Early numbers are concerning, but the full picture isn't yet painted

I don't expect an Olive Garden to do well in Italy.

With all the restaurants that boast hundreds of "Mom's secret prep" or "Granny's special seasonings," buy one take one home promotions just aren't going to be enough of a lure to get people to choose a corporate chain over local specialty cooking.

If I read about an OG opening in Italy and then closing within a month's time, I wouldn't jump to any conclusions about the overall success of the chain. If Darden reported that Olive Garden sales in the United States were suddenly horrible and many locations were closing down, I'd be a little quicker to get out and nab some last minute bread sticks.

Now that you're craving OG bread sticks, let's talk about Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite. The game officially dropped just over a week ago on September 19th, and a few sales indicators have rolled out.

According to Media Crate Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite has sold just over 8,000 copies on the PlayStation 4 in Japan. Contrast that with Pokken Tournament DX's 53,395-sale first week, and it doesn't take a ton of imagination to see how people might very well take this figure and blow it up into something it isn't.

Infinite isn't fairing too well in the United Kingdom either, as it came in twelfth on the overall charts according to Metro Gaming. Eight thousand units sold on PS4 in Japan is not great, and a relatively low performance in the UK is not encouraging, but these are also not the death sentences that social media posts might make them out to be.

The Marvel vs. Capcom franchise has flourished most in North America, and so we're looking to NA sales for the real make or break numbers. As of the writing of this article, said numbers have not yet been released.

Looking back at Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, only 600,000 units sold worldwide in the first four months after the game's release. This number was low in terms of expectations, but some reports incorrectly claimed that sales were drastically lower, down around the 30,000 mark.

I'm not at all proposing that the 8k sales reports for MvCI are false, but rather trying to illustrate how alluring bad news can be, and how quickly it can be inflated.

If you've been following MvCI's development over the last year, (and Street Fighter 5's over the last 17 months) you know that many fighting game players are not the happiest with Capcom right now. As such, a game like Marvel Infinite is perfectly primed to be a catalyst for perpetuation of bad news.

My takeaway is this: wait and see before passing any major judgement. Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 sales continued to grow from that 600k mark to an eventual 1.2 million units worldwide (on top of the 2.2 million that the original MvC3 sold).

We also saw a somewhat similar narrative with Street Fighter 5's week one Steam sales being relatively low. The game would go on to eventually hit the 1.7 million mark, which isn't the greatest, but certainly isn't flop-status either.

Infinite very well could be a flop, but history has taught us that it's much too early in the game to call it right now, especially off of numbers from Japan and the UK for a game that is expected to sell best in North America.