donny2112 said:
Joker 1 was severely supply constrained, and the DS userbase is likely much more Dragon Quest heavy now than it was when Joker 1 launched. A larger first week shouldn't be out of the question.
That logic is sound enough, but I expect a relatively significant decline installment over installment on many DS games going forward both due to franchise exhaustion and the natural transition from new-hit-software driven hardware sales to catalog software driven hardware sales (IE 2005-ish PS2 in US).
I realize that there's relatively little 2010 evidence from which to test my theory. The two major games that would test my theory would, I guess, be Last Window, which favours me, Dragon Quest VI, which is against my idea, and Pokemon Ranger, which favours me. I don't consider Shiren 4 a good example to use because of the publisher change.
But in general I expect DS software to wind down this year both in volume announced and in volume sold. That Nintendo has literally nothing announced for the DS except Pokemon Black/White and Golden Sun only serves to highlight a trend that I feel is probably true of most Japanese publishers this year.
I suspect you'll see it in the US as well. For example, I'd wager (having, of course, no access to NPD numbers for any of these games) that Strange Journey undersold Devil Survivor in the US, amongst other 2010 : 2009 or earlier comparisons to make. I'd also wager that
relatively few high profile DS games that haven't yet been announced will be from this moment on.
Note that I feel all of these processes are entirely natural, especially with an unprecedented device like the DS, and I don't have anyone in particular to criticize.
sphinx said:
I don't see any developer, 1st or 3rd party, doing anything particularly remarkable on any front. Some sequels, yes, but everything is just minor.
Am I the only one seeing this trend?
Evidently not
Seriously though, each major publisher has one or two little titles, and that's about it. Capcom's got MMZC, Ghost Trick, and Okamiden, which is more than most. Square Enix only has DQMJ2, probably the first time since FF3 that they haven't had any announced DS games, Konami pretty much just has (ugh) Love Plus+. As I mentioned there, Nintendo literally just has Golden Sun and Pokemon BW.
Level 5 still has a bunch of stuff (Layton 5, Layton 6, Ninokuni, Fantasy Life, IE3), of course, but I don't expect them to announce any new DS titles besides Layton 6 and maybe another round of IE. In other words, like you said, a few sequels.
