Final Fantasy XIII Sells 450,000 Units

Vgchartz.com – A very strong start on day one in the America’s for the latest Final Fantasy title with two thirds of sales on PS3.

Preliminary day one sales are in for Final Fantasy XIII, and with around 290,000 units sold on PS3 and 160,000 units sold on Xbox360 it looks like the title is a success. With recent reports of 5 million units shipped worldwide, that likely breaks down to two million in Japan and around 1.5 million in each of the Americas and Other Regions (Europe, Asia, Africa, Middle East, Australia).

A day one figure of 450,000 should increase by around 40-50% by the end of the week meaning that around 45% of the initial shipment would have sold through in week one, with the rest of the shipment likely to last through to the end of April. The game launches in other regions on Friday and VGChartz expects a similar figure of around 500,000 units to be sold in the first couple of days with the PS3 version leading by at least 2:1.

The last Final Fantasy title to be released on home consoles was Final Fantasy XII on PS2 which sold 570,000 units in the Americas and 420,000 units in Other Regions in week one. Based on the day one info we have for XIII in the Americas and expectations for the remainder of the week, final sales should come in at around 15-20% higher overall, but around 20-25% less if you just compare the PS3 version alone. This opens up an interesting debate as to whether the 360 version took sales from the PS3 version or added sales overall to the game – personally I’d suggest an element of both!

On the hardware front, both consoles saw small boosts yesterday – slightly more on Xbox360 due to the exclusive and heavily advertised Final Fantasy XIII Elite Bundle and don’t forget that both consoles are still coming down from the strong Battlefield sales last week and also anticipation for God of War III this coming week (in the case of PS3) so hardware boosts and declines are hard to attribute to just one game in a month as busy as this.

Keep checking back as VGChartz will bring you final week one sales next week and can update this article with day one figures for Other Regions tomorrow.