This Week In Sales: Final Fantasy Explorers Explores Japan

Period: The week of December 15th – December 21st (2014)

Top-seller: Yo-kai Watch 2: Headliner (3DS) – 532,724

Nintendo 3DS sales: 13,832 | Tot. sales: 9,754,287

Nintendo 3DS XL sales: 27,469 | Tot. sales: 6,806,970

New Nintendo 3DS sales: 46,815 | Tot. sales: 319,803

New Nintendo 3DS XL sales: 108,235 | Tot. sales: 761,111

PlayStation Vita sales: 32,834 | Tot. sales: 3,331,309

Vita TV sales: 963 | Tot. sales: 149,123

Wii U sales: 38,314 | Tot. sales: 2,099,630

PlayStation 4 sales: 30,951 | Tot. sales: 937,517

Xbox One sales: 893 | Tot. sales: 42,105

<< Last week’s software sales chart

<< How to read and understand sales

Last week, Square Enix released Final Fantasy Explorers in Japan and the game sold 161,197 copies in its first week. That’s an impressive figure, considering that the game doesn’t appear to have had a very high budget. It is also holds up fairly well when compared to the debuts of other co-operative action games that aren’t Monster Hunter and God Eater (such as Toukiden, Freedom Wars, Soul Sacrifice and Phantasy Star Nova).

On that note, while Final Fantasy Explorers may look like another Monster Hunter-inspired, 4-player co-op experience, Japanese websites and magazines have been emphasizing that the game actually feels more like a portable MMORPG. Given that a game of this kind hasn’t been attempted using the Final Fantasy brand before, the closest comparison one could draw is to the Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles games on Nintendo DS, both of which focused on co-op multiplayer as well, and shared a somewhat similar graphical style. Here’s a look at how both those games sold:

(2007) Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates – 177,845

(2009) Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time – 101,718

Not too shabby a debut for Explorers. That having been said, the game is currently sitting at a rating of 2.5 stars on Amazon.jp, and it appears that this is mainly because people find the amount of content lacking compared to games like Monster Hunter. We’ll have more details on the Amazon consumer reviews this week, and it should be interesting to see how they affects Final Fantasy Explorers’ sales in the weeks ahead.

[Note: Sales figures will not be posted next week as Media Create, the sales tracker we follow, will be on vacation. Expect the “This Week In Sales” to resume on January 7th, 2015.]

The top-20 software sales chart for last week is as follows:

Sales data acquired from 4Gamer and Media Create.