Long story short, according to NOA, Fire Emblem: Awakening had the best first-month sales of any entry in the franchise released in North America. It sold over 180,000 units, about 63,000 of which were through the eShop. By comparison, the previous release, Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, sold about 250,000 lifetime in North America since its release in 2009.

Source

That's awesome news. Really glad such a profoundly well-made game sold as well as it deserved.

Still waiting for my copy to show up (shipped yesterday!). Never played a Fire Emblem game before so I have no idea what to expect when I play it. Might wait till after Luigi's Mansion to play it too.

Looks good, I'll probably be picking it up when it releases here in Australia, shame it's not getting released for another month.

Amazing considering how unbelievably hard it is to find. I want this game but I don't do the whole eshop thing because of the way they handle it.

And well deserved

awesome, go ninty!

Awesome. Curious to see how much money they make off of all the DLC.

I'm still working on it and playing way too much of it's DLC. I am one of the impatient that bought the eShop version. Occasionally I'll play 10 hours a week or only devote 2 a week. Still I will beat it!

As far as the main story goes, I only have one chapter to go, but I'm taking my time, powering up my dudes, raising strong children and feasting on the DLC. I unlocked the special version of Elincia tonight, which is pretty cool, but fell a turn short of beating Lost Bloodlines 3 (my Avatar got hit with a critical).

That sounds like good news. Hopefully it has legs and can pass 500,000 units. We need these types of games to sell more.

If I was super crazy rich I would buy like, 500,000 copies of this game.

Or maybe just give $19,999,560 to Nintendo and tell them to make like 10 more of these games.

Or just start my own game company.

Yeah probably that one.

Great! Hope my favorite game of the year so far keeps selling well. :)

I've really been surprised by the positive word of mouth for this game. I hadn't played a Fire Emblem game since the series first came to NA on the GBA, but all the buzz compelled me to buy Awakening. This is probably one of the best experiences I've had with a game in ages and I'm glad it's seeing some solid sales.

Is the DLC generally worthwhile? I'm definitely willing to throw more money at Intelligent Systems if the quality of the DLC is anywhere near that of the main-game.

It is. The battles are generally a good challenge, and they offer up a huge heaping helping of fan service for fans of the series. All of the DLC battles are set in a place called the Outrealms, and your allies and opponents in most of these maps are figures from all of the previous games. There's even some good little dialogue bits with some of the old characters. For most of these battles, victory also unlocks a special version of a past Fire Emblem character (ex: Elincia, Marth) that can also be used in the rest of the game (though they can't form support relationships). Some battles also reward the player with items that can't be acquired in the base game. The difficulty of these maps also depends on which difficulty you're playing on.

@hailinel: Alright sounds cool. I'm not super familiar with the series beyond this game and that first NA GBA game (and SSB I guess) so the fan-service probably won't do much for me, but I'm enjoying playing the game so damn much that I'll probably buy the DLC anyways.

Dammit Nintendo why did you have to region lock this thing. I now have to wait til April to play this game.

Don't get me wrong, I like Japanese games, I also like Western games, but if some one like Square Enix, who has both a western dev, and a Japanese dev could use them both. The western to write the game, and the Japanese to make the mechanics.

Of coarse I say this not knowing how western games translate there. They may think western game storylines are just as cheeseie as I think a lot of Japanese storylines are.

@dagbiker: What does that have to do with the topic of this thread?

There is still a market for $40 handheld games. I just really wish Nintendo had it's act together when it came to online stuff. The friends list on the 3DS is a joke...............

also I think that was the most confusing post I've read all week

It's nice to see those kinds of numbers are considered respectable, after so much news about games selling millions of copies and being labeled failures. Not surprising that so many JRPG developers are shifting development to handhelds.

I bought a 3DS just for this game. It is kind of a dumb game (dumb in a super cheesy Japanese way) but a pretty solid combat system.

Sorry, it was 3 in the morning. It had nothing to do with the topic, except the game. But the 2 other incoherent paragraphs that were about this topic lead to that idea, but I deleted them, before I posted it.

Glad to hear that it did well in the NA, hopefully it will be the for Europe, this series deserve success and I can't wait to get it!

Well big surprise here, give a game a modicum of marketing and finally get digital distribution going and of course you crush the last game's sales. This seems like the first time Nintendo actually tried to sell a Fire Emblem game to North Americans.

You could play Devil Survivor while you wait... Oh, that isn't out yet either. And Etrian Odyssey doesn't even have a release date. The joys of being European 3DS owner.

Those eShop numbers look high. Is it because the game is so hard to get at retail?

@funkasaurasrex: I'll say the price of the DLC is pretty steep considering what you're getting, but the game is so much fun that I didn't really care. I'd take a long hard look at what you're getting out of each DLC map before buying it. If all it gives you is a character that you won't recognize and probably won't use, then it might not be worth your money. The difficulty of the missions are static so the chances of them hitting that sweet spot of challenging but fair are pretty slim. More likely you'll either be getting stomped pretty hard or be the one doing the stomping.

That said, if you're really into the class/leveling/skill mechanics in the game, some of the missions are invaluable. Champions of Yore 3 gives you a book that teaches a +2 All Stats skill so, at this point, I've done that mission 45 times. Lost Bloodlines 2 gives you a scroll that turns your male characters into the Demon Fighter class and Lost Bloodlines 3 teaches you a 2x Exp skill so I'll be grinding away at those for a while as well.

I'd assume so. Because of shipping delays most retail stores didn't even get copies in until Thursday and the game came out on Monday. Anyone who really wanted the game ASAP and anyone who didn't pre-order would have been much better served picking up the game off the eShop. I know that's what I did.

Nice because fire emblem is so good.

Good to hear. I bought a 3DS for Awakening. I can say it was a wise purchase.

It’s nice to see a game sell 180,000 units in its first month and be treated as a success.

We hear about how games are too expensive to make now and need to sell millions to be successful, but that’s an arbitrary hole publishers have dug for themselves. People like graphics and spectacle, but I think/hope there’s still a market for lower-budget games.

I often wonder why the big publishers draw a line between “hardcore”, high-budget games and “casual” low-budget games. Why can’t there be more hardcore low-budget games? Isn’t it really risky to put so many of your eggs in a small number of high-budget baskets? I don’t doubt there are smarter people than me at publishers making these decisions, but there’s got to be untapped value in modest, high-quality games (and not just the typical indie platformer fare).

Waiting for eShop :\

In the same boat. The number of digital sales would be surprising... was the absurd shortage of physical copies not so well documented. Regardless, pretty much everything Fire Emblem deserves success, which I why I bought all the DLC maps even though they are clearly overpriced (and that's with me even knowing who all those old characters are and occasionally shaking my head at one of the localization changes).