 95k is actually really, really good.
Actually the point I was trying to make was that pre-recession, these game and hardware figures would have been seen as the under performing sales figures that they really are. Only shifting 95k consoles on the back of a monster hunter game would have been laughed at. Now it's seen as a major triumph dispite the fact that they have yet to sell enough to even break even!
If that game had been on PS3 instead, the game would be so much better. That would have made real MH fans go out and buy a PS3 for MH3. The PS3 sales would be more han 95k if it had MH3 right now.
You've gotta laugh haven't you ;)