Dragon Ball Video Game Sales Discussion Thread

[Lord Beerus]

It really sold over 300,000 copies in US in just 5 days?

Vgchartz must be way off then right? I know they don't include digital sales but that surely wouldn't make up the difference. The NPD only lists the game as PS3/PS4/X360/XONE so I'm not sure if they're even including the PC/Steam sales into that.

So just between US and Japan that's at least 450,000 copies sold.

I told ya vgchartz isn't accurate, it's no substitution, even when numbers aren't currently available.
Also NPD doesn't track digital sales, Xenoverse is digital only on PC.

VGChartz never get their numbers right. We'll have to wait on BN to get the official word on how Xenoverse did.

[ArchedThunder]

It really sold over 300,000 copies in US in just 5 days?

Vgchartz must be way off then right? I know they don't include digital sales but that surely wouldn't make up the difference. The NPD only lists the game as PS3/PS4/X360/XONE so I'm not sure if they're even including the PC/Steam sales into that.

So just between US and Japan that's at least 450,000 copies sold.

I told ya vgchartz isn't accurate, it's no substitution, even when numbers aren't currently available.
Also NPD doesn't track digital sales, Xenoverse is digital only on PC.

VGChartz never get their numbers right. We'll have to wait on BN to get the official word on how Xenoverse did.

I fully expect them to put out a press release that it passed 1 million with a thank you to all of "Toki Toki City's Time Patrollers!" by the end of the month.

[Bullza]

I told ya vgchartz isn't accurate, it's no substitution, even when numbers aren't currently available. Also NPD doesn't track digital sales, Xenoverse is digital only on PC.

They must track digital sales the article says

"The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D (3DS) (515,000 copies sold digitally and physically)"
"Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate (3DS) (290,000 copies sold digitally and physically)"

And the game is available on PSN to buy as a digital download and I imagine it'd be on Xbox Live as well.

VGchartz are supposed to be within 90% accuracy which they were with the above two games so I don't know why there's such a discrepancy with Xenoverse's sales. Maybe they'll adjust it.

[ArchedThunder]

I told ya vgchartz isn't accurate, it's no substitution, even when numbers aren't currently available. Also NPD doesn't track digital sales, Xenoverse is digital only on PC.

They must track digital sales the article says

"The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D (3DS) (515,000 copies sold digitally and physically)"
"Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate (3DS) (290,000 copies sold digitally and physically)"

And the game is available on PSN to buy as a digital download and I imagine it'd be on Xbox Live as well.

VGchartz are supposed to be within 90% accuracy which they were with the above two games so I don't know why there's such a discrepancy with Xenoverse's sales. Maybe they'll adjust it.

The Digital notes are from Nintendo, not NPD.
And VGchartz is more like 20% accurate, the site is a joke.

[Lord Beerus]

I fully expect them to put out a press release that it passed 1 million with a thank you to all of "Toki Toki City's Time Patrollers!" by the end of the month.

If Xenoverse shift a million units by the end of month, that would be amazing. And given how well it's sold so far, it seems like it's going to do that.

[Bullza]

They had Majora's Mask at selling 501K and Monster Hunter at selling 264K without digital sales so those are pretty accurate.

Usually they'll use official numbers like NPD and Media Create to make them more like the official sales. Maybe when they update the global figures there'll chance things around.

[Psycho50501]

In all honestly I'd rather have 2 years worth of DLC than another DBZ game by a diff developer... Even if it was An BT HD collection... I always liked Dimp's DBZ games much much more...

[Sora Saiyan]

VG Charts was well off with this one! I wonder how well it's done including digital sales. Never thought it would sell as good as this in its first week.

[Lord Beerus]

VG Charts was well off with this one! I wonder how well it's done including digital sales. Never thought it would sell as good as this in its first week.

It sold very well on PSN and more than at least 20,000 people bought the game on PC through steam in the first week. So it's doing very well digitally. But we don't know how well it sold on Xbox Store.

[Bullza]

I was looking at the old NPD data for the Dragon Ball games on PS2 and this is essentially what I found.

Budokai 2 released December 4th sold 650,000 copies by the end of the month.

Budokai 3 released November 16th sold 178,000 copies by the end of the month and 621,000 copies by the end of December.

Tenkaichi released October 18th sold 140,000 copies by the end of the month.

Tenkaichi 2 released November 7th sold 195,000 copies by the end of the month (that includes the Wii sales).

[Lord Beerus]

I was looking at the old NPD data for the Dragon Ball games on PS2 and this is essentially what I found.

Budokai 2 released December 4th sold 650,000 copies by the end of the month.

Budokai 3 released November 16th sold 178,000 copies by the end of the month and 621,000 copies by the end of December.

Tenkaichi released October 18th sold 140,000 copies by the end of the month.

Tenkaichi 2 released November 7th sold 195,000 copies by the end of the month (that includes the Wii sales).

Wow. There's a significant drop from sales by the end of the month from the Budokai series in comparison to the Tenkaichi series. What happened? Was series fatigue starting to settle in by that point?

