“It [Zack & Wiki] did not sell 500K units or anywhere near it. To the best of my knowledge, the 300K figure quoted by IR included European orders from Nintendo who published the title on our behalf in that territory. Nor did it do the volume it did do at anywhere near frontline pricing (in the US anyway). And what you think was a cheap game to make, wasn’t. Great games almost never are. Lastly, Okami Wii is not on track to outsell the PS2 version. The worldwide Okami Wii number might get to the US Okami PS2 number at some point though…
I will say that the Japan VG chart number appears to be pulled straight from Media Create… which is fairly accurate. Japan’s $2M TV campaign for the title in just that territory (e.g. better marketing) did not move the bar. We could have spent more, sold more, but due to that increased spending generated less profit (more loss). Look at publicly listed publisher financials. Industry standard is a variable marketing spend of between 9-12% of forecasted gross sales. We spend at similar levels (and sometimes above that) on every title we do, in every territory we operate in, including on Z&W…
Okami has been moderately successful… due in no small part to the quality of the game and the fact that it was cost effectively produced with managed scope.” – Christian Svensson, Corporate Officer/VP of Strategic Planning & Business Development
I’m glad that – at the very least – Okami “has been moderately successful.” At the same time, I’m very disappointed that the game hasn’t performed better. I could go on and on about how great I think the game is. The same goes for Zack & Wiki!
