Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney Didn’t Do So Great

Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney, Level 5 and Capcom’s crossover tale featuring characters from both series, hasn’t done well, either by Professor Layton standards or Ace Attorney standards.

As we reported earlier in the week, the game sold 128,856 copies in its first week on store shelves in Japan. Sales tracker, Media Create, add that this figure represented a mere 42.22% sell-through.

While the low sell-through figure by itself isn’t bad—games that have a habit of selling over long periods of time often showcase this trend—Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney’s first-week sales numbers were just plain low, even when compared to previous Layton and Ace Attorney games.

Here’s a rundown of how past titles (since 2006) in both series have performed in their respective first weeks, with sell-through figures provided where available in parentheses:

(2007) Professor Layton and the Curious Village – 136,736

(2007) Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box – 293,897

(2008) Professor Layton and the Unwound Future – 347,360 (51.45%)

(2009) Professor Layton and the Last Specter – 306,473 (86.75)

(2011) Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask – 119,591 (35.77%)

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(2006) Ace Attorney: Justice for All – 23,503

(2007) Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations – 56,787

(2007) Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney – 250,186

(2009) Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth – 171,940 (73.45%)

(2011) Ace Attorney Investigations 2 – 132,266

A few things to note:

1. If the sales figures for Ace Attorney: Justice for All and Trials and Tribulations appear incredibly low, it’s because the original Ace Attorney trilogy was released for the Game Boy Advance in Japan, and then later re-released for the Nintendo DS. Note the jump from Trials and Tribulations to Apollo Justice, which was the first original Ace Attorney title on Nintendo DS.

2. 2011’s Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask was a Nintendo 3DS launch game, selling to a very low userbase, which explains the relatively lower opening sales.

3. Even the lowest-selling Ace Attorney game, Ace Attorney Investigations 2, which was a spin-off, sold better than Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney. Incidentally, the lower sales for Investigations 2 were suspected to be due to fewer TV commercials than its predecessor.

Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney will likely continue to sell for a while, but there’s no denying that the game could have seen far better opening sales. As to why it didn’t… we suspect that might be because the game was originally announced way back in 2010, and then went dark for about a year, until just recently before its release.

It’s possible that potential buyers simply lost interest during the downtime and turned their attention elsewhere. After all, there are a lot of other popular games on the market right now… such as this one, for instance.

Sales data provided by Media Create and Geimin.net.