Needy Streamer Overload surpasses 1 million units sold (UPDATE 2024/01/14: Over 1.5 Million)

[Iraiza]

Publisher WSS Playground just announced that Needy Streamer Overload/Needy Girl Overdose has surpassed 1 Million units sold. The game launched for PC on January 21st 2022, and for Switch on October 27th 2022.

【NEEDY STREAMER OVERLOAD Reaches 1,000,000 Sales!!!】 This is thanks to everyone supporting KAngel! To celebrate, the game is 50%OFF on various platforms! Get it now!

シェルばんは！ インターネット・エンジェル超てんちゃんだよ♪ 余計な言葉は要らないからシンプルに言うね 超てんちゃんのゲーム NEEDY GIRL OVERDOSEが、販売本数100万本突破 ｷﾀ━━━━━(ﾟ∀ﾟ)━━━━━ !!!!! わたし 100万のオタクに愛される天使になったよ ( ⁎ᵕᴗᵕ⁎ ) †昇天†

Hi Shell! I'm internet angel super-tenchan. I don't need any extra words, so I'll keep it simple. Choten-chan's game NEEDY GIRL OVERDOSE has sold over 1 million units.━━━━━(ﾟ∀ﾟ)━━━━━ !!!!!I became an angel loved by a million otaku. ( ⁎ ᵕᴗᵕ ⁎ ) †Ascension†

Here's a short milestone timeline (not sure if exhaustive):

• 21/01/22: Release Date (PC/Mac).
• 28/01/22: 100,000 copies sold.
• 06/02/22: 200,000 copies sold.
• 03/03/22: 300,000 copies sold.
• 04/04/22: 350,000 copies sold.
• 21/05/22: 450,000 copies sold.
• 22/06/22: 500,000 copies sold.
• 21/08/22: 550,000 copies sold.
• 27/10/22: 600,000 copies sold. Switch Release.
• 23/12/22: 700,000 copies sold.
• 30/06/23: 1,000,000 copies sold.
• 27/07/23: 1,200,000 copies sold.
• 14/01/24: 1,500,000 copies sold.

 

[RPG_Fanatic]

Congrats on the Developers for making a million seller game.

 

[ILikeFeet]

the days where hitting 1M units is worthy of celebration is slowly coming back

 

[KR_EP]

Many sales sleuthing salutations @Iraiza for some impressive OSINT field work. For what its worth, after you posted the previous sales milestone (when a 2nd manga adaptation was announced before its author Itaru Bonnoki had the Runs with My Sick all of their own), I emailed the publisher to inquire about if it had compiled all the sales milestones in a single place. No response.

Media Create Sales: CY 2022 (2022 Jan 03 - 2023 Jan 01)
182./000. [NSW] Needy Girl Overdose <ADV> (WSS Playground) {2022.10.27} (¥3.980) - 15.634 / NEW (8.415 <49,67%>)
First Shipment Estimates: 16,942

*Needy Sales Data Overdose*...domestic retail sale time! Dat Digital Ratio! First shipment estimates meant that 1,308 retail copies remained as of January 1, 2023. However not even OMGkawaiiAngel-chan could save Needy Atlus Overbilled as her streamtabulous PV failed to lift 3rd pillar Soul Hackers 2...2 1 mil. July 7, 2023 is when the anniversary streaming event begins, perhaps it'll have some mew mew new news. Global retail version, free updates, paid DLC, sequel, prequel, interquel, spin off, anime, live action film, 3rd manga... *Overdose Overdose*

 

[Iraiza]

Thanks to @Hartmann for posting about this on the Media Create thread.

『NEEDY GIRL OVERDOSE』が100万本売れるまで。販売本数の50％以上が中国、セールで約64万本を販売【CEDEC2023】 | ゲーム・エンタメ最新情報のファミ通.com

“CEDEC2023”の最終日に実施されたセッション“インディーゲームが100万本売れるまで :『NEEDY GIRL OVERDOSE』の販売データから”の模様をリポートする。

www.famitsu.com

Needy Girl Overdose/Needy Streamer Overload has now surpassed 1.2 million units in sales as of July 27th 2023, and thanks to a recent presentation for CEDEC2023 we have some extra details about its performance, with the most notable being that over 50% of the its sales are from China.

