Strong retailer impressions of Harvest Moon: The Land of Origin led us to believe that the game would have a great first week on store shelves, and it did. As reported yesterday, The Land of Origin had the highest debut of any Harvest Moon title in recent years, selling 81,131 copies in its first week.
That’s higher than any of the Nintendo DS Harvest Moon titles. Here’s a look at how those fared in their first week:
Looking at the chart above, you may feel that those first-week sales aren’t really all that great. To avoid any misconceptions, it bears mentioning that Harvest Moon is the kind of game that sells over a long period of time. For instance, while Tale of Two Towns sold only 63,610 copies at launch, last we heard, it had gone on to sell 230,000 copies.
Now, why were first-week sales for The Land of Origin so high? Perhaps, as one retailer suggested, it was that commercials for the game for particularly effective this time around. Another very likely possibility is that the new ability to fully customize your character and ranch appealed to a lot of potential players.
Either way, the question now, for Marvelous AQL, is how to sustain this growth.
Food for thought:
On a related note, retail blog Sinobi reported that pre-orders for Rune Factory 4 were far higher than Harvest Moon. On the flip side, Rune Factory games don’t sell nearly as much as the Harvest Moon titles do in the long run, so it should be interesting to compare sales of The Land of Origin and Rune Factory 4 later in the year.
