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It’s not often that a pair of games topping the charts brings bad news for their respective publishers.
PS3 title Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII and Wii U platformer Super Mario 3D World entered the weekly Japanese charts in first and second spots today, but both point to serious declines for their brands.
Gematsu points out that FF XIII enjoyed week one unit sales of 1.5m units. FF XIII-2 debuted with 605k. Lightning Returns managed just 277k.
Super Mario 3D World, which is adored by critics, managed just 99,588 units in its debut week – the lowest week one sales for a 3D Mario title ever on any platform.
Mario’s latest outing did little to help Wii U sales, either, which climbed just 5k week-on-week to 21k and were 42 units short of Vita.
The news is a blow to those who thought that the arrival of Nintendo’s powerhouse IPs would provide a much-needed boost for the struggling machine. It will be interesting to see if the European release this Friday has a more positive effect.
