790K people bought Chrono Trigger DS (and other Square sales figures)

by Randy Nelson on May 21st 2009 7:15PM

Note: numbers reflect 10k increments

Square Enix has released an accounting of its software sales for fiscal year 2009 -- which ended March 31 -- and remakes ruled. Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride, a refresh of the 1992 Super Famicom installment in the famous role-playing series, sold 1.35 million copies globally -- placing Dissidia: Final Fantasy, a new property, in second place with combined sales of 930,000 teeny-tiny UMDs.

Let there be no questioning of Chrono Trigger's lasting appeal: the DS re-release managed to make it into the hands on 790k gamers, many of which were no doubt buying the game for the second or third time since the 16-bit original's 1995 launch.

European gamers gobbled up Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII with half a million units sold in the territory, although the region came in third in overall sales for Square Enix. The US actually proved to be its most lucrative market with 1.69 million games sold, versus 1.51M for Japan. Part of the success in the West: The Last Remnant and Infinite Undiscovery, which sold better in the States than anywhere else.

[Via Siliconera]

Source

Tags: chrono-trigger, chrono-trigger-ds, DS, fy09, Microsoft, Nintendo, sales, sales-figures, software-sales, square-enix, Wii, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (49)

We need those guys to buy gta:cw and madworld too lol.

Like I have said before: even Chrono Trigger debuted with less sales than GTA.

DS games have huge legs... I think that the DS is the system with the software with bigger legs that I have ever seen, kinda like the PS2.

GTA will be a million seller for sure...

And MadWorld is already at 250,000 worlwide. I bet it will be like deBlob and Boom Blox, and some other titles... it will reach the platinum status eventually.

What I don't like though, is that titles like no more heroes and the like may have reached around 1mil, but the price of the titles dropped to 20 before they get there.

That has more to do with the stores selling them then with anything else. They want them to move so they drop the price based on a formula they have. in the end they still have to give the money owed to the developer, so they get there money, it's just the store that gets less.

So much for not making money on remakes huh?

That's an extremely sad number for a port with almost 0 improvements. The only good thing that could possibly come from this is it would give them more incentive to do a ps3 remake of FF 7, but knowing Square-Enix they would just port the regular game over and add a new dungeon to call it "new".

0 improvements?

It has new endings... a new dungeon, a better translation, and all the animations from the PS1 version.

Oh boy, new endings to a game that already had a billion to begin with.

I agree, Chrono Trigger should have sold much more, and I think it will over time, unless they stop production and the carts become collectibles...maybe my SNES cart will regain some value.

25 hours in and things are getting really good.

The game is timeless. No pun intended.

they should do that, just to piss you off

Nook...

I think that tmac was "sad" about those numbers because it was a high number, not because he thought that it sold poorly.

But don't worry, he is the official Nintendo hater, so, his comment is not a surprise.

Hey, tmac, how do I reset my password if I've forgotten it?

on ps3? No idea, I've never tried to do it before.

No, on Joystiq. Does anybody know?

"The game is timeless. No pun intended."

You're not fooling anyone. Of course that pun was intended, or you wouldn't have mentioned it. (Yes, I'm one of those pedants who think the phrase "no pun intended" and the word "literally" should be excised from the English language. So sue me.)

And 790k is a very respectable number, I think. It could have been higher or lower, of course, but that has always been and will always be the case.

I don't know, it would take so much time and energy to do a remake of a game as large as Final Fantasy 7 on PS3 it would be better to just make a whole new game. The reason all the Final Fantasy games before 5 keep getting remade is that it doesn't really take much time and effort to do so. The only reason I'd really want 7 remade is to see how gorgeous some of the locations would look on PS3, particularly Gold Saucer and Cosmo Canyon. It's a shame Advent Children didn't get to most of the more interesting locations, but then again I was ashamed for even buying the movie, so I guess it's not that much of a surprise.

Oh, and also, I never had the chance to fully play Chrono Trigger until the DS port (emulators are a no go with me), so I don't see how there's anything sad about it.

Square denies up and down that a FF7 remake will happen. It's the only game of their 3D series I could see getting the upgrade, not to mention it would be free money. If they made a PS3/FF7 bundle availabe, they wouldn't be able to keep them on the shelves. That idea is on me, Sony/SE.

Alot of people in North America bought Final Fantasy 4.

Yeah, Europe, too. And in Japan it's basically nothing.

And of course, Dragon Quest sells like crazy in Japan and very poorly everywhere else.

Check the release dates and the dates in which this data was collected. Final Fantasy IV was released in Japan four months before the start of fiscal year 2009, and Dragon Quest V had only been available in the west about a month prior to it ending.

So I guess japanese don't really liked FFTA2 on the DS....

And for good reason. So disappointed by that one.

