Hi guys.
As some will probably guess by my avatar, I love musou games.
Therefore I have written this report on the sales of Musou games over the year.
This report looks at three things
- Yearly sales of Musou games
- Revenue for Musou games
- Number of games/new IP's released per year
Please read it and enjoy it.
Musou sales in Japan 2000-2014
The following report looks at Musou sales in Japan between 2000 and 2014. The chart below shows three things, how many units of Musou games were sold each year in Japan, How much revenue was generated each year by musou games and how many musou games were released each year.
This report will show how this chart was calculated and analyse the results. I hope you all find it interesting.
(Red is sales, Green is revenue)
Methodology
Game
The games used in the chart above are only Musou games. This includes the Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors, Warriors Orochi, Dynasty Warriors Gundam, Fist of the North Star, One Piece pirate warriors, Warriors of Troy and Hyrule Warriors games. I have included all musou games whether they be on PS3, PSP or Xbox. I have not included games like Bladestorm or Dynasty Tactics as I do not class them as musou games. Each game is seperated by release date. For example Dynasty Warriors Gundam for PS3 came out in 2007, therefore the sales are added to the 2007 total. The PS2 version was released in 2008 and therefore the PS2 version sales has been added to 2008. Same applies to Dynasty Warriors 6.
Sales
Sales data is from various sources such as Famitsu, Media Create, Dengeki and KOEI themselves. The data for Japan is highly accurate. Here is the method I used to calculate yearly sales of musou games- Dynasty Warriors 3 was released in 2001 and sold 1,150,000 units. These units were sold across the main release, the re release for the same console one year later and the BEST version released after as well. Despite this all the sales for DW3 have been included in the 2001 total as this is when the game was released. So therefore as you can see the total for 2001 is 1,150,000 as that is when DW3 was actually released.
Revenue
Revenue is worked out on a per game basis. For example, Dynasty Warriors for PS3 may have an RRP of ¥7560, yet the PSP version may only retail at ¥5040. This is why in 2008 there is more sales than 2007 but less revenue. Because in 2008 the games were not high value and revenue was not high for the games released that year. In 2007 there were more high profile high budget releases. Revenue is worked out for each game individually then added together to create the year total.
Conclusion
KOEI released it's first 3D action musou game in 2000 with the aim to sell one million copies worldwide. In Japan the game was successful and sold 350,000. Worldwide the game fell just short of a million and so KOEI developed and released their second musou game, Dynasty Warriors 3 with the same aim of hitting one million worldwide. This time the game was hugely successful and not only did the game sell one million worldwide, it sold over one million in Japan. Thus the musou genre was born and started to grow in Japan.
In 2002, KOEI released Dynasty Warriors 3 Xtreme Legends, despite selling close to a million, revenue was low for the game due to the fact it was a spin off and was being sold at a lower price. In 2003 KOEI released two musou games in one year which pushed sales to 1.83m in Japan and revenues hit ¥10,982m. That's an average of ¥5,500m per game in revenue. 2004 saw the release of 4 musou games including one new IP, Samurai Warriors. This was KOEI best selling year yet with over 2.1m sales in Japan and revenues of ¥11,994m. Despite the release of two more musou games compared to the year before revenue had not increased in the same way and the average revenue per game had actually dropped to around ¥3,000m per game. This was due to the fact that only one high budget game was released in 2004 (SW) and the rest were all spin off games.
In 2005 sales fell slightly but revenue was maintained thanks to high profile releases such as Dynasty Warriors 5 and Dynasty Warriors 5 XL. However, there were the only two big games to be released that year so it's understandable why sales fell. In 2006 Musou game sales and revenue fell heavily despite the same number of games being released as in 2004/5. This drove the average revenue per game down even further to just ¥1565m. Samurai Warriors 2 was the only noticeable release in 2006 and it performed half as well as the original release which is why sales were so low for 2006.
In 2007 KOEI released 2 extra musou games taking the total number of musou games up to 6. Over 1.87m units were sold in 2007 and whilst this wasn't the highest performing sales year it was the highest revenue in one year that KOEI ever had, over ¥14,450m. This was due to two new high budget IP's, Warriors Orochi and Dynasty Warriors Gundam. Along with Dynasty Warriors 6 these were the three high profile releases in 2007 and these games drove sales and revenue up. The average revenue per game for 2007 was around ¥2,450 though which meant that KOEI were having to sell more games to get to the same level as of revenue as they were getting to in 2003/4 with less games being sold.
