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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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WestEgg said:
Fire Emblem Engage is also kinda disappointing, I think Three Houses had really struck a chord with audiences, and the talk around in engage seemed to drop off in comparison much more quickly, so I’m not surprised.
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Can we really say its disappointing? Not as fast as 3H, sure. The game sales are faster than recent FE games with 3H being the exception. FEA had 1.79 m and Fates had 1.84 m around their ww release (games had stagger releases so its a bit more than a quarter). We only have a quarter of sales and, while it wont have the legs of 3H, to say it dropped off its a bit early.

3H did really struck a chord with the public and people who have never played an FE game. Any FE game after was always gonna be a hard sell and given the use of previous characters, story and design in Engage I am not surprise.
 
I hope Nintendo will dedicate themselves to finding good writers for the next Fire Emblem. Good characters with strong themes will go a long way, even if the plotting itself is often suspect. Good gameplay is obviously a big plus but it seems clear the broader FE audience that they built with Three Houses wants more than just that.
 
For the first time BOTW outsells Smash Bros Ultimate in a fiscal year and will probably eventually overtake it. It also looks certain that Super Mario Odyssey will pass Pokemon Sword and Shield by next quarter.

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I'm kinda disappointed Metroid Prime Remastered didn't go past 2m. I guess Nintendo really underestimated and was conservative with physical supplies, and while good, the digital sales weren't as huge as I thought. It's still a Q1 release so we'll get more updates on its sales for the coming quarters, I expect far better legs than Dread due to the way smaller first quarter sales.



Fire Emblem Engage did less than I thought it would too.



New Super Mario Bros. U sold really huge numbers even before the movie, I'm curious to see the results of the next quarter. Also expect increase on Odyssey sales, since the game has been charting in UK for weeks now, and I believe a lot of people chose that one from the bundle.
 
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SirArthur said:
Can we really say its disappointing?
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I doubt Nintendo is disappointed in Engage’s performance, it shows that the audience for FE is stable. I’d imagine that with how big 3H is, people might have also simply gotten their fill of Fire Emblem from that.
 
contrary to some folks, I think MP1 and Engage are good numbers. it's not often you see remakes do significantly better and MP1 was a shadowdrop, implying Nintendo's own expectations. Engage might be disappointing following the growth from 3H, but it's also pretty different in tone but still sold well to its (possible) budget. plus it helped IS come to grips with Unity
 
Part of me wonders how much the strength of evergreens versus new core titles comes down to teenagers wanting to save their allowance for Zelda
 
Decent results overall however the biggest disappointment of this report was the sales of Metroid Prime Remastered, it was about 900k short of what i expected. It looks like the shadow drop backfired.
 
ILikeFeet said:
contrary to some folks, I think MP1 and Engage are good numbers. it's not often you see remakes do significantly better and MP1 was a shadowdrop, implying Nintendo's own expectations. Engage might be disappointing following the growth from 3H, but it's also pretty different in tone but still sold well to its (possible) budget. plus it helped IS come to grips with Unity
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Its one if not the best Unity game on switch (Cuphead is also good). I might be misremembering but IS also use propriety tech? Again could be misremembering, I am not familiar with Unity.
 
Adulfzen said:
poor marketing is just copium at this point for the fact that there seems to be a hard limit for Metroid as a franchise to grow (unless it wildly changes to the point of being unrecognizable from what it used to be) which doesn't mean they can't still keep making those games since Nintendo does a good job of budgeting those releases usually.
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I disagree. The franchise is more niche than IPs like Mario, Zