Yes, Inazuma Eleven Go Might Have Missed A Goal

Yesterday, we posted a sales graph showing a comparison of all the Inazuma Eleven RPGs released in Japan to date, pointing out that Inazuma Eleven Go, recently released on the Nintendo 3DS, appears to be lagging behind the previous games in terms of sales. Here’s the graph again, for reference:

While Go’s numbers are indeed low compared to its predecessors, what we didn’t know was how Level 5 expected the game to perform, or how many copies of it they shipped to stores. Today, we have a little more information on this front.

ASCII Media Works have pitched in with their own weekly software sales report at Dengeki Online, and their numbers indicate that Inazuma Eleven Go sold 141,019 copies. They add that this is about 35% of the total number of copies Level 5 sent out. So yes, that would indicate Inazuma Eleven Go isn’t exactly flying off shelves, relative to Level 5’s expectations.

Food for thought:

1. For the curious, the Shine version was ahead of the Dark version. Shine sold 79,262 copies, while Dark sold 61,757 copies. That’s a win for the Endou/Natsumi pairing, as in Dark, Endou is married to Fuyuka.

2. You really think Level 5 would have learnt their lesson after releasing Ni no Kuni (DS) so close to Monster Hunter Portable 3rd in 2010, which was cited as one of the reasons the game didn’t hit the ground running. Inazuma Eleven Go was released five days after Monster Hunter 3G, and seems to be suffering the same fate.