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Sales Data Updated sales numbers for Switch titles: Fire Emblem Engage (1.61M), Kirby's RtDL DX (1.46M), Metroid Prime Remastered (1.09M), and more

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I mean Three Houses seems more designed to appeal to whoever, the summoning makes me feel Engage is meant for the hardcore fans

...though they may not see the summons as fanservice (not the normal FE fanservice I mean references and characters lol) and rather as a pipeline for the many FE Heroes players in which case it def disapoints
 
if Prime 4 is cross-gen it can do well as a decent tech showcase (tho limited by having to be on Switch 1 as well)

If it's the swansong of the system (and not in the way TP or BOTW was, more in the way Mother 3 was (even then Rhythm Tengoku but in terms of grandiosity)) then uh... damn

I might buy Prime 4 despite not caring cause I genuinely worry for Retro's future, it will very likely be 10 years after TF when it drops they need a hit
 
Aurc said:
Folks, I'm starting to think Metroid might be somewhat on the niche side.
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I mean it ain't huge but I think it has grown more this gen than people realize, I mean it's only lagging a bit behind a new FE and Xeno, Dread sold as well as Xeno 2. Monolith has more leeway but I'd argue with Mercury involved I wouldn't worry about 2D Metroid much

Prime 1 doesn't worry me so much as Prime 4, that game as a game has been on the table for almost 6 years, current ver 4 years, that's more then most nintendo games even in the current gen of longer dev times and Retro has been almost shutdown before like...
 
Johna X said:
if Prime 4 is cross-gen it can do well as a decent tech showcase (tho limited by having to be on Switch 1 as well)

If it's the swansong of the system (and not in the way TP or BOTW was, more in the way Mother 3 was (even then Rhythm Tengoku but in terms of grandiosity)) then uh... damn

I might buy Prime 4 despite not caring cause I genuinely worry for Retro's future, it will very likely be 10 years after TF when it drops they need a hit
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I’m praying it’s crossgen now. It’s clear the switch won’t do wonders for these more niche series the way it used to, Prime 4 absolutely needs that new hardware buzz.

Not to mention going by the remaster, it’d be a perfect “showcase” game for the new hardware as well
 
Johna X said:
I mean Three Houses seems more designed to appeal to whoever, the summoning makes me feel Engage is meant for the hardcore fans

...though they may not see the summons as fanservice (not the normal FE fanservice I mean references and characters lol) and rather as a pipeline for the many FE Heroes players in which case it def disapoints
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I think that’s a fair point- clearly the ‘collect your faves’ aspect of FE Heroes has been massively successful to the tune of a billion dollars on mobile, eclipsing the rest of the series. But the simplistic writing in heroes is really only there to serve up the five-minute micro-battles supported by a gacha system and drip-fed content. Whereas in a 30 hour console campaign that’s all available at the start as players paid for it, the writing really needs to underpin it a lot more, or at least realise why people like the epic heroes in the first place. I’m not gonna claim Eireka or Lyn or Ike’s stories in their own games were masterpieces, but the limitations in 2D cut scenes excuse a large party doing nothing much more than a 3D one where you can see how close everyone is and see half a dozen epic heroes do nothing time and again.
 
Yeah I'm pretty bearish on Prime 4 breaking out (relatively speaking) in light of these sales tbh. I'm not even sure it can match Dread unless it's a cross-gen title.

I never thought Prime 1 would hit 2m this quarter but I thought it'd at least get to 1.5m.
 
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Johna X said:
I mean it ain't huge but I think it has grown more this gen than people realize, I mean it's only lagging a bit behind a new FE and Xeno, Dread sold as well as Xeno 2. Monolith has more leeway but I'd argue with Mercury involved I wouldn't worry about 2D Metroid much

Prime 1 doesn't worry me so much as Prime 4, that game as a game has been on the table for almost 6 years, current ver 4 years, that's more then most nintendo games even in the current gen of longer dev times and Retro has been almost shutdown before like...
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Dread is well above the Xenoblade games, I don’t think Engage will catch up with it either.
 
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Johna X said:
I mean it ain't huge but I think it has grown more this gen than people realize, I mean it's only lagging a bit behind a new FE and Xeno, Dread sold as well as Xeno 2. Monolith has more leeway but I'd argue with Mercury involved I wouldn't worry about 2D Metroid much

Prime 1 doesn't worry me so much as Prime 4, that game as a game has been on the table for almost 6 years, current ver 4 years, that's more then most nintendo games even in the current gen of longer dev times and Retro has been almost shutdown before like...
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wasn't Xenoblade always seen as more niche than Metroid?
 