Data as of 2023/7/27:
China - 616.279
Japan - 131.936
America (US) - 113.911
South Korea - 45.187
Others - 310.622

Total - 1.217.935

---
This graph showcases the weekly evolution of the Steam version - the article/talk focuses a lot on the importance of wishlists and of participation in sales events. It features some graphs that showcase the correlation between wishlists and sales, and others that highlight the peaks every couple of months due to various sales, so go check it out if interested.

They go into detail about how sales were particularly strong during Steam's major sales events as well as publisher-specific sales, showing that over half of the game's sales were during a sale and highlighting that the standalone/publisher sales they set were more effective than Steam's seasonal ones, because they typically made them coincide with events like special livestreams, INDIE Live Expo, the launch of the Switch version, or holidays like Golden Week or the Lunar New Year.

Seasonal Sales - 260.269 (21%)
Standalone Sales - 383.733 (32%)
Non-Sales - 573.933 (47%)
Total - 1.217.935


They also go into quite a lot more detail about the sales by sharing exact units sold and regional breakdown for each major sales period since launch.

Spoiler: Steam Seasonal Sales

Summer Sale 2022, from 2022/6/24 to 2022/7/6
China - 15049
Japan - 5569
US - 4093
Other - 19310
Total - 44021

Autumn Sale 2022, from 2022/11/23 to 2022/11/30
China - 12931
Japan - 1982
US - 2452
Other - 7336
Total - 24701

Winter Sale 2022, from 2022/12/23 to 2023/1/6
China - 16087
Japan - 4334
US - 5977
Other - 13692
Total - 40090

Spring Sale 2023, from 2023/3/16 to 2023/3/23
China - 23399
Japan - 3096
US - 2250
Other - 12958
Total - 41703

Summer Sale 2023, from 2022/6/30 to 2022/7/14
China - 53649
Japan - 11740
US - 9247
Other - 35118
Total - 109754

Seasonal Sales - 260.269 (21%)

Spoiler: Publisher/Standalone Sales

First 10% off sale, from 2022/4/4 to 2022/4/12
China - 21269
Japan - 3855
US - 2753
Other - 11549
Total - 39426

First 20% off sale coinciding with the release of the Switch version, from 2022/10/31 to 2022/11/7
China - 29139
Japan - 3546
US - 4846
Other - 17353
Total - 54884

Lunar New Year and first 30% off sale, from 2023/1/20 to 2023/1/27
China - 25768
Japan - 2107
US - 1220
Other - 8093
Total - 37188

Golden Week 2023 and first 40% off sale, from 2023/4/27 to 2023/5/11
China - 32500
Japan - 5236
US - 6387
Other - 30482
Total - 74605

First 50% off sale to coincide with the launch of a new patch that added French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Vietnamese language support. Their graph gives it the same dates as the Golden Week sales, but I believe it happened between 2023/6/17 and 2023/6/29 and then it merged with the summer sale that began on the 30th to make one giant month-long sales period (this is just a guess from looking at the "Price history" chart on SteamDB, as well as the update history showing the new language support added on June 20th)
China - 101063
Japan - 9730
US - 14469
Other - 52368
Total - 177630

Standalone Sales - 383.733 (32%)

 

[KR_EP]

Excellent work as always @Iraiza this is undoubtedly one of the most successful adventure games in recent times, would not be surprised if the forthcoming title by Acquire & Aniplex set to be announced this winter is one of many games influenced by it as well. Gonzo original title & narrative set up caught the eye. Yet its the commitment to following through with the risqué premise & sticking the landing, breaking from the standard VN template which makes it stand out from the myriad of small, medium enterprises that release ADV games on a daily basis. It should also be pointed out the presentation was by Ryuta Onuma, President of Ryu's Office so it's also a case of a SME hiring a firm that specialises in marketing & sales promotion. When combined with robust post-launch adding new endings, its not just about good title happening to sell well for the genre & scope of the project - there's clearly method to the sales madness.

