Marvelous Making a Loss on Wii?

By Adam Riley 29.11.2009 1

Marvelous Making a Loss on Wii? on Nintendo gaming news, videos and discussion

According to a financial earnings report from Japanese developer/publisher Marvelous Entertainment, it seems the company has found its Wii releases simply are not making anywhere near as much profit as its PSP games.

From the comments translated so far, three out of four Wii games lost Marvelous money, whilst four out of five PSP titles actually made them money.

It should be noted, though, that this is not the whole story. If you look at the updated sales figures below, you will see why:

Muramasa: The Demon Blade (Wii) - 47,000 unit sales in Japan
Arc Rise Fantasia (Wii) - 45,000 unit sales in Japan
Valhalla Knights: Eldar Saga (Wii) - 16,000 unit sales in the US
Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility (Wii) - 57,000 unit sales in Europe
Little King's Story (Wii) - 26,000 unit sales in Japan, 37,000 in the US and 67,000 in Europe

Muramasa has only been out in the US for a short time, published by Ignition Entertainment, and was strangely omitted from this report, despite selling 35,000 units in North America in its first month during September this year. Additionally, the game only goes on sale here in Europe next Friday, 27th November.

Arc Rise Fantasia will not be hitting the US or Europe until next year, whilst Valhalla Knights is not out in Europe yet either. As for Harvest Moon, this is the very first game that hit Wii in Japan not long after the system launched, so has taken nearly three years to finally arrive in Europe. It also only landed here in October, 2009, so selling what it has so far it certainly not a bad start.

Finally, Little King's Story surely must be the one game Marvelous is talking about when it states profit was made on a Wii game. Selling 130,000 copies worldwide so far is quite an achievement for such a niche title with no licence attached or even big-name developer pushing it. Sales in Europe, where it launched first earlier this year, have been very healthy indeed, whilst it has not been out in the US and Japan for anywhere near as long, yet has notched up moderate sales.

Overall, it is sad to see Marvelous seemingly pointing the finger at Wii for the reason behind its losses, and it becomes even more obvious faith is being lost in Nintendo's home console with the news of the original No More Heroes being upgraded for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

What are your thoughts on the sales mentioned above?

Box art for Muramasa: The Demon Blade
Developer

Vanillaware

Publisher

Rising Star

Genre

Real Time RPG

Players

1

C3 Score

Rated $score out of 10  9/10

Reader Score

Rated $score out of 10  9/10 (12 Votes)

European release date Out now   North America release date Out now   Japan release date Out now   Australian release date Out now   

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Comments

Pablo (guest) 02.12.2009#1

This seems to be a reoccurring theme lately with developers that games made for the Wii are under performing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyeemtS1jII

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