Fire Emblem Fates sells 400K copies in the U.S. despite just 9 days on market

Nintendo has turned Fire Emblem into a hit franchise.

The publisher revealed today that the strategy role-playing release sold 400,000 copies at physical retailers and on the 3DS eShop in the United States in just over a week, according to data from industry-tracking firm The NPD Group. That was enough to make the game the third best-selling release across all systems in the States if you combine the sales for Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright, Conquest, and Special Edition. Even if you don’t combine these, Birthright cracked the top 10 for software sales on its own. For Nintendo, this is the latest series it has turned into a blockbuster after slowly building up interest in Fire Emblem in the West for years. This should aid the company’s efforts to navigate the $99.3 billion worldwide gaming business as it looks to transition to mobile and the NX followup to Wii U and 3DS.

“The [Fire Emblem] games took two top-10 spots on the best-sellers list [by SKU] from the NPD Group, which tracks U.S. video game sales,” reads a Nintendo press release. “This far outpaces 2013’s Fire Emblem Awakening game, the series’ previous record-holder in the United States, and is a testament to both the longstanding popularity and rapidly growing fan base of the franchise.”

Nintendo now plans to shift that momentum into downloadable content with the impending release of a third campaign for the game called Revelation. The publisher is only selling this content through its eShop store and as part of the Special Edition bundle that also includes both Birthright and Conquest. Nintendo is also planning to release weekly DLC to support the game through the rest of winter and into spring.