Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon was Japan’s best-selling game last week, moving 280,151 copies. Considering the 3DS’ consistently strong sales in Japan, this isn’t necessarily a surprise. What is interesting, however, is the high ratio of copies sold to copies shipped out to retailers by Nintendo. According to Media Create, Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon sold 84.79% of its first shipment in Japan.
This means that Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon shipped about 330,406 copies. Compare these numbers to a game like Super Mario 3D Land, which sold 343,492 copies in its first week. This could simply mean that Nintendo doesn’t have as much confidence in the Luigi’s Mansion franchise as it does in the Mario franchise. However, this could also give us some interesting information about Nintendo’s current sales strategy.
When Super Mario 3D Land came out, Nintendo had not begun releasing day-and-date digital versions of retail games. In that game’s case, shipping a larger amount to retail makes sense. Seeing as how Nintendo has had a decent amount of success with the eShop lately (Fire Emblem: Awakening being a recent example), it stands to reason that they might want to see their digital sales rise even further. In turn, the amount of physical copies they ship may decrease. After all, games sold on the eShop will net more profit than games sold at retail. If Nintendo can accurately judge the number of physical copies their games will sell, it wouldn’t surprise me if we see this trend continue.
But then again, it could all just be a fluke. Who knows?
