NPD rankings are in, DmC bombs in the US and world-wide

EDIT: Updated the OP. VGChartz has revised their numbers, from 740k to 580k after the NPD came out.

VGChartz is also clocking in DmC's global sales figures at less than 600k and there are rumors circulating around neoGAF from reputable sources that in the US DmC < 200k, and judging from the ranking of the above image, that's not so far-fetched. With DmC being such a critical success and a commercial failure, it really begs the question - is there simply no place for third person hack and slash games in the industry anymore?

In addition to NG3, DmC's failure is marks the second fall-from-grace from the top dogs of the genre. Both Ninja Gaiden and DMC were heralded as the kings of the hack and slash genre moving into this gen - and with DMC4 being the best selling game in the franchise and Capcom's 11th highest selling game of all time; it begs the question as to why DmC's numbers are so abysmally low. The marketing was fine for the game (bus ads, TV spots, that CG trailer that played in theaters for a solid two months straight, etc) and the release date couldn't have been better. A dry month with no competition, a month before its biggest competitor. It had tons of time and space to breathe and flourish, yet it only manages to sell 3/4ths of a million copies.

The genre has never been about pulling Call of Duty numbers, but with DMC4 pulling 2.7 million copies its fair to say that there is a niche place for it in the consumer base. There are a lot of pieces missing from the puzzle and questions about the future of the franchise, and we're still awaiting a few more numbers to come in (one of them being the DMC HD collection - which is rumored to have sold, ironically enough, around 750k copies as well), but there's no question that a lot of people are getting worried how a good game (and DmC is a great game) could have bombed so miserably. Is the market just not viable for a game like this anymore, or is it no coincidence that NG3 and DmC have now both bombed horribly by turning off the exact fanbase that cultivates the genre by trying to reach out to a wider audience?

I think a lot of publishers, Capcom included, are looking to MGR's reception to see what the future holds for the genre and awaiting its reception with bated breath. If one of the most well known franchises + the most revered hack & slash developer = sales bomb, then stick a fork in the third person hack and slash genre, because it's likely finished... which is a disappointment because they're my favorite genre.

UPDATE: MGR's first week has apparently outsold DmC's first month according to multiple sources, leaving a lot of my previous fears completely unfounded about there not being a market for hack and slash games in this industry anymore.

The DMC purist are speaking with their wallets, BUT considering the best version is on the PC (Which is not tracked by NPD) who KNOWS

PC might be the best version, but can it really be such a significant chunk of the market that it will boost it up to, say, top 3? I always thought Capcom's games sold way better on the consoles than they did PC. That's where genres like this shine, isn't it?

Given the fact that NPD doesn't track digital sales, I don't see them being a relevant gauge of success anymore, especially for niche games like DmC that likely have a large base of esavvy consumers that would have bought the game digitally, digital distribution wasn't even a factor when DMC4 came out, now there is a growing subset of the market that only buys digitally.

I think this is most likely the case here, especially with how poor the PR for this game has been and how alienating it has been to the typical consumer who buys DMC games - they've likely chosen to speak with their wallets. The word of mouth for this game was absolutely abysmal on the internet, and no doubt it effected a significant amount of potential sales.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/02/05/are-fans-to-blame-for-lower-than-expected-dmc-sales/

Very interesting read on the whole debacle, and although my gut feeling is telling me to trust Occam's Razor... I think my worries will be alleviated a little when MGR does well commercially and confirms that there still is a place for third person hack and slash games in this industry. I hope it does well, anyway, everything I've seen about it looks like its shaping up to be the most successful Platinum Games entry since Bayonetta and an amazing game in its own right.

That could be, but since Capcom has lowered its sales expectations to 1.2 shipped for the game this year, I can't imagine digitial sales would make up a significant amount of sales in DmC's case, especially so in this instance when you consider that there was absolutely no incentive whatsoever to purchase this game digitally. The GameStop exclusive pre-order was getting Vergil's Downfall DLC for free - and anyone who was remotely interested in Devil May Cry would have gone with that route (especially given that without preordering it, Vergil's Downfall would cost $9 to buy). I think its a fair argument to make in the case of a game like Call of Duty, but in DmC's case the incentives were stacked way in the physical copy's favor to really expect there to be a huge number of digital sales for this game. With Steam though, it's hard to say how it did there, I don't really recall it being in the top 20 sellers list more than a few days at its release.

I've never played a Devil May Cry but I added it to my queue on GameFly and got it right away (it came in today)....so maybe no one wants to play it??

