According to Media Create, the first week sales of Macross Frontier: Itsuwari no Utahime Blu-ray were 152,699 copies. However, this record high number has been omitted from Oricon Blu-ray sales ranking because it was bundled with PS3 game “Macross Trial Frontier” and sold as a game software. Bandai Namco Group has taken advantage of the sales network of game media, which is much wider than that of anime media.
The new strategy would expand the anime market, but it may cause a confusion in the statistics, which lack large portion of Blu-ray sales. Similar problem has already arisen in the DVD market. The OVAs bundled with manga books (eg. Mahou Sensei Negima! Shiroki Tsubasa Ala Alba, Goku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei) are counted as “books” and not included in the DVD sales data.
Sources: Anime!Anime!, 4Gamer
ref. the DVD sales of Macross F Movie I were 21,040 copies.
Japan’s Weekly DVD Ranking for Oct 4 – 10
