Some of the first reports about sales figures are starting to come in and it doesn’t look good for the Wii U exclusive, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE. The game has reportedly only managed to move 50,000 SKUs at retail during June. The game originally launched on June 24th in North America and Europe and on June 25th in Australia.

According to Go Nintendo, they picked up their news from market analyst ZhugeEX from a series of tweets on Twitter, where he states…

“Tokyo Mirage Sessions FE performed as expected at retail in the US during June. Around the 50k mark on Wii U, nothing amazing. “Digital sales of the game should boost that number above during June, but not significantly so. The game didn’t bomb at least.”

ZhugeEX must have a different definition of “bombing” because a game like Paradox Interactive’s Stellaris managed to sell 200,000 copies in a single day, according to PC Gamer, and that’s a fairly niche game in a fairly niche sub-genre.

Stardew Valley almost managed to move several hundred thousand copies over the course of a couple of weeks after release with a nearly non-existent marketing campaign, as noted by Niche Gamer. Within two months the game had sold a million copies.

According to Steam Spy, the indie game RimWorld from Ludeon Studios has already moved 66,000 copies since its debut four days ago on July 15th. It’s already managed to surpass Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE and I’ve never seen RimWorld advertised or promoted anywhere.

Most gamers are saying that 50,000 units being sold for Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE is abysmal. It may be a niche title but something closer to 100,000 would have been a lot more acceptable. In fact, on its first day out in Japan it moved 26,340 copies, as reported by Siliconera.

On the Go Nintendo article, user Artten explains that 50,000 in sales for a game like Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE is not good…

“with a lack luster advertising effort and needless Censorship that went into catering to and audience that’s not there, you end up neglecting the one that is, the anime and J RPG fandom. And that fandom is a lot bigger than 50,000 on the Wii U. Frankly I believe money spent on the censoring of this game was wasted, and if it had been spent more effectively on targeted advertising, sales would probably be better.”

It’s true that the game was needlessly censored from top to bottom (literally, in regards to the clothing). Some entire segments were removed (such as the DLC where the characters appeared in swimwear) and lots of the cleavage, bare midriffs and thighs were also censored on the female characters. In one quite bizarre instance the localization team even removed the female pelvic bones from the character meshes in Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE.

Artten makes a good point that the money spent censoring the game, removing content, paying artists and modelers to completely change entire costumes and characters, all could have gone into marketing the game instead.

It was also suggested that Nintendo should consider hiring XSeed Games to do the localization for them when it comes to releasing titles in the West, because right now Nintendo seems to be utilizing methods that only seems to turn gamers off from purchasing their titles. Heck, with the import sales of Dead or Alive Xtreme 3, it shows that thousands upon thousands of gamers (as noted by Getmatsu) – even in the West – are willing to pay to experience a Japanese title that isn’t censored.