According to the site VGChartz.com, Lost Odyssey sold over 101,277 copies in its first week in the United States. It's a very strong start for Sakaguchi's latest JRPG epic. I hope the game will continue to sell well, and encourage Mistwalker to continue making games like it. Good sales will also discourage them from paying any attention to the largely misinformed/misguided/ignorant reviews that the game has been getting from the general gaming press.
In other news, the Xbox 360 version of Devil May Cry 4 continues to sell very well, and is number 1 on the chart. You may ask, why isn't this the headline? Well, DMC4 is expected to do well; it got great reviews and has quite a large fanbase...so the game selling well isn't really news. Lost Odyssey selling well IS definitely news, because this game had poor reviews from the gaming press, but received great buzz from gamers everywhere, as evidenced by the feedback on most gaming forums out there. I expected Lost Odyssey to only do 30,000 in sales, or even worse. I'm quite happy to see that the game surpassed my sales expectations for it. I feel that the game deserves to succeed in the marketplace, and that Mistwalker/Feel Plus deserves to be rewarded for a job well done!
Lost Odyssey selling well in the marketplace also proves another thing: gamers don't pay that much attention to game reviews anymore. With the free exchange of user feedback on the Internet, it seems gamers find it more reliable to get feedback from fellow gamers on whether or not a particular game is worth buying. Game reviews are losing their value in the game industry because, in the end, they're only one opinion from one other gamer, who most of the time doesn't enjoy the genre or the type of game that they're forced to play. Why listen to one gamer's opinion when you can get many others' opinions online, and make your buying decision based on that? Also, with other sources of information such as game videos, game demos, trailers or site previews, gamers can easily make their own decision on whether or not a particular game is really for them.
Also, I think another reason why the game did well despite the ignorant reviews was because of Microsoft's stronger efforts in marketing the game. With Mistwalker's earlier release, Blue Dragon, Microsoft did not do a good job in pitching the game in the US marketplace, and that's the primary reason why it didn't sell very well. For Lost Odyssey it seems that Microsoft learned their lesson...I'm glad they didn't drop the ball for marketing the game this time around. It wouldn't be in their favor to lose Mistwalker's support...the important thing for the Xbox 360 now is to continue expanding its game lineup and aim for more diversity and range in its game library. With games like Lost Odyssey, the Xbox can move away from its reputation as a 'shooter box' and serve a larger demographic of gamers by providing a wider range of genres and game experiences.