These figures aren`t for the life of the game - they`re for the 2009 fiscal year which started April 1st, 2008 and ended March 31, 2009.

FFTA2 was released in the 2008 fiscal year (October 2007) in Japan, and was old by the time April rolled around. Outside Japan though it was released in the 2009 fiscal year, so shows up on this chart.

It sold 320k in Japan, which is far from badly.

FFTA2 WAS AWESOME
FFTA2 IS AWESOME
FFTA2 WILL BE AWESOME

Ewwww thank god. Wouldn't want them to do anything new with the franchise. :P

Your analysis shows a complete inability to read bar graphs. The "total" figure you cite refers not to the total games sold, but to other titles.
Learn to do 4th grade math, then come back and see me.

You`re completely right.
The total figures for each region are those written to the right, and the figures in parentheses are the total figures for the 2008 fiscal year.

The "other" figures are for OTHER games not listed by title. At the very least it should be clear from adding up the figures from the other games that it cannot be the total. (Just the top two games knock the number over for the US...)

Japan is the most lucrative market with 5.19 million selling. The US, however, only sold 3.71...

Please guys - read the chart, and if you can`t figure it out have someone translate it for you.

See, that just prooves it...yes it does, Americans are officially more obsessed with gaming then us :D

I kid I kid

But it is suprising to see how Crisis Core sold.

And Square, isn't it about time you released Dissidia over here? I've been waiting for ages, keep me waiting any longer and I won't bother wth the bloody game ¬_¬

Released in August

Europe appears to have loved Crisis Core. I don't know why that's so surprising to me. It just seems like Europeans don't ever play more of anything than we North Americans.

Damn....by comparison those 360 exclusives look like shit.....

Other = total? O_o

My girlfriend bought me a copy.

Why was I voted down? The figure clearly states that the 1.51 and 1.69 million figures are for other titles. If this isn't clear enough on its own, Dragon Quest V and Dissidia sold a combined 2.13 million in Japan, reading off the totals given, exceeding the alleged 1.51 million cited in the article above. What's worse, the total figures are given explicitly (albeit in Japanese, but clearly enough to anyone who can do basic math) at the right of the graph as 5.19 and 3.17 million in sales for Japan and North America, respectively.

I have never seen Chrono Trigger on the shelves in Australia. The game apparently had an incredibly small production run and is now deleted. You can't complain about poor sales if you have nothing to sell to people who want to buy it.

hey SE, it be cool if you had some ps3 sales up there

Eh, f**k SE, the way I see this, is its a response from the C&D order thrown at CT:CE and other fan-gamees (which are really no different than what you can find on newgrounds and such).

They just showing "Look how many copies of CT: DS we sold, this wouldn't of happened if CE released" type of crap.

I know i know, crazy conspiracy theorist is crazy, but I'm in a mood where I want things to burn.

and I wasn't one of them ;)

Your loss.

I finally finished DQV a few weeks ago. I thought the story was great for the most part and different than most typical JRPGs. But 3/4 into the game, the story almost drops off entirely and you have to do a lot of level grinding before completing the last dungeon. I thought the game was pretty epic for a 15 year old JRPG, but that damn ending was pretty anti-climatic.

The magic balancing was weird too. The two members of your party that have healing magic are also your strongest fighters. The other party members that are strong with magic only have status and attack magic. It was a little annoying, but not game breaking.

Any info on TWEWY?

"Normally I would have bought any Ds game with a total score of over 9.0 like Chinatown wars but to be honest I was never a fan of the GTA series with the exception of IV,yeah I'm in the minority that liked the dramatic story." Same here, but CW had some good dialogue too (except for one mission, when it's clearly written by someone else - and hey, he's in the credits! - who tries too hard to be funny) and I really liked it :) Get.

Mr. ESC: DQV is excellent. Probably my favorite in the main DQ series, for whatever that's worth. I've actually played it to completion twice (once to marry Bianca, once to marry Deborah).

I just bought Chronno Trigger a week ago and I am LOVING the game.

Let's see, I bought

FF IV
FF VII: Crisis Core

Will be getting:

Dissida
Crono Trigger

Hey Square, wanna know why your sales are down over 30%? Because you don't release good console games anymore. Also I'm still waiting for an answer on the PS3 version of The Last Remnate.

"Dissidia sold more units than Crisis Core? That's just weird."

These figures are for the fiscal year 2008, not the total sales figures of each game. Crisis Core was released in 2007 in Japan for instance. In total, it sold 1,92 million units worldwide.

More people outside of Japan should play Dragon Quest.

If you people keep Dragon Quest IX in Japan, I swear to God.....

This the same Square Enix that whined about "piracy" hurting sales of this game before it was even released to stores? Yes, yes, don't celebrate that you made money. Just whine that you could have made more.

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790K people bought Chrono Trigger DS (and other Square sales figures)

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