This Week In Sales: Square Enix’s New IP Fails To Take Off

Period: The week of June 10th – June 16th (2013)

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Top-seller: Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D – 104,569

Nintendo 3DS sales: 17,602 | Total sales: 8,354,627

Nintendo 3DS XL sales: 29,533 | Total sales: 3266521

PlayStation Vita sales: 10,664 | Total sales: 1,626,398

Wii U sales: 5,983 | Total sales: 947,899

<< Last week’s software sales chart

 

Square Enix have been attempting to turn their transforming car franchise, Gyrozetter, into an established multimedia brand, but things may not be going according to plan.

 

Last December, former Square Enix president Yoichi Wada explained that the Gyrozetter arcade game wasn’t doing as well as the company would have liked, and explained why he felt this was the case. Now, half a year later, it looks the Gyrozetter RPG on Nintendo 3DS might not have much more luck than the arcade game did either.

 

Gyrozetter: Wings of the Albatross was released in Japan last week, and sold a mere 18,000 copies in its first week. Ouch. Not quite the start you’d expect from a game that already has an arcade game, an anime tie-in, and merchandising behind it.

 

Back in December, Wada said that he felt it was a mistake to release the Gyrozetter arcade game before the anime began to air, and that doing so robbed Square Enix of the opportunity to properly explain the appeal of the game. Perhaps Gyrozetter just got off to a bad start from the get-go, and it’s proving harder to undo the damage at this point.

 

Or perhaps there just aren’t enough features in the 3DS game to make it a must-buy for the school boys’ market. After all, between publishers like Level 5, Nintendo, Namco and Capcom all competing for a piece of that audience, competition is now tougher than ever.

 

The top-20 chart for the week was as follows:

 

Lw Tw Title Weekly Sales Total Sales Sys. Publisher
New 01. Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D 104,569 New 3DS Nintendo
01. 02. Tomodachi Collection: New Life 42,372 1,133,246 3DS Nintendo
New 03. Gyrozetter: Wings of the Albatross 17,925 New 3DS Square Enix
03. 04. Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon 14,949 781,660 3DS Nintendo
05. 05. Animal Crossing: New Leaf 14,693 3,278,356 3DS Nintendo
04. 06. Resident Evil: Revelations 9,759 160,120 PS3 Capcom
06. 07. Shin Megami Tensei IV 9,034 241,670 3DS Atlus
07. 08. Terraria 6,608 42,549 PS3 Spike Chunsoft
02. 09. Kamen Rider: Battride War 6,152 172,946 PS3 Namco Bandai
09. 10. Dragon Ball Heroes: Ultimate Mission 4,707 208,316 3DS Namco Bandai
10. 11. Taiko no Tatsujin: Super Splendid Edition 4,634 497,427 Wii Namco Bandai
13. 12. New Super Mario Bros. 2 3,595 2,043,072 3DS Nintendo
12. 13. Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate 3,485 319,972 3DS Capcom
15. 14. Mario Kart 7 3,392 2,064,091 3DS Nintendo
08. 15. Valhalla Knights 3 3,375 60,570 PSV Marvelous AQL
17. 16. Run for Money Tousouchuu 2,568 496,786 3DS Namco Bandai
23. 17. Gods Eater Burst (PSP the Best Reprint Edition) 2,463 4,376 PSP Namco Bandai
21. 18. Pokémon Black/White 2 2,453 3,014,537 DS Pokémon Co.
19. 19. Taiko Drum Master: The Little Dragon and the Mysterious Orb 2,391 495,981 3DS Namco Bandai
20. 20. New Super Mario Bros. U 2,224 521,251 WiiU Nintendo

 

Sales data acquired from 4Gamer, Media Create and Geimin.net.

 

Ishaan Sahdev
About The Author
Ishaan specializes in game design/sales analysis. He's the former managing editor of Siliconera and wrote the book "The Legend of Zelda - A Complete Development History". He also used to moonlight as a professional manga editor. These days, his day job has nothing to do with games, but the two inform each other nonetheless.

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