Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero has become a big and welcome win for Bandai Namco at a time where “some overseas-developed titles had a rough start.” In new financial reports, the publisher says the recently released fighting game “saw outstanding sales,” and that was largely thanks to overseas fans.
In a presentation which inexplicably reuses the same slide four times, Bandai highlights Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero as a standout success in its entertainment unit, echoing Dragon Ball’s “large contributions” to its toys and hobby sector. The game passed 3 million copies sold within 24 hours of launch, and became the biggest Dragon Ball Steam launch ever before it was even officially released.
In a separate, Japanese (machine translated) report, Bandai adds that approximately 90% of total sales for Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero came from players in Europe and North America. The company also touches on the different ways it promoted the game, focusing on social networking pushes in some regions and in-person events in others.
The biggest contributing factor, of course, was probably the fact that the game is fun. Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is currently sitting at 34,000 91% user reviews on Steam, and you know you’ve got people hooked if they’re pushing through obscene difficulty spikes with a smile on their face.
This figure is closely mirrored in another report collecting total and Japan-specific IP sales. Dragon Ball saw 140.6 billion Yen worth of sales this year, but in Japan’s toys and hobby business specifically, the IP has generated 23 billion Yen in the same period – an unsurprising figure that again illustrates how global Dragon Ball really is. Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero is only the latest example of this in action, but likely one of the clearest examples too.