It seems that reports of Street Fighter IV‘s sell out in Japan weren’t exactly accurate, as the game not only is reported to be readily available but also isn’t exactly topping sales charts either.
When Street Fighter IV hit store shelves in Japan last week (it’s due in the US and Europe this week), Capcom was quick to celebrate its brisk sales by declaring that the game was not just selling well but “in fact SOLD OUT in Japan” and that “they were totally overwhelmed by the demand.” However, the ever-skeptical Cheap Ass Gamer found that a bit hard to swallow, considering they had just walked into a store on release day and picked up a copy with ease.
Admitting that “it is possible (although highly unlikely) that in the last 24 hours, every copy in the country was gobbled up,” they decided to investigate. After combing through retailers both online and off, Cheap Ass Gamer’s CheapyD found that the game was readily available and, in fact, not sold out in any stores. Capcom went on to revise its initial statement to say that every “day one” copy had been sold, but again, Cheap Ass Gamer couldn’t accept it.
“This revised statement is just as a preposterous as the original,” CheapyD wrote. “How could Capcom know if every one of the thousands of stores in the entire country sold all their copies on day one? And, in less than 24 hours, all this information was conveyed back to SFIV‘s producer (during the SFIV event in LA) and all of Japan’s stores were fully restocked.”
Whoever’s side of the story you believe, the numbers show that the game is definitely selling well, even if it’s not at the top of the sales charts. The PS3 version sold 79,000 copies while the 360 version sold 37,000, both nabbing first and second for Thursday new release sales behind the new Mario & Luigi game for the DS, which took in 291,000 in sales, according to Magicbox. Capcom still has plenty to pop Cristal over, though – who was expecting a fighting game to beat out a Mario game for the DS in Japan?