We get it, you don't like this game and will find every excuse to post negative news about it.

I think the genre is seen as lower value than others and that people are reluctant to spend the same amount of money on it. You're even seeing Sony add a MP component to God of War. I also think Capcom hurt themselves by calling it Devil May Cry from every angle. Potential new fans don't want a Devil May Cry game and old fans don't want this Devil May Cry game.

Indicative of the general stat of the industry, not on the efficiency of "speaking with your wallet". Those DMC fanboys claiming "HEY GUYS. SEE, WE DID IT". No, no you didn't

VGChartz + NeoGAF = totally accurate and trustworthy numbers.

VGChartz numbers. Good source.

I never seen someone put so much negative energy into one thing. Imagine what else you could accomplish if you actually spent time with something you ENJOYED.

Oh hey. You posted this topic like 4 times already. I kinda get it at this point: You don't like the new DMC and are attempting to vindicate your dislike by posting sales figures.

It came out in January, is the best reason I can possibly think of. Had it come later in the spring/early summer, it would probably have been a success.

What company in their right mind releases things so soon after the holiday period?

(Those <200K figures are suspect as hell, though. I'd imagine it's higher than that.)

Also, as much as I'm looking forward to it, I'll be incredibly surprised if MGR is a commercially successful.

Maybe for those on board before the game was even out, but it seems like a lot of people became interested in DmC post-release thanks to the positive buzz. For those people, buying the game on PC would be the first choice if possible. The numbers may not be huge, but I doubt they're small enough to be written-off entirely.

seriously

I think call of duty and modern fps games in general have made the mass gaming audience a little jaded, these games used to sell boatloads, I seriously doubt Dante being revamped could have effected sales THAT much.

These comments are completely childish and add nothing to the discussion. If you don't like my topics, I encourage you to ignore me or simply don't post in them if you have nothing worthwhile to contribute. I like the game and I think (as I said in the OP) its a great game in its own right. It's not my fault there hasn't been great news on the sales front for this game, so please, you don't have to jump down my throat with personal attacks like a bunch of rabid fanboys. I'm sorry this game wasn't as well received as you would have liked it to be, there's no reason to be so aggressive. I'm just trying to bring new discussion to these forums and share news on this game post launch - its outside of my control that a lot of the news surrounding this game after launch has only been about the sales figures and reception. Aside from Vergil's Downfall coming on the 27th and BP next week, there's nothing else to really share about this game - Ninja Theory has been extremely quiet since this game launched.

The above is the NPD (which is extremely accurate and trustworthy) and while VGChartz isn't 100% on the nose, it gets more of a bad rap that it deserves on these forums for some reason. The general consensus is that the numbers are within +/-15% or so; they're not just arbitrarily made up on the spot. There is some validity to them.

That's actually a really good point that I didn't think about - with how well optimized DmC is for the PC I suppose it would be the definitive version to get, and to my knowledge there would be no way to really know those numbers outside of Capcom's own official report. Maybe there is a significant amount of copies there to support this game after all.

No but hey he sort of writes that he likes it in all the comments to go along with it. And when he was making all the crazy comments before when it was reviewed he was joking and trolling as a joke.

How can someone be so misunderstood?

Poor Brighty. Keep dem VG Chartz numbers rolling in and keeping us all informed of what's really going on.

Who knew you could get this much forum mileage out of DmC sales figures.

I'm not taking sides here or trolling, just legitimately curious. Where would you say is a decent place to find game sales info and the like?

@brighty: Ninja Gaiden 3 had some serious issues right out of the gate it was a bad to mediocre game depending on what side of the coin you fall on. DmC suffered from absolutely NO advertisement. Seriously, did anyone see a single ad for this on TV? Which is a shame because its a damn amazing game. I think the real interesting thing to see will be what God of War Ascension does.

Sale figures the publisher releases if they specify sold and not just shipped. Anything else is bullshit.

There isn't one. VGChartz is inaccurate and sometimes completely full of shit, but it's also the only website that actually deals in this kind of information.

NPD is sorta kinda accurate, but they don't include Steam sales (because Valve won't release sales data like pricks) and I think Wal-Mart is another retailer that refuses to release sales data.

Basically nobody wants to share their numbers so we wind up with shoddy estimates from sources that try anyway and forum dwellers love denounce them as shite.

WOOT Farycry3 and NBA 2k

Ah, I guess it's that time of the week again is it.

Unfortunately there are no longer any good sources independent sources for the public. NPD doesn't give out the numbers anymore, it's up to publishers to release them. So all we can tell now is where a game falls compared to others.

