Why do we still listen to Famitsuu anyway, they give absolutely everything 9's, Christ
I got thinking a while back about the wildly differing claims about sales of the recent Lunar games, Harmony and Genesis/Dragon Song. We have no reliable means of charting sales in the U.S., but we do have a couple reliable gauges in Japan.
Media Create claims that Harmony sold 17,050 copies in Japan in 2009. The game did not place in the 2010 sales chart, which lists the 1,000 highest-selling games in its year. Given that the lowest-selling title on the 2010 chart racked up about 5,000 units, Harmony ended up with 17,000 to 22,000 units of Japanese sales. For contrast, the less-reliable Famitsuu claims that the much-maligned DS Lunar did 23,673 worth of sales in Japan in its release year, and you might be able to add a few thousand onto that for subsequent years...
Again, though, that's not worth much: we don't know what would constitute a good return for Game Arts, at least for Harmony; the game's competent technically, but they weren't breaking any programming budgets. (I'm sure they were dreaming of far greater profits from Lunar's DS debut.) Furthermore, I, for one, don't really know what constitutes solid sales for a PSP title in Japan. I'm looking in Harmony's sales neighborhood, almost exactly halfway down Media Create's 2009 chart, and while I don't see any title that jumps out at me, it's not stuck in the slums, either; if I had to pick a common thread among its neighbors, I'd choose "low-profile offshoots of popular series" - a sequel to Chocobo Tales, a Prince of Tennis cash-in, a combo pack of Mega Man Legends 1 & 2, etc. (To again compare with the DS title, Genesis wasn't up with the bestsellers either, but it did run with a bit better class of also-ran - Naruto and One Piece games, FFX-2 Ultimate Hits, rereleases of the main Mario Bros., etc.)
And, of course, without the make-or-break of overseas sales, the picture provided of the game's market performance is very vague. But it's hard data in an area of speculation almost entirely bereft of it.
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Media Create claims that Harmony sold 17,050 copies in Japan in 2009. The game did not place in the 2010 sales chart, which lists the 1,000 highest-selling games in its year. Given that the lowest-selling title on the 2010 chart racked up about 5,000 units, Harmony ended up with 17,000 to 22,000 units of Japanese sales. For contrast, the less-reliable Famitsuu claims that the much-maligned DS Lunar did 23,673 worth of sales in Japan in its release year, and you might be able to add a few thousand onto that for subsequent years...
Again, though, that's not worth much: we don't know what would constitute a good return for Game Arts, at least for Harmony; the game's competent technically, but they weren't breaking any programming budgets. (I'm sure they were dreaming of far greater profits from Lunar's DS debut.) Furthermore, I, for one, don't really know what constitutes solid sales for a PSP title in Japan. I'm looking in Harmony's sales neighborhood, almost exactly halfway down Media Create's 2009 chart, and while I don't see any title that jumps out at me, it's not stuck in the slums, either; if I had to pick a common thread among its neighbors, I'd choose "low-profile offshoots of popular series" - a sequel to Chocobo Tales, a Prince of Tennis cash-in, a combo pack of Mega Man Legends 1 & 2, etc. (To again compare with the DS title, Genesis wasn't up with the bestsellers either, but it did run with a bit better class of also-ran - Naruto and One Piece games, FFX-2 Ultimate Hits, rereleases of the main Mario Bros., etc.)
And, of course, without the make-or-break of overseas sales, the picture provided of the game's market performance is very vague. But it's hard data in an area of speculation almost entirely bereft of it.
.