This Week In Sales: Tales of Berseria Sets Sail In Japan

Period: The week of August 15th – August 21st (2016)

Top-seller: Tales of Berseria – 173,537 (PS4)

Nintendo 3DS sales: 835

Nintendo 3DS LL sales: 135

New Nintendo 3DS sales: 5,400

New Nintendo 3DS LL sales: 23,437

PlayStation Vita sales: 10,027

Wii U sales: 4,702

PlayStation 4 sales: 17,596

PlayStation 3 sales: 1,192

Xbox One sales: 52

<< Last week’s software sales chart

<< How to read and understand sales

Last week, Japan had a major release with Tales of Berseria on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3. Check out how it performed in the latest of Media Create’s weekly sales data for software and hardware that sold in the week of August 15 through August 21, 2016.

It comes as no surprise to see Tales of Berseria take the #1 and #2 spots with 173,537 copies sold in its debut for PS4 and 76,186 for PS3 for a combined total of 249,723 units between the two versions.

Here’s a look at how it stacks against other Mothership Tales games:

• (2009) Tales of Vesperia – 216,593
• (2010) Tales of Graces f – 215,187
• (2011) Tales of Xillia – 525,605
• (2012) Tales of Xillia 2 – 364,439
• (2015) Tales of Zestiria – 340,891

It’s pretty apparent that Tales of Berseria’s 249,723 copies is a significant drop for first-week sales, the lowest we’ve seen it since 2010’s Tales of graces f (which isn’t technically a “Mothership” title, but it was major enough so we’ll let it slide.) However, let’s not forget that it’s not all about the big numbers, as there are several ways to look at it.

First-week sales numbers are always important, but when it comes to RPGs in Japan, the following weeks are just as important. Reason being is because when someone plays an RPG they enjoyed a lot, they’ll certainly share the positive word-of-mouth with others for the next few weeks. Think of it like a good movie, or even a good TV show. A TV show would probably be a better example, as a movie is done and over with in a couple hours, while a season of a TV show could take anyone a whole day or several weeks—like an RPG. The first example that comes to mind would be Stranger Things, the recent hit Netflix-original drama. Stranger Things wasn’t exactly the biggest topic the moment it was released, but we all saw how it blew up in popularity the following weeks. And that, my friend, is the power of word-of-mouth. Again, keep in mind that it doesn’t mean Tales of Berseria could pull off a Stranger Things or a Yo-kai Watch-style boost in popularity and sales simply from word of mouth alone, as RPGs tend to not have a long tail in Japan. With that all that in consideration, you can see how the next few weeks will be crucial for Tales of Berseria in making the most out of what they have.

While the previous title, Tales of Zestiria sold almost 100k copies more than Berseria, you might also remember the drama that surrounded the game when it released in Japan. That definitely took a hit with some of the series’ core fans, so it wouldn’t be that much of a surprise to have some fans going with the “wait and see” approach. Again, another reason why the next few weeks will be extra important for Tales of Berseria. And perhaps the minority of fans that are “boycotting” the game may hear some good things about it and have a change of heart.

The game is currently sitting at 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon Japan, and as some of you may know, Amazon Japan’s reviews tend to be super picky and titles often get blasted with lower scores compared to how they do in the Western counterpart (see: Freedom Wars). So this can only be seen as a good thing for the time being, and it’ll be interesting to see how it performs in the coming weeks. ne more thing that I should mention about Tales of Berseria’s sales figures is that we can’t truly judge its performance until we get to see some sell-through numbers and some info on Bandai Namco’s sales forecast for comparison.

As far as other new titles go, we had Idea Factory’s latest Otomate title with Collar X Malice at #11 at 7,271 units sold in its first week, which is actually pretty good for any visual novel game on PS Vita that’s for a niche audience. Hardware sales were once again stagnant as they’ve been for the past few weeks, so nothing too new there.

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

Sales data acquired from 4Gamer and Media Create.