[Bullza]

It may not have been as big of a drop as those figures make it appear. A game that came out in December when video games sales are at their highest would generally sell more than they would in October but they did drop a lot all the same.

Nevertheless I did find some more information.

Budokai 2 sold 720,000 copies by the end of January.

Tenkaichi (I think) sold 300,000 copies by the end of November.

Tenkaichi 2 sold 292,000 copies by the end of December.

The show did finish between Budokai 3 and Tenkaichi so it's understandable why the sales may have taken a dive after that.

[Lord Beerus]

It may not have been as big of a drop as those figures make it appear. A game that came out in December when video games sales are at their highest would generally sell more than they would in October but they did drop a lot all the same.

Nevertheless I did find some more information.

Budokai 2 sold 720,000 copies by the end of January.

Tenkaichi (I think) sold 300,000 copies by the end of November.

Tenkaichi 2 sold 292,000 copies by the end of December.

The show did finish between Budokai 3 and Tenkaichi so it's understandable why the sales may have taken a dive after that.

Didn't finish airing in the states in 2003? And Budokai 3 was released in 2004 with Tenkaichi 1 released in 2005. And I believe that it was GT that was airing during that period. And I think it may have been it's initial frosty reception from fans that contributed to the decline of sales as some fans may just been burnt out from the series following how bad GT was and may have jumped ship. I mean it was also during that period that Bleach and Naruto skyrocketed in popularity in the US, so some Dragon Ball fans may have ditched the series in favor of moving on to different things.

[Hellspawn28]

I always believe that DBZ video game fatigue started around 2008 or 2009 since we where getting so many games yearly that people got burn out. I do think that the popularity drop of DBZ after 2003 may had an affect on the games as well. You also had Ultimate Uncut in 2005 but that was 11:00 PM on week days and was market to older fans who wanted to see the first part of DBZ uncut with a proper dub.

[Bullza]

Didn't finish airing in the states in 2003?

Dragon Ball Z finished prior to Budokai 2 being released but Dragon Ball GT ran until 2005 so prior to Tenkaichi. The other thing to take into account was that the new consoles were all out by the time Tenkaichi 2 was released and people are more reluctant to buy past gen games.

They still did pretty decently though. To recap

Budokai sold 2.04 million in US Total
Budokai 2 sold 1.5 million in US Total
Budokai 3 sold 1.14 million in US Total
Tenkaichi sold 1 million+ in US and Europe in half a year
Tenkaichi 2 sold 1.18 million Worldwide in half a year
Tenkaichi 3 sold 1.04 million Worldwide in half a year
Burst Limit sold 730,000 Worldwide in half a year

So there was always a gradual decline but all in all it held out pretty well.

[Psycho50501]

So I'm guessing we should be hearing about the next dbz game in may or so since Bandai Namco has an contract for a DBZ game every year...

[Hellspawn28]

There's no proof that are in a contract to do a DBZ game ever year. We didn't get a DBZ game in 2013. It's up to Namco Bandai to do another DBZ game next year or not. Namco Bandai did DBZ games every year because of Budokai 1 in 2002 made a ton of money for them. With DBZ starting to make a come back in Japan during the early 2000's with the kanzenban being release at the time and DBZ still being pretty big in other parts of the world, it made sense for them to do another game. Budokai 2 did well then they made another one in 2004 and so forth.

[Psycho50501]

There's no proof that are in a contract to do a DBZ game ever year. We didn't get a DBZ game in 2013. It's up to Namco Bandai to do another DBZ game next year or not. Namco Bandai did DBZ games every year because of Budokai 1 in 2002 made a ton of money for them. With DBZ starting to make a come back in Japan during the early 2000's with the kanzenban being release at the time and DBZ still being pretty big in other parts of the world, it made sense for them to do another game. Budokai 2 did well then they made another one in 2004 and so forth.

Oh ok my bad I thought someone said the Budokai HD Collection and DBZ for Kinnect came out in 2013... But found out it came out in 2012... Well that is a relief then... I would be fine with no game in 2016 and XV2 in 2017...

[Psycho50501]

I think we might not get anything in 2016 at all. We didn't get anything in 2013 and it will be up to Namco Bandai if they want another game next year.

We got DBZ for Kinect and Budokai HD collection in 2013. I'm pretty sure there is a contract in place that requires Bandai release a console DBZ game every year.

EDIT: NPD results came out, for the month of February Xenoverse was the 7th best selling retail game, the 10th was Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate selling just under 300k and the best seller was Majora's Mask 3D which sold 515K. By those two numbers It's likely Xenoverse sold around 350k physical copies in the US from February 24th to February 28th.

Hd Collection and Z for Kinnect came out in 2012 not 2013.

Z for Kinect : Release Date: September 25, 2012
HD Collection: Release Date: November 6, 2012

So with that there was no Dragon Ball game in 2013.. So it is very possible that we wont see another Dragon Ball game til 2017(XV2)

[Super Sayian Prime]

Battle of Z launched in Japanese fiscal 2013.