This Week In Sales: Xenoblade Chronicles 3D Isn’t Really Feeling It

Period: The week of March 30th  – April 5th (2015)

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Top-seller: The 3rd Super Robot Taisen Z: Tengoku Hen (PSV) – 121,219

Nintendo 3DS sales: 1,893 | Tot. sales: : 9,827,885

Nintendo 3DS XL sales: 2,256 | Tot. sales: 6,895,060

New Nintendo 3DS sales: 8,242 | Tot. sales: 521,109

New Nintendo 3DS XL sales: 22,183 | Tot. sales: 1,250,481

PlayStation Vita sales: 21,584 | Tot. sales: 3,684,062

Vita TV sales: 672 | Tot. sales: 160,146

Wii U sales: 7,486 | Tot. sales: 2,269,615

PlayStation 4 sales: 26,738 | Tot. sales: 1,375,839

Xbox One sales: 902 | Tot. sales: 50,009

<< Last week’s software sales chart

<< How to read and understand sales

For what is considered one of the best RPGs of the last 10 years, Xenoblade Chronicles has always found itself fighting an uphill battle for one reason or another. When the game was originally released in Japan back in 2010, it was during a period when the Wii software market had begun drying up and wasn’t very receptive toward an unproven RPG brand. Then, when it was released in North America two years later, it was made available exclusively through GameStop and Nintendo’s online store, which limited its reach in that territory as well.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3D, which was released last week, finds itself in a similar position. Released exclusively for the New Nintendo 3DS—which has sold less than 1.8 million units in Japan thus far—the game is unable to reach the audience of 16 million that Nintendo have built up with their older 3DS models. And so, Xenoblade Chronicles 3D debuted with opening week sales of just 56,932 copies.

For reference, the original version of Xenoblade Chronicles on Wii sold 82,952 copies at launch. While that figure is far from impressive, the game continued to move units through word-of-mouth and went on to sell close to 200,000 copies in Japan by the end of 2013. Additionally, it was confirmed in a recent Iwata Asks interview that Xenoblade Chronicles ended up selling more in the West than it did in Japan, so it’s safe to assume that the game ended up doing “okay” globally, despite its uphill climb.

Whether Xenoblade Chronicles 3D will manage to do the same remains to be seen. In Japan, the game certainly stands a chance of continuing to sell alongside the New 3DS as word-of-mouth spreads and more and more people seek out a game to play on their New 3DSes. For now, though, it has another uphill climb ahead of it yet again.

In other news, Bandai Namco released The 3rd Super Robot Taisen Z: Tengoku Hen, selling 230,419 copies of that game, demonstrating once again how much of a boon their hold on the anime market can be. Time and again, Namco’s anime licenses have managed to pull in respectable numbers while other publishers struggle to make any headway on consoles.

And with that, the top-20 software sales chart for last week is as follows:

Lw Tw Title Weekly Sales Total Sales Sys. Publisher
New 01. The 3rd Super Robot Taisen Z: Tengoku Hen 121,219 New PSV Bandai Namco
New 02. The 3rd Super Robot Taisen Z: Tengoku Hen 109,200 New PS3 Bandai Namco
New 03. Xenoblade Chronicles 3D 56,932 New 3DS Nintendo
02. 04. Sword Art Online: Lost Song 23,279 162,577 PSV Bandai Namco
01. 05. Bloodborne 22,610 175,177 PS4 Sony
03. 06. One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 22,146 119,508 PS3 Bandai Namco
New 07. Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair 21,582 New PS4 D3 Publisher
04. 08. Theatrhythm Dragon Quest 15,995 92,854 3DS Square Enix
14. 09. Minecraft: PlayStation Vita Edition 15,880 73,100 PSV Sony
07. 10. One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 14,945 69,252 PSV Bandai Namco
05. 11. Pro Baseball Spirits 2015 14,940 77,137 PS3 Konami
16. 12. Mario Party 10 14,410 103,488 WiiU Nintendo
09. 13. Pro Baseball Spirits 2015 11,211 57,537 PSV Konami
08. 14. One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 10,546 57,238 PS4 Bandai Namco
19. 15. Yo-kai Watch 2: Headliner 10,439 2,573,917 3DS Level 5
06. 16. Sword Art Online: Lost Song 10,264 65,354 PS3 Bandai Namco
15. 17. Resident Evil: Revelations 2 10,035 103,100 PS3 Capcom
23. 18. Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire 8,709 2,587,345 3DS Pokémon Co.
11. 19. Kuroko’s Basketball: Ties to the Future 8,311 43,726 3DS Bandai Namco
12. 20. Senran Kagura: Estival Versus 8,297 52,845 PSV Marvelous

Sales data acquired from 4Gamer and Media Create.


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Author
Ishaan Sahdev
Ishaan specializes in game design/sales analysis. He's the former managing editor of Siliconera and wrote the book "The Legend of Zelda - A Complete Development History". He also used to moonlight as a professional manga editor. These days, his day job has nothing to do with games, but the two inform each other nonetheless.