Lugia667 said:
wasn't Xenoblade always seen as more niche than Metroid?
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well I just mean no one is like worried Xeno is dead, tho again Monolith has leeway both due to being own studio and assistance, they may greenlit anything purely as thanks for TOTK help
 
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I don’t know. I feel IS will be happy with Fire Emblem sales for engage.

It didn’t feel like a long game in the end. Cutscenes were short. And very fully were fully animated. Gameplay felt like one and done too, no new game plus. Felt like they wanted folks to play the trial maps afterwards.

Three houses felt like something you needed to replay 4 times. And it was an exhausting game compared to engage
 
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Tbh I'm not sure a "Switch boost" ever exised to quite the extent people act like, obviously to an extent but it may have been more less options so what's new more intriguing + pandemic freetime, above all else you'd think if such thing exists on an inherent level then the appeal of WarioWare as a co-op party game would do better then 1.27 million

Being a primarily 2d or simplistic 3d game I'm not too worried about series future but it feels like the kind of thing that based on every supposed trend would have done at least twice that on Switch

(Tbf we don't know if it's stuck at 1.27 mil, its more they stopped putting it on sales data since May 2022, so as of Mar 22 1.27 mil, means likely hasn't sold more then 2 mil but idk specific requirements)
 
Dardan Sandiego said:
It's okay, what it doesn't have in sales it makes up for in prestige.
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It has a 94 on Metacritic. That's mid. Prestige territory is 95 and above. Nintendo has an image to maintain, after all. It's also $40, rather than the premium $70 price point that Nintendo fans are now accustomed to. To top it all off, Sterling gave it a 7.5.

See you in the "Metroid Prime Remastered is a hidden gem that gamers overlooked" thread.
 
Johna X said:
Tbh I'm not sure a "Switch boost" ever exised to quite the extent people act like, obviously to an extent but it may have been more less options so what's new more intriguing + pandemic freetime, above all else you'd think if such thing exists on an inherent level then the appeal of WarioWare as a co-op party game would do better then 1.27 million

Being a primarily 2d or simplistic 3d game I'm not too worried about series future but it feels like the kind of thing that based on every supposed trend would have done at least twice that on Switch

(Tbf we don't know if it's stuck at 1.27 mil, its more they stopped putting it on sales data since May 2022, so as of Mar 22 1.27 mil, means likely hasn't sold more then 2 mil but idk specific requirements)
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The Switch boost existed well before the pandemic. Lots of games became the best selling games in their series before 2020, like Smash, Zelda, Mario Kart, etc.

It's no secret that Switch software flies off the shelves. It's just not always gonna apply to literally every series.
 
Aurc said:
It has a 94 on Metacritic. That's mid. Prestige territory is 95 and above. Nintendo has an image to maintain, after all. It's also $40, rather than the premium $70 price point that Nintendo fans are now accustomed to. To top it all off, Sterling gave it a 7.5.

See you in the "Metroid Prime Remastered is a hidden gem that gamers overlooked" thread.
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the sad thing is it will be hard to tell if this is a joke or not
 
Mekanos said:
The Switch boost existed well before the pandemic. Lots of games became the best selling games in their series before 2020, like Smash, Zelda, Mario Kart, etc.

It's no secret that Switch software flies off the shelves. It's just not always gonna apply to literally every series.
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I guess I moreso meant obscure series growing, this feels like a console that appeals to a core audience like never before while also being mainstream as the cause for all that, not not a boost but none of those series were comparable with Metroid or FE type stuff
 
I feel really conflicted. I'm a huge fan of Monolith Soft - I want them to do well.

The fact that XC3 is struggling emulate the long-term success of XC2 is disappointing. Ahead of release, we all expected this game to do the business and grow the franchise past where XC2 left it. I want Xenoblade to go from strength to strength.

On the other hand, I must confess that as someone who enjoyed XC2 a lot more than XC3, if this does make Takahashi and co look back and wonder 'what made this game more successful than the others' part of me would be glad.

I do think the console's age has something to do with it, but that's only part of the answer if you ask me. Diagnosing why is difficult because I think the reasons are numerous. I don't think it's down to quality though.

I'd put a cheeky £10 on XC2 having outsold XC3 since the initial sell-through at release, but it'll be a while before we learn that.
 
