Early Signs of a Solid Start
It wasn’t just in domestic markets where Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown was released for digital download last week. In Japan, where Sega is still somewhat strong and the art of arcade fighting remains popular, the home console release dropped there as well. It is there that we see good news for the game, and perhaps the first sign Sega’s digital strategy could work.
A report from Andriasang cites a Tweet in Japanese from a Sega port development account purportedly in charge of VF5FS‘s conversion that claims the game in its launch week has already surpassed the company’s sales expectations. To clarify, the way Andriasang has written its story, that’s total sales targets, and not just launch week expectations.
That doesn’t mean anything in the Western markets, however, where we have no idea how well VF5FS has done in its launch week last week. Major Nelson has not updated with XBOX Live activity for a few weeks, but at minimum, it would be very interesting to see a comparison between it and what little officially exists of Sonic 4: Episode II‘s launch data. We’ll let you know if and when such a comparison can be made.