Ryu's Office, of which Mr. Onuma is the president, is a company that provides marketing and promotion services for games, with the motto of providing all kinds of marketing services other than making games.

For NEEDY GIRL OVERDOSE, the mission was to maximize unit sales, and we provided publishing support, marketing and promotion in Japan, China, North America and Europe.

He also served as the point of contact with platformers Valve on Steam and Nintendo on Nintendo Switch, and designed the sales strategy.
...
Source: "NEEDY GIRL OVERDOSE" sold 1 million units. More than 50% of the units sold were in China, and about 640,000 units were sold in sales [CEDEC2023] Famitsu summary via DeepL Translation

But even then, it was expected the subject matter drawing upon Japanese internet culture would primarily appeal to Japanese users. However after it became clear it was garnering wider interest from China (140,000 wish lists in the days after launch, double that of Japan) they were flexible enough to change tact & pivot its marketing strategy towards Chinese speaking audiences. Live broadcast & subtitles for the Internet Overdose theme song has seen it go from 8.6 to 60 million views on BiliBili. South Korea is also mentioned. Below lesson is really key:

Although it is very difficult to conduct large-scale promotions in all regions, the company believes that by observing the actual responses of users, such as wish list trends, it will be able to identify the necessary measures. It is very important to determine areas of focus by carefully observing user response and flexibly changing policies as necessary.

In addition to participating in Steam's big seasonal sales, it is also important to participate in their own sales. Especially in the case of independent sales, it is important to design and implement promotions that match the timing of the sale. Through such comprehensive efforts, he said, it is possible to maximize the number of sales worldwide.

If that overall number for Japan also includes eShop & retail copies then 131,936 - 16,942 = 114,994 for the number of domestic PC/eShop downloads + any second retail shipment. If not then we can add its 131,936 + 16,942 = 148,878 in Japan plus any eShop downloads & additional retail shipments after January 1, 2023. Overall 1,217,935 + 16,972 = 1.234,907.

Media Create Sales: CY 2022 (2022 Jan 03 - 2023 Jan 01)
182./000. [NSW] Needy Girl Overdose <ADV> (WSS Playground) {2022.10.27} (¥3.980) - 15.634 / NEW (8.415 <49,67%>)
First Shipment Estimates: 16,942

First 20% off sale coinciding with the release of the Switch version, from 2022/10/31 to 2022/11/7
Japan - 3546

The slides being about Steam combined with Japan numbers at the launch of the Switch version mean it doesn't include them. Opening at 8,415 at retail in Japan but only 3546 total unless its digital only. A very strong result on Steam either way, Switch port is a sales bonus plus revenue from manga & merch! Ryu's Office can always do a Switch/eShop presentation.

 

[Iraiza]

The game has now hit 1.5 million units sold ahead of its 2nd anniversary next week

150万本｜にゃるら

　遂に2周年記念放送が発表されました。 　このための準備で死ぬほど頑張ってきつつ、全然今も収録があり、なんならこの日記すら移動しながら時間の隙間で書いている。 　まあ2周年の内容に関しては、その時に書けばいいわけで、今回は見えている情報として「150万本」の話をしましょう。 【めちゃ豪華】超てんちゃん2周年+150万本すごい配信！！【今年もやばい！】 今年もよろ www.youtube.com 　150万本の話をしましょう……というかお前のゲームだろうが！　と思

note.com

ジェルばんは！ついに150万本エンジェル・超てんちゃんだよ♫1月19日21時！！！ニディガ展2（ツー）の前にドでかい配信やるぞ！！！！2年目でめちゃくちゃ気合い入れてきたから絶対見なね新曲あるよ……( ⁎ᵕᴗᵕ⁎ )

DeepL translation:

Gel hanya!
It's finally 1.5 million Angel Super Tenchan ♫

January 19 at 9pm!
I'm going to do a huge delivery before the Nidiga Exhibition 2 (two) ！！！！
We've been really hyped up for the second year, so be sure to watch .
There's a new song: ......