2008 saw musou sales increase but revenue stayed the same. This was due to a number of repeat sales on older games. For example, Warriors Orochi, Dynasty Warriors 6, Warriors Orochi and Dynasty Warriors Gundam were all released on PSP/PS2 to create repeat sales. As these were re released/ported games the sale price was lower and therefore revenue didn't increase while sales did in 2008. 2009 saw the release of KOEI's flagship title, Samurai Warriors 3. However because the game was sold on the Wii, a platform with little to no Musou fans, sales were very low and revenues even lower. The only other notable release in 2009 was Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce which sold just under 400,000 units but revenues were low due to it being a cheap PSP title. Average revenue per game was now at ¥1,450m which was very low compared to the ¥3,000m average revenue per game in 2004.
Between 2007-2009, KOEI had released 6 musou titles per year. In 2010 KOEI only released four musou games including a new IP, Fist of the North Star. The game sold very well with 660,000 units sold through. This caused revenues to be higher than in 2009 despite sales being lower. The average revenue per game in 2010 was now at around ¥2,400m which was much closer to 2004 and 2007's average revenue per game. 2011 saw KOEI go all out and release 10 musou games in one year. This led to sales of over 2.11m units which was KOEI's best selling year yet in terms of Musou games. Despite this, it meant that the average revenue per game had decreased massively to the same as 2009 (¥1440m). Dynasty Warriors 7 was the highest grossing game in 2011 with ¥3742m in revenues. Dynasty Warriors 4 remains KOEI's highest grossing game to date with ¥8500m in revenue. 2011 matched 2007's sales and revenue but had to release 6 more games to achieve this. So really shows that sales per game and revenue per game was low in 2011.
In 2012 KOEI introduced One Piece Pirate Warriors which was KOEI's third best selling IP after Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors. The game sold 860,000 units on PS3 and allowed KOEI to have a fairly good year in terms of sales. 2013 saw a decrease in sales and revenue but this was due to less games being released. This took the average revenue per game to around ¥1,850m which was slightly higher than 2012 which was ¥1650m per game.
It's clear that Musou games are not selling in the same capacity that they were back during the PS2 era. In fact Dynasty Warriors sales have more than halved the amount sold on the PS3 compared to the PS2. Despite this, sales and revenue per year has been fairly high when compared to 2003-2005. But this has come at a price, KOEI have had to develop many new IP's to keep the musou series selling and has had to release more than 6 musou games per year to get to the same amount of revenue and sales that they had in 2001-2005 when they were previously releasing between 2-4 games per year. The average revenue per game has dropped considerably and It's really only a new IP that will cause a spike in sales in revenue. 2014 is currently looking like another 2006 where sales and revenue will be very low and that is understandable due to the transition between next gen consoles just like in 2006. One thing KOEI has done this generation is release DLC to extend the life of each game and to create additional revenue streams for each game. So even though the revenue per game is lower, KOEI are doing everything they can to maximise.
One final thing worth mentioning is that the cost of development is ever increasing, and KOEI are developing many more games whilst sales and revenue just isn't growing YOY. So even though sales and revenue is the same or higher than they were in 2003-2005 it doesn't mean that the cost to develop the games is the same. It's likely that the cost of development is higher now and KOEI need to develop many more games to get sales to the same level as before.
The bottom line is that Musou is still popular in Japan, not as popular as it once was but it still sells and those sales are now split across many different IP's which means that sales are still just as high as they were in 2003-2004. The main difference being is that KOEI need to release many more games for the sales to add up and for revenue to be high where as in 2004 KOEI could easily rely on just a couple of games to do the same thing. Musou is on a decline in 2014 and I don't see us ever getting back to the revenue and sales levels of 2004, 2008 or 2011 unless KOEI freshen up the series and introduce a very good new musou IP. It'll be interesting to see what happens in the future.
EXTRA
Average revenue per game for each year.
¥2380m - 2000 (1 Game)
¥7820m - 2001 (1 Game)
¥3025m - 2002 (1 Game)
¥5490m - 2003 (2 Games)
¥3000m - 2004 (4 Games)
¥2380m - 2005 (4 Games)
¥1565m - 2006 (4 Games)
¥2450m - 2007 (6 Games)
¥3525m - 2008 (6 Games)
¥1435m - 2009 (6 Games)
¥2360m - 2010 (4 Games)
¥1450m - 2011 (10 Games)
¥1635m - 2012 (8 Games)
¥1855m - 2013 (6 Games)
Average units sold per game for each year.
0.35m - 2000 (1 Game)
1.15m - 2001 (1 Game)
0.76m - 2002 (1 Game)
0.92m - 2003 (2 Games)
0.52m - 2004 (4 Games)
0.38m - 2005 (4 Games)
0.26m - 2006 (4 Games)
0.32m - 2007 (6 Games)
0.35m - 2008 (6 Games)
0.23m - 2009 (6 Games)
0.31m - 2010 (4 Games)
0.21m - 2011 (10 Games)
0.24m - 2012 (8 Games)
0.27m - 2013 (6 Games)
For more sales information check out the thread here:
http://s13.zetaboards.com/koeiwarriors/topic/7234435/1/
