Being a personal fan of data, I like to take a second look at any conclusions gained from data insights. The latest conclusion being widely accepted is Media Sales numbers are showing that Bayonetta 2 is selling poorly in Japan.

Let’s take a closer look at why this claim is being made. First Media Create’s expected sales figure reports that Bayonetta 2 has sold 38,828 units in its first 2 days. Meanwhile Bayonetta 1 was expected to have sold roughly 135,000 copies on the PS3 and 64,000 on the XB360 in its first week in Japan as mentioned in the screenshot below.. Assuming Media Create was reporting on the first week of sales for Bayonetta 1 this would mean 4 days worth of sales. Overall this seems like Bayonetta 2 is not living up to its predecessor’s numbers. However in Japan, many reputable sources, including Media Create also report on a number of expected stock sold as a % which indicates how sales are trending with the publisher’s expectations. Obviously if a game sells say 10% of its stock in its first week then it’s selling far less than expected. The most famous sites which report expected numbers and ratio of stock sold are Media Create, Famitsu and Dengeki.

Now let’s take a look at a few other Nintendo exclusive titles and how they sold:

Media Create reported that Yoshi’s New Island’s expected sales figure for the first week was 58,285 units sold in 4 days and pushed 57.59% of its initial stock.

Similarly Media Create also reported that in its first day of sales Mario Kart 8 was expected to have sold 325,892 units or a ratio of 50-55% of its initial stock. Now taking a look at Bayonetta 2’s expected stock sold, Media Create reports that it moved 67.9% of its initial stock which is better than both Yoshi’s New Island in 4 days or Mario Kart 8’s initial sales day.

(Please note that the linked Media Create site automatically updates every week so a screen-shot is shown below.)

In conclusion I\’m not going to argue that Bayonetta 2 is selling great but neither will I say sales are poor. When looking at other Nintendo exclusive games, the numbers all seem to line up with Nintendo’s expectations and so the message I would offer to take away from all this is the game is selling fine. Additionally all these figures don\’t include downloaded numbers and I didn\’t even mention how Bayonetta 2 has already reached 2% of its Japanese user base (assuming 1.91M Wii U in Japan) while a game like Yoshi’s New Island which sold many more copies upon release only accounts for 0.4% of its Japanese user base. (assuming 16.23M 3DS in Japan)