Fallingshadow, where are you getting the idea of 23 copies per country, do you think Sega was selling it in all 44 European countries? No distributor handled all 44 countries. The PAL version was unoptimised and ONLY in English. It was a cheaply ported, limited release for a handful of locations. It's likely almost all of them were sold in the UK.
The availability of limited Warhammer models on the resale market is an apples to oranges to comparison in many ways. Games Workshop has been pumping out miniatures for 50 years, there's proabbly over 10,000 different models and over 100,000,000 made. They have a different sense of attachement. For gamers, reselling funds new experiences. That there's a dozen copies of a £500-£1,000 game on ebay right now, with game collecting blowing up since COVID and YouTube popularising the game, doesn't seem like good evidence of a higher print run, more that people know what they have and don't want to justify a £1,000 game on their shelf (especially when most retro enthusiasts are switching to things like ODEs, MiSTer and emulation anyway).
The number of PAL copies produced was confirmed by Sega producer David Nulty in an interview at The Ringer. The same interview discusses the game with people involved with US localisation and they mention that the US release had 20,000 copies produced for its first run, with a second run of between 2,000 and 5,000 copies. A claim was made in 2007 on the Panzer Dragoon Legacy forum that 999 copies were for sale in Europe. Apparently a magazine back in the day said 999 copies were for sale, though I haven't found which magazine. The things that line up and have sources involved with the game make the most sense. The idea of an English-only limited release being equally divvied up amongst 44 European countries in 1998, and that Warhammer figure resales bear any relevance, is silly.
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Re: CIBSunday: Panzer Dragoon Saga (Saturn)
Fallingshadow, where are you getting the idea of 23 copies per country, do you think Sega was selling it in all 44 European countries? No distributor handled all 44 countries. The PAL version was unoptimised and ONLY in English. It was a cheaply ported, limited release for a handful of locations. It's likely almost all of them were sold in the UK.
The availability of limited Warhammer models on the resale market is an apples to oranges to comparison in many ways. Games Workshop has been pumping out miniatures for 50 years, there's proabbly over 10,000 different models and over 100,000,000 made. They have a different sense of attachement. For gamers, reselling funds new experiences. That there's a dozen copies of a £500-£1,000 game on ebay right now, with game collecting blowing up since COVID and YouTube popularising the game, doesn't seem like good evidence of a higher print run, more that people know what they have and don't want to justify a £1,000 game on their shelf (especially when most retro enthusiasts are switching to things like ODEs, MiSTer and emulation anyway).
The number of PAL copies produced was confirmed by Sega producer David Nulty in an interview at The Ringer. The same interview discusses the game with people involved with US localisation and they mention that the US release had 20,000 copies produced for its first run, with a second run of between 2,000 and 5,000 copies. A claim was made in 2007 on the Panzer Dragoon Legacy forum that 999 copies were for sale in Europe. Apparently a magazine back in the day said 999 copies were for sale, though I haven't found which magazine. The things that line up and have sources involved with the game make the most sense. The idea of an English-only limited release being equally divvied up amongst 44 European countries in 1998, and that Warhammer figure resales bear any relevance, is silly.