#crackalchemist

The four games that are presently being tracked under the UtaPri Banner are as follows Uta no Prince-Sama:  Debut Uta no Prince-Sama:  All-Star After Secret Uta no Prince-Sama Music Uta no Prince-Sama Music 2 So how did each of these games do?  Well... Let’s start with the VNs and that means we start with Debut According to the numbers for the first 10 weeks Debut sold 65K copies in its first week which is impressive but by the 10th week it actually didn’t even get to 700 copies.  The total sales for that game were 79,075 when the first 10 weeks ended and as of this writing the total is 93,159!  That number was tracked about 3 years ago and no new numbers are available For All-Star After Secret which came out last year...this one was kind of a poor show in its own way because THIS ONE remember had a the QN pretty prominent...here’s what it did! In the first week which was 3/14/2015 the game sold 60,688 copies which is good but its about 5K less than Debut.  It gets more intersting when you look at the total for 10 weeks and we end up with a number of 70,106 and in the final week of its weekly tracking it sold ONLY 250 copies!  I have a theory about this one though and I’ll get into that bit of analysis in a bit HOW ABOUT THE MUSIC GAMES?! Okay these are gonna get interesting because in theory they are a completely different genre and not the “traditional” games that we looked at UtaPri for.  It was an Otome/Visual Novel so there is almost no way (I would have thought) they would do better than the VNs Here’s what we got In the first week that UtaPri Music was on sale it sold about 45,000 copies and that SOUNDS pretty bad because in the first week the other games outsold it.  There’s just one thing about this game vs. either Otome...they stayed fairly consistent Okay there was a drop in week 2 of about 30,000 copies (it was around 11K for the next week) BUT there is something to be said that after that for the remaining 8 weeks they stayed in the thousands of copies sold with the final week of the 10 having 1,500 copies sold which brought the 10 week total to 82,548!  Already what we are seeing is that the Music games sold VERY WELL just in the first 2 months of released but how did it end for them?  Well... For a yearly breakdown they sold 74,445 copies in 2011, in 2012 they sold an additional 26,752 which allowed them to crack the 100K mark at 101,197 and in 2013 they sold about 1000 more copies which brings the number to 102,714 Okay so THAT is a bit of a revelation...how did the second game do? In the first week of release for Music 2 we got sales of 66,037 and that was on September 7th, 2013.  The drop off was a bit more significant here and in the end they had a number which was actually pretty much level with the first game at 82,457.  Keep in mind that the number for M1 was 82,548 but also that one could maintain being in the 1000 copies sold range for 10 weeks BETTER than this one did...in its final week tracked for 10 it sold only 374 copies.  I’m gong to give a theory on this and it may or may not work with the new game coming out in what will soon be 5 days in Japan. The YTD that I can give you as far as the game being out is 89,544!  Keep in mind that Music 1 actually cracked the 100K barrier which is pretty cool and interesting when you look at the sales of the series just based on these four games. Part of me wonders this Are the paltry numbers they got for last year a sign that Japan has pretty much moved onto the VITA?  If this is the case then the decision to port over the older games (and to put Music 3) onto this system makes sense.  I DO want to bring something up for those that might think that this spells the end of the series because of no new VN announced and its actually pretty important Diabolik Lovers Confused?  Let me break it down for ya There are  4 games current available on the PSP and PS VITA with two of them, Haunted Dark Bridal and More Blood, having been ported over and Rejet has decided that there was going to be a 5th game in the franchise next month so the story keeps going even when you probably CAN make an argument that you wonder how many games you can make out of that story (and this probably means 5 seasons will be in the works...not complaining) Now you might ask “Well how do the ports do?” and the answer is that as of this writing the port for MB has under 20K sold for last year.  The argument that you can make for those sales are this:  Anyone that was going to buy the game bought it when it was a newer game for the PSP and the port didn’t interest them.  It should also be noted that to date the original DiaLovers game is the best seller with a YTD of just under 50K on the PSP! Its an interesting thing to look at because we have REPEAT for the VITA coming out so the question is going to be how entrenched is the fanbase in Japan to buy the game again OR new fans if there are any and there could be we just don’t know yet! What I think will be interesting to see with Music 3 and the ports is with this season coming does Broc and NIS Japan willingly take a risk to do a game for HEAVENS whom they reintroduced in the series at the end of this last season?  The mock newspaper article on the website that appeared after the finale would make you think so but this also I think in some ways MIGHT depend on the sales of the ports. Its interesting too when you look at the games that were tracked for UtaPri that the Music games as a whole sold BETTER than the VN games with Debut being the one that really did anything for the VNs that was shown...I seriously wish there were numbers for the others. The thing that makes the Music game numbers interesting is it seems to reach a broader audience because in those cases everyone can listen to music so there is no specific “market” even with the aspects of the cutscenes that happen as rewards.  Its also interesting to note that the first UtaPri music game did the best which featured the Audition songs, Happy Love Songs, Drama songs and the songs from S1.  When you get to Music 2 it started BETTER than the first game and I wonder if part of that was off the back of S2 and maybe wanting to get to hear some of their favorites and MAYBE there was some disappointment when they found out certain songs (like Poison Kiss for example) wasn’t included in the game?  You might not think that’s a big deal but for some people if they like a song a lot and want to hear it in a game and its not included that disappointment can turn off a customer.  With a song like “GOLDEN STAR” not being included in the game to play I wonder if that could hurt the overall sales PLUS we know that they put in the bonus scenes from the April Fool’s game right?  I wonder how many people are going to want to see those scenes again especially with the Marching Band motif going on? There is A LOT to think about when it comes to UtaPri and its future as a brand and an Anime which we kind of forget it was one of the top selling Animes of last year.  Now with a pretty quick turnaround can they sustain that and let’s say they do coupled with strong game sales and all the other merch probably planned...how do you stop a series like this now? We’ll find out soon won’t we”