This report shows how we now think that franchises like Fire Emblem, Xenoblade and Metroid reaching a million in sales is the bare minimum lol. Times have surely changed
 
I’m honestly glad we’re in a situation where selling 1 million and change in a couple months is considered disappointing. Compared to WiiU/3DS era where plenty of games just straight up bombed.
 
carlosfilho said:
This report shows how we now think that franchises like Fire Emblem, Xenoblade and Metroid reaching a million in sales is the bare minimum lol
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Yeah, all things considered, those three franchises are doing well. We simply shouldn’t expect series to be growing in sales entry over entry, it’s not that easy.

Engage didn’t even have that big of a drop off compared to Three Houses, it’ll do fine.

Xenoblade I feel needs to find a way to make its battle systems and gameplay to be more accessible to casuals if it wants to grow as a franchise. Perhaps even transition to a full blown action RPG?

We’ll need to monitor Metroid Prime Remastered for a while longer, since it was shadowdropped, its legs could be affected too.

Johna X said:
I guess I moreso meant obscure series growing
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They have grown, FE, XB and Metroid are in a much better position now than the previous era.
 
Samus95 said:
Is both phisical and digital counted? Because Prime probably did the majority if it sales in digital format
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Unless you think mario kart 8 deluxe did all those sales without even counting digital and has therefore a nearly 100% attach rate...

The entire list includes digital for obvious reasons
 
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meatbag said:
Xenoblade I feel needs to find a way to make its battle systems and gameplay to be more accessible to casuals if it wants to grow as a franchise. Perhaps even transition to a full blown action RPG?
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I bloody hope not. Chasing trends by throwing away a relatively unique battle system in the console space is literally never good for anyone
 
Aurc said:
Folks, I'm starting to think Metroid might be somewhat on the niche side.
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I mean you're right, I still find it a little puzzling why this is the case though. Metroid feels like it should have everything it needs to be a more popular franchise, it just never quite does it though.
 
Another thing that you all aren't taking into a consideration, the current financial situation is not looking so hot. I feel like a lot of people are likely cutting back on gaming as a whole or being very selective with what they purchase.
 
Nintendo's top two franchises. Mario and Zelda are also pictured.

52883048446_dec35f0158_o.jpg
 
As someone who thinks that Three Houses is a way better package than Engage, i can't really feel bad about Engage selling worse.
Engage has better tech (or rather polishing) and map designs, but everything else is just worse compared to TH. Forgettable chars (one of the biggest no-gos in a FE game!), good maps ruined by shitty combat design ("Just make endless reinforcements!"). A story so bad that even i, someone who doesn't need a good story, was bored. The Emblem system felt like it needed some more tweaking, with some Emblems being basically useless ...

I have yet to finish the main story (at final map) and the DLC (not started). But i ... can't just motivate myself to do it, and with Zelda coming up, this will be pushed into the late year, if at all.

Man ... okay i do feel bad. If IS doesn't have it in them what it takes to make a compelling FE, then by all means continue to co-operate with KoeiTecmo.

Kinda okay with MP Remastered sales. Given it's cheap price, it had to do some numbers to reach this.
 
Johna X said:
I mean 1 million in like 2 months for Metroid is fine, that's already a third of Dread
Perhaps the issue is it will be quite front loaded
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I dont think it will be that frontloaded. Being shadowdropped means less people planned their gaming schedule around it and some people don't even know it's out yet. Slowly more people will pick it up that's why I think it will have decent legs .UNTIL we see Prime 4 for the first time, then I expect it to get a pretty sizable bump in sales in anticipation of the new shiny game in the series.
 
Mekanos said:
Older games don't get updates in quarterly reports unless they sell a minimum amount. Have to wait for the yearly report later this year.
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This is the End of FY report. We only get updates on games that didn’t pass 1m within a given FY when the CESA White Paper drops, this year’s edition covering to the end of Calendar Year 2022.
 
MondoMega said:
This is the End of FY report. We only get updates on games that didn’t pass 1m within a given FY when the CESA White Paper drops, and this year’s edition will cover to the end of Calendar Year 2022.
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Yes I know. I was talking about the calendar year report, not fiscal year.

DenkeyKong said:
I dont think it will be that frontloaded. Being shadowdropped means less people planned their gaming schedule around it and some people don't even know it's out yet. Slowly more people will pick it up that's why I think it will have decent legs .UNTIL we see Prime 4 for the first time, then I expect it to get a pretty sizable bump in sales in anticipation of the new shiny game in the series.
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Metroid games have always been frontloaded, and this is a 20 year old game. It's not gonna discover some big new audience.
 
