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Originally Posted by einhorn303
Isn't "#3 for the studio" actually...really good? I mean, it's outselling Evangelion DVD's and lots of other stuff with big mainstream appeal.
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It doesn't mean much of anything. If the overall success of the company is very low, #3 just indicates that Clannad is doing better than the rest. Evangelion is a very old title, and the last reprint (still very expensive) occurred almost a year ago, so you can't really expect it top charts.
Another inconclusive indicator is sell-through. If a product sells out both online and at retail, we can conclude that demand met or exceeded supply. However, supply is based on retail expectations/pre-orders in the first place.
I'll use hypothetical numbers here, but let's say that at the time of licensing, a publisher hoped to ship 2000 units of "Series A" to retailers. However, because the economy is weak, customer pre-orders are low, and competing titles have been failing, retailers order a mere 500 at launch. Subsequently, 500 eager customers snatch up all available copies, with another 100 waiting for another shipment.
By anecdotal evidence, fans might perceive that "Series A" is a smash hit. However, without real numbers, as well as a gauge of what the company originally expected to sell, it's impossible to draw a real conclusion. We know that the title is performing better than what retailers expected, but we don't know if it's truly a success (and in this example, 600 units represent only 30% of what was originally expected. It might be enough to break even, and it might be doing better than the rest of the company's lineup, but it's hardly a noteworthy hit).