Shmups Sales Figures 2008

antares · Post by **antares** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 8:13 pm

I've looked up the shmups that were released in 2008 on vgchartz just out of curiosity. Sadly they don't track every game but here are the ones I've found:

Castle Of Shikigami III (Wii - US): 4,846

Ketsui Death Label (NDS): 15,569

Nanostray 2 (NDS - US): 6,788

Otomedius G (360): 28,908

Raiden IV (360): 7,022

Thunder Force VI (PS2): 15,802

XBLA Games:

1942: Joint Strike: 68,448
Galaga Legions: 47,648
Geometry Wars 2: 220,325
Ikaruga: 116,407
Omega Five: 47,408
Power Up Forever: 6,075
Shred Nebula: 2,971
Triggerheart Exelica: 33,812

stoneroses · Post by **stoneroses** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 8:19 pm

Very interesting, thanks.

I would love to know the historic sales data for some of the older games like Silvergun, Soulky, Ibara, etc. just cause I am curious.

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 11:20 pm

Anyone know what constitutes "successful download sales". Ikaruga seems to have hit that, but w/ the Xbox's multi million user base, 30,000 seems pretty lame.

Shelcoof · Post by **Shelcoof** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 11:35 pm

Wow those are some pretty low sales!!

Dragoforce · Post by **Dragoforce** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 12:11 am

Surprisingly high sales for Otomedius considered it's a Japan only 360 game. Especially compared to Raiden 4.

Matsunaga · Post by **Matsunaga** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 12:26 am

No PSN sales numbers? I knew shmups don't sell much, it's no wonder we get so few of them. Even crap FPS like Haze probably sold a shitload more copies than any of these. I wonder if the sales even cover the development costs of may of these shooters.

ex.machina · Post by **ex.machina** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 12:48 am

Surprisingly low on some titles. Hard to be successful with a real "shmup" nowadays. You gotta do some stuff like Geometry Wars it seems. Fun game to play, but not a real shmup imo.

VorpalEdge · Post by **VorpalEdge** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 12:55 am

VGChartz is not accurate. Short version: they make stuff up. Long version: well... I'll let you read for yourself.

adversity1 · Post by **adversity1** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 1:40 am

GP, Braid is an example of a game we could start with. It was developed with $180,000 over three years, probably much less than your standard shmup. Then it was sold for $15 on Live (not sure how much MS takes as a cut) and by the first week had made something like 825k (http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/8/indi ... first-week).

Online sales of a shmup which stand at 30k for instance would make a company $450,000...not sure how close to a break-even point this is though. Couldn't really say what an average shooter game's budget is.

VorpalEdge wrote:VGChartz is not accurate. Short version: they make stuff up. Long version: well... I'll let you read for yourself.

Yeah I would be real curious to find out where they are getting their numbers for Japan. AFAIK, Media Create is the most accurate but I'm not sure if they track more minor titles like Ketsui DS and other shmups.

Still, the numbers for Otomedius, TF VI and Raiden IV are probably pretty accurate.

One major question I have: wasn't Ketsui DS limited to 10,000? Or did they do another print run? Otherwise that 15k figure does not make sense.

And yeah, these are horrible sales. The industry is in a bad state and selling shooters is going to be that much harder. But the clear difference in online 360 sales shows that this is where shmups should be marketed. That MS turned down CAVE for DLC is on reflection a real blow to their ability to market their games. It's been said before but: dumb and sad.

originalz · Post by **originalz** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 1:48 am

You're crazy if you think Braid is a good indicator of costs of an XBLA game. I remember that over $100,000 of those costs were for hiring a professional studio to do the music. Take that out and the production costs were much, much lower.

VGChartz isn't completely accurate, but it's usually a good way to get a feel for things. If you compare their numbers to the official ones, they may not be exactly the same, but they're close enough so that you can get a good idea. Hell, even "official" trackers like Media Create, Famitsu, Dengeki...they all have different numbers for the same week.

adversity1 · Post by **adversity1** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 1:53 am

Not putting Braid out there as an average budget by any means. I meant it as the very bottom-end of game dev budgets given that it had a core team of three people working on it.

professor ganson · Post by **professor ganson** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 2:52 am

I suppose Shiki 3's poor showing would have something to do with its also being available on PC and 360. Still pretty sad since it's among the best on the list.

Udderdude · Post by **Udderdude** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 3:05 am

XOP Black: 0

:3

originalz · Post by **originalz** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 3:56 am

professor ganson wrote:I suppose Shiki 3's poor showing would have something to do with its also being available on PC and 360. Still pretty sad since it's among the best on the list.

US sales are better than JPN, where it sold less than 1000 units.

Anyway, some other numbers...about a month old but these titles are older and probably haven't sold much more since.

Raiden Fighters Aces 3.800
Shikigami no Shiro III 3.074
Senko no Ronde 9.207 (doesn't include plat sales)

sven666 · Post by **sven666** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 7:19 am

anyone ever seen any sales figures for Arcade PCBs ?

antares · Post by **antares** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 7:42 am

vgchartz take their japanese sales figures from Famitsu so I guess they are probably more accurate than us and pal figures.

PSN: I would be very interested to know how much Soldner X sold but I've never seen sales figures of PSN games anywhere.

Shikigami 3: I haven't put it on the list because it was released in 07 for the XBox but according to vgchartz: 6,770 for the jp XBox version.