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Raysu Delight said:
I mean you're right, I still find it a little puzzling why this is the case though. Metroid feels like it should have everything it needs to be a more popular franchise, it just never quite does it though.
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All jokes aside: I just chalk it up to Metroid being very different from what most Nintendo fans go in for. It's fine for stuff to be niche, even if I do wish it could get that boost. It's got a lot working against it: a dark sci-fi aesthetic, almost no characters other than the protagonist, the relative difficulty compared to their other franchises, first-person games not being super popular in Japan (I know Resident Evil 7 and 8 have struggled with this a bit), and so on.

All that said, yeah... these numbers for MPR are somewhat of a bummer. It was an amazing release, too, so it's nothing to do with quality, and everything to do with people's gaming preferences.
 
Aurc said:
All jokes aside: I just chalk it up to Metroid being very different from what most Nintendo fans go in for. It's fine for stuff to be niche, even if I do wish it could get that boost. It's got a lot working against it: a dark sci-fi aesthetic, almost no characters other than the protagonist, the relative difficulty compared to their other franchises, first-person games not being super popular in Japan (I know Resident Evil 7 and 8 have struggled with this a bit), and so on.

All that said, yeah... these numbers for MPR are somewhat of a bummer. It was an amazing release, too, so it's nothing to do with quality, and everything to do with people's gaming preferences.
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It's not just about the Nintendo audience though, at this point metroid dread is probably the best selling metroidvania ever, certainly the highest revenue by a long shot, the entire genre just has a hard cap on appeal to the gaming audience regardless of platform
 
Linkstrikesback said:
It's not just about the Nintendo audience though, at this point metroid dread is probably the best selling metroidvania ever, certainly the highest revenue by a long shot, the entire genre just has a hard cap on appeal to the gaming audience regardless of platform
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This is a great point as well, yup.
 
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People dissapointed about Metroid Prime's 1.09M. Meanwhile, I'm over here hoping Re-Boot Camp manages to make at least 300k in sales. I wish my niche series made Metroid numbers.

Aurc said:
Nintendo's top two franchises. Mario and Zelda are also pictured.

52883048446_dec35f0158_o.jpg
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What are the bottom two games?
 
Bonejack said:
If IS doesn't have it in them what it takes to make a compelling FE, then by all means continue to co-operate with KoeiTecmo.
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This is, frankly, being overdramatic. Engage did fine. It sold a little worse than Three Houses, but it’s not that huge a drop.
 
It is true that you couldn't bet on Metroid titles hitting the million mark in the past, and Prime Remastered did that in 2 months with a release out of the blue. Samus Returns didn't manage that on 3DS, and Prime R has already matched the LTD sales of Prime 2 (RIP).

I also wouldn't draw conclusions for Prime 4 based on this. Prime 4 isn't getting a digital first release out of nowhere on a Wednesday; it's going to get a song and dance marketing campaign, and possibly a cross-gen release, depending on hardware timing. Even without cross-gen, I'd expect Prime 4 to compare more closely to Dread's performance.

One major positive is that unlike many publishers, these numbers are enough for Nintendo to stay interested and invested. Same for FE and Xenoblade.
 
meatbag said:
This is, frankly, being overdramatic. Engage did fine. It sold a little worse than Three Houses, but it’s not that huge a drop.
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That's more my personal feelings for FE, Engage's shortcomings and the future from me than a comment on the sales. But i agree, it reads like it wasn't that.
 
Switch Sports, btw, which is as barebones a release as you can get, is almost at 10 million. It's so annoying that we won't get more sports or a better experience, in general. What a bummer. It could've been so good.
 
try not to do the Arlo thing with regards to sales numbers and what you think the game should be like. It's never a good idea
 
xaszatm said:
What are the bottom two games?
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Famicom Detective Club. I've never played them, but they remade both for Switch, and there's a lot of development crossover with key Metroid staff, which I find cool. I intend to give 'em a shot sometime.
 
Lugia667 said:
ah the Arlo fallacy: The Games will surely sell better if they appeal to what I liked
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Lugia667 said:
Dunkey didn't bash it hard enough so it didn't sell as well
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Lugia667 said:
it's cause of a certain youtuber
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Lugia667 said:
try not to do the Arlo thing with regards to sales numbers and what you think the game should be like. It's never a good idea
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You seem to be doing a thing of dropping these YouTuber references in when nobody else mentioned them or talked about them at all. Why do you keep bringing them up in this thread about sales?
 
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