This Week In Sales: Monster Hunter Has A New Story To Tell

Period: The week of October 3rd –  October 9th (2016)

Top-seller: Monster Hunter Stories – 140,603 (3DS)

Nintendo 3DS sales: 449

Nintendo 3DS LL sales: 90

Nintendo 2DS – 9,421

New Nintendo 3DS sales: 3,084

New Nintendo 3DS LL sales: 16,548

PlayStation Vita sales: 9,282

Wii U sales: 2,545

PlayStation 4 sales: 31,071

PlayStation 3 sales: 820

Xbox One sales: 88

<< Last week’s software sales chart

<< How to read and understand sales

Last week, Japan saw two major releases with Capcom’s Monster Hunter Stories for Nintendo 3DS, Arc System Works’ latest fighter in BlazBlue: Central Fiction on PS4 and PS3, and Idea Factory visual novel Norn9: Norn + Nonette Act Tune on PS Vita. Here’s the latest video game software and hardware that sold in Japan during the week of October 3 through October 9, 2016.

The top-selling title of the week goes to Monster Hunter Stories, and since there’s a lot more than what meets the eye in its debuting performance, we have an in-depth analysis shared by our good friend Ishaan:

Last week saw the release of Monster Hunter Stories in Japan, and the game sold 140,603 copies in its launch week. Monster Hunter Stories is an attempt to expand the Monster Hunter franchise–which typically appeals to a broad audience comprising of a mix of school kids, teens, and adults–out into a multimedia brand spanning a kid-friendly turn-based RPG, an accompanying shounen anime series, and a trading card game.

 

Effectively, Capcom are hoping to reach the same audience that brands like Pokémon, Yo-kai Watch, and even their own Mega Man Battle Network games have successfully appealed to. What this means is that, while Monster Hunter Stories is spinning out of an existing brand, Stories itself is starting from scratch because it aims for an audience that hasn’t cared about Monster Hunter until now.

 

As a result, a year from now, we won’t be comparing Monster Hunter Stories’ sales trajectory to the mainline Monster Hunter series. Instead, we’ll be comparing it to the sales of its peers–recent kid-friendly brands such as Yo-kai Watch and Inazuma Eleven. Let’s start there.

Notice anything the brands in the chart above have in common? In each case, it took one game to build the brand up, and it was only the second game that actually became a smash hit. Whether or not Monster Hunter Stories will follow the same trajectory remains to be seen, but for now, the above chart shows us how it’s holding up against its peers at launch.

Next, let’s move on to Capcom-specific games. Of late, Capcom have been trying very hard to create kid-friendly brands, and haven’t exactly been successful at accomplishing this goal. The last kid-friendly franchise Capcom managed to pull off was Mega Man Battle Network, with newer attempts such as E.X. Troopers and Gaist Crusher having failed. In contrast to those titles, Monster Hunter Stories is off to a good start.

 

This holiday season should give us a better idea of just how long a tail Monster Hunter Stories has, and its sales figures one year from now will give us a clear picture of just how successful (or unsuccessful) the game has been. In the meantime, judging by launch sales alone, things are looking optimistic.

 

[Editor’s Note: Thanks again for putting this together, Ishaan!]

Following, BlazBlue: Central Fiction placed #2 with 20,608 units sold on PS4 and 9,674 units sold on PS3 for its debut for a total of 30,282. This is a significant drop in numbers when compared to Chrono Phantasma’s debut of 72,464 copies in its debut in 2013, after selling through 86.36% of its shipment at launch.

While we don’t have the sell-through rate of BlazBlue: Central Fiction yet, here’s a look at how it stacks against previous first-week sales in the series:

• (2009) BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger – 33,768 (PS3) | 24,812 (360)
• (2010) BlazBlue: Continuum Shift – 49,871 (PS3)
• (2011) BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend – 32,992 (PS3) | 4,766 (360)
• (2013) BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma – 72,464 (PS3)
• (2015) BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma Extend – 7,589 (PS4) | 15,550 (PS3)

Let’s not forget that BlazBlue: Central Fiction won’t have an “Extend” version, according to producer Toshimichi Mori.

And finally, the third new title was Norn9: Norn + Nonette Act Tune by Idea Factory’s otome games label Otomate, which has been keeping its streak of weekly releases going for a while now. The visual novel title sold 3,505 copies on its first week for PS Vita, charting at #18 of the week.

As for hardware sales, we didn’t see anything too different from the past few weeks other than a slight increase in Nintendo consoles and a slight decrease in PS4 sales as it continues stabilizing after its restock spike.

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

Sales data acquired from 4Gamer and Media Create.