Xenoblade U.S. "Pre-orders" will soon surpass Europe and Japan's "total sales"

[Fabrizo]

Xenoblade will do well I'm sure, but they probably lost a lot of customers by taking Amazon out of the equation sense they already had some insane pre-orders before the game was even announced for the US.

[Zonned87]

Update:

http://www.vgchartz.com/preorders/

Xenoblade Chronicles Wii 158,455 (pre-orders)

[Sagadego]

Stop posting chartz! They pull numbers out of thin air.

[Zonned87]

I think they are accurate.

[Shizuka]

It's debatable.

[Ryos]

I think they are accurate.

I'm willing to take XSEED at their word when they say their numbers are complete fiction. The only way we'd be able to get accurate sales figures is if the game sold well enough to break into the top ten, and then we'd only know that it made it there. I wish we had accurate numbers like Japan does though - it'd really help know what games to rally behind and others we can dismiss as not working here.

[Savin877]

I'm willing to take XSEED at their word when they say their numbers are complete fiction. The only way we'd be able to get accurate sales figures is if the game sold well enough to break into the top ten, and then we'd only know that it made it there. I wish we had accurate numbers like Japan does though - it'd really help know what games to rally behind and others we can dismiss as not working here.

Which brings me to a point that I have tried to make time and time again while I was in the industry. Developers need to start releasing their sales numbers. Naturally I could write a 10,000 word essay on this easily and post it but let me just break it down into 2 simple points that we see constantly.

1) Whenever a game sells well, you ALWAYS see the dev/publisher boasting about how awesome their game did and will actually release the #s. WoW, BF3, CoD, come to mind, etc. You NEVER (okay not NEVER) but almost never see this done for localized games from overseas unless it has the name "Final Fantasy" in the title.
2) If a game does bad, the devs/publishers like to keep quiet. Naturally for a multitude of reasons I am sure, but one that stands out to me is.....guess what? The consumers still know. All we have to do is walk into the Walmart/Target/Gamestop/etc and see 300 copies of your game lying in the clearance bin.

Now these are two very basic, and very simple examples that I could break down and go into much greater detail on but that will be reserved for if I ever feel like making that topic.

Okay back on topic:

For all that its worth, I would love to see Xenoblade Chronicles do well here and I hope that anyone who is a fan of RPGs and owns a Wii will give this title a shot.

[Chaosblade]

I'm under the impression there is a little more to it than companies just not wanting to divulge information, but I agree. One reason companies don't like to make sales information public is due to worry that it will be misinterpreted. But that's catch 22, because the only reason the information would be misinterpreted is because people aren't conditioned to understand those details and make proper conclusions based on them.

That's why you see a lot of people hearing that a game sold, say, 60k copies, and they're like "Wow, that game sold horribly." But given the budget and expectations, 60k copies could have been outstanding.

[SpaceDrake]

I think they are accurate.

No, they aren't. They're fiction. Trust industry people when they say this.

[Shizuka]

All people can expect are NPD numbers from April, which are usually released in May.