Also looked for Senko No Ronde:
US: 3,096
JP: 8,883 (without platinum I guess)

RFA: Couldn't find that but I would guess it's also in the 7,000 range like Raiden IV and Shikigami. Maybe even more considering how much work Gulti / Success is putting into patches

XBLA: Seeing how well Ikaruga performed I wonder why Treasure is declining a RS port.

Strider77 · Post by **Strider77** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 8:34 am

With TF6 being over 15,000.... I wonder what Sega's goal was in order to go ahead with the "shooter project".

I really hope they get to do more ect.

ex.machina · Post by **ex.machina** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 8:44 am

antares wrote: PSN: I would be very interested to know how much Soldner X sold but I've never seen sales figures of PSN games anywhere.

According to this report, Soldner-X was Sony's second best PSN game in December:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/s ... -ps3-sales

ex.machina · Post by **ex.machina** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 8:45 am

Strider77 wrote:With TF6 being over 15,000.... I wonder what Sega's goal was in order to go ahead with the "shooter project".

I really hope they get to do more ect.

Yeah I'd love that too, but TF6 was terrible I think. It would probably have sold less than 5K if it didn't carry the Thunderforce name.

Strider77 · Post by **Strider77** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 9:21 am

to each his own but I really liked TF6.... I am very thankful to have it.

Koa Zo · Post by **Koa Zo** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 5:01 pm

This:

Strider77 wrote:With TF6 being over 15,000.... I wonder what Sega's goal was in order to go ahead with the "shooter project".
I really hope they get to do more ect.

and, this:

Strider77 wrote:to each his own but I really liked TF6.... I am very thankful to have it.

escadrille · Post by **escadrille** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 7:04 pm

Those are very low numbers. Doesn't bode well for future XBLA ports.

bcass · Post by **bcass** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 7:47 pm

adversity1 wrote:Not putting Braid out there as an average budget by any means. I meant it as the very bottom-end of game dev budgets given that it had a core team of three people working on it.

Only 2 people made Braid.

bcass · Post by **bcass** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 7:48 pm

originalz wrote:You're crazy if you think Braid is a good indicator of costs of an XBLA game. I remember that over $100,000 of those costs were for hiring a professional studio to do the music. Take that out and the production costs were much, much lower.

That's completely wrong. Jonathan Blow (Braids creator) licensed cheap existing music from magnatune for Braid.

Udderdude · Post by **Udderdude** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 8:14 pm

bcass wrote:
originalz wrote:You're crazy if you think Braid is a good indicator of costs of an XBLA game. I remember that over $100,000 of those costs were for hiring a professional studio to do the music. Take that out and the production costs were much, much lower.
That's completely wrong. Jonathan Blow (Braids creator) licensed cheap existing music from magnatune for Braid.

I'd like to see a price breakdown for the entire project, somehow I doubt he'll make that public though.

bcass · Post by **bcass** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 8:43 pm

You can check yourself for XBLA sales on your 360. The total number of players on the leaderboards will give you a rough idea of how many people bought it. I did this with Braid and sales are approx. 180,000. So, revenue for that title is approx:

£10.20 (1200 MSP) * 180,000 = £1,836,000 (approx $2,653,416).

Jonathan Blow was signed up with Microsoft quite earliy on (before the XBLA rates were cut) so he'll be getting at least 50% of that. I doubt his costs come anywhere near $1m so it looks like he's made a tidy profit for his first game.

antares · Post by **antares** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 9:09 pm

bcass wrote:You can check yourself for XBLA sales on your 360. The total number of players on the leaderboards will give you a rough idea of how many people bought it.

Not really. It seems many people buy games but then play only offline. Space Giraffe for example was sold 22,000 times but has only 7,000 entries in the leaderboards.

You can check the latest XBLA sales chart here:

http://news.vgchartz.com/news.php?id=2828

bcass · Post by **bcass** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 9:25 pm

antares wrote:
bcass wrote:You can check yourself for XBLA sales on your 360. The total number of players on the leaderboards will give you a rough idea of how many people bought it.
Not really. It seems many people buy games but then play only offline. Space Giraffe for example was sold 22,000 times but has only 7,000 entries in the leaderboards.

You can check the latest XBLA sales chart here:

http://news.vgchartz.com/news.php?id=2828

There are over 10,000 entries on the Space Giraffe leaderboard. And the reason why there is so few is because the leaderboards were reset several months after it was released after it needed patching. Just before the patch, there were almost 20,000 people on the SG leaderboard (although you have to shave some of them off as you'll get the occasional instance of multiple accounts playing on the same 360). If I'm not mistaken, vgchartz get their data from the leaderboards too. Microsoft don't release XBLA stats (not at that detail anyway).

szycag · Post by **szycag** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 9:30 pm

Leaderboards could also be occupied by people who didn't purchase the game; logged in on a friend's system or it's saved to a console with multiple users (you get two licenses when you purchase an XBLA game, one linked to your account AND the system it was purchased on for every game.) More nitpicking clearly guesstimate figures, I should write for Game Set Watch too!

bcass · Post by **bcass** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 9:32 pm

szycag wrote:Leaderboards could also be occupied by people who didn't purchase the game; logged in on a friend's system or it's saved to a console with multiple users (you get two licenses when you purchase an XBLA game, one linked to your account AND the system it was purchased on for every game.) More nitpicking clearly guesstimate figures, I should write for Game Set Watch too!

bcass wrote:you have to shave some of them off as you'll get the occasional instance of multiple accounts playing on the same 360