DmC Devil May Cry May Have Failed To Attract Casual Fans In Japan

DmC Devil May Cry was released in Japan last week and sold 110,429 copies on the PlayStation 3. The Xbox 360 version of the game wasn’t featured in the top-20 sales ranking, but sales tracker, Media Create, report that it sold approximately 6,000 copies.

Media Create add that the PlayStation 3 version of the game sold through 61.82% of its shipment while the Xbox 360 version sold through 60.10%.

Launch sales of the game are significantly lower than those of Devil May Cry 4, which was released in 2008 in Japan. That game sold 205,390 copies on the PS3 at launch, and an additional 40,023 copies on the Xbox 360.

Media Create surmise that a number of fans were estranged as the character design and game are different from those of previous Devil May Cry games. However, it wasn’t core series fans that sat DmC out—instead, Media Create theorize that the game failed to attract the more casual fans.

What leads them to this theory is that release week pre-order sales for the PlayStation 3 version of DmC Devil May Cry and Devil May Cry 4 were about the same. They suspect that core Devil May Cry fans opted to pick the game up while casual fans didn’t.

It’s an interesting theory because the goal of DmC Devil May Cry appears to have been exactly the opposite—to attract more fans to the franchise than the previous game did. Of course, Japan is a small part of the game’s market, but Eurogamer report that even in the U.K., DmC Devil May Cry’s sales were about one-third of DMC4’s at launch.

Without hard worldwide figures or an official statement from Capcom, it’s hard to put together an accurate picture of whether or not they consider DmC Devil May Cry a success, since factors like differences in the development budget, manpower, marketing expenses and long-term sales all play a role in defining success. That said, what we do know is that the game isn’t doing as well as its predecessor in at least two territories.