VG Chartz is a very unreliable source.

@pr1mus: Alright, cool thanks! I'll keep on eye on them from now on.

Fuck this world to hell. There is no justice in it. DmC is a great game.

@brighty: NPD does not take every retailer in consideration nor it takes in consideration digital sales and it's only America sales number. And you actually did not provide any NPD numbers.

Also, who thought DMC would sold something more than 1/2 million copies anyway?

As the asterisk on the bottom of the chart states, NPD numbers don't track digital sales. They don't track sales from Walmart. It only tracks sales in the United States. Games published on multiple platforms inflate their numbers. DmC was the only new game on that list. All the other games mentioned are hold overs from the holiday season the year before albeit six weeks into this year. DmC came out on January 15. Does that mean that NPD was only able to track that game for seventeen days after release? While all the other games were available on a store shelf for thirty one days. If people were so in love of the old games, wouldn't the Devil May Cry HD collection be on top of the list?

To equate sales figures or number of physical copies sold to measure the quality of a game is lame. I don't take value in NPD numbers. Statistics can be used to say anything. The people who hate the new Devil May Cry so much are just using that information to validate their argument. It's funny seeing people who hate things that are different.

Man this sucks, but not too unexpected. At least I did my part, even if I prefer the old ones. :/

@zleunamme: Name a post here where someone said sales = quality of the game.

Also, my guess as to why the HD collection isn't higher than DmC is because it's older and didn't receive a lot of advertising either, and by this time, almost every fan that wanted to own the old games either already have them on PS2 or have already owned the HD collection for a while. Also also, for what it's worth, the DMC collection outsold the new DmC on release date on Amazon, though I guess that isn't worth much.

I thought DMC's sales have been dwindling for a long time. How did DMC4 sell, compared to this new DmC? 750k worldwide isn't great or anything, but I have nothing to compare it to. DMC, at no point in its lifespan, was ever FF7 or Halo or something.

VGChartz? Whatever. But I do wonder if Capcom did overshot assuming they could pull in a million.

I played DMC3 (bought HD Collection) instead of buying DmC.

No regrets.

(plus I got to play it for free on loan anyway, 3 is much better)

Oh, this again?

Oh I think they'll hit a million easily before the year is up in trickle sales. Especially once spring rolls around and we get some gnarly steam sales.

Bayonetta sold just over a million copies to date, the HD collection isnt on any sales lists that i can see, its not a case of people voting with their wallets, its more the case that third person action dont sell so well any more.

DMC 4 sold 2.7 million to date

Good point. I was thinking more that the industry needs to stop focusing on the immediate blockbuster hit.

especially once black friday rolls around. this game'ill be fine

So much anger in this forum.

Even if it didn't sell a bunch, which I wouldn't be trusting those stats anyway for multiple reasons, they couldn't have possibly expected it to be a dambuster, could they have? DMC is in some ways beloved by a rather specific portion of people, and is relatively niche. I enjoy DmC a fair amount, but I'm not exactly busting for a new one right now. Besides, as @sooty said:

There's a reason there aren't a lot of games, especially big budget games, coming out in January and February - nobody's buying games right now. Almost every industry sees lower sales during this time of the year because people already spent a ton of money around the holidays. Releasing a big budget game is suicide because video games, in general, don't have very long tails when it comes to their sales numbers (unless you're Madden or Call of Duty).

Capcom really needs to do some meaningful with DMC or shelve it. The last two entries haven't did the series any favors

Really? It begs the question? Do you even know what that means!?!?!?!?!?!?

http://begthequestion.info/

Made a thread about this over on the DmC board since, you know, it seemed like the place to do it. Anyway, word through the grapevine is it sold 187k on both consoles. That is not good no matter how you look at it. PC sales will remain a mystery unless Capcom feel the need to release them. However, even if it did well it would probably still not equal the performance of DMC4 on only 2 platforms. This is really a lose-lose situation that we're in considering Capcom's whole goal with this reboot was to dramatically boost sales. I'm not really sure what they'll end up doing with the franchise after this. As for Ninja Theory, this can't look good for them.

Well, all this BS around a very good game just made me buy another copy and randomly gift it to someone on my Steam friends list.

This game is a great character action game and Ninja Theory did a great job with the reboot!

mind explaining how Darksiders became A Thing because it released in January when nothing was coming out?

Or how Bioshock was the toast of the internet because it released in August, back when all that came out during the summer was Madden?

Mass Effect 2 came out on January 26th, 2010 about two weeks after Darksiders. But that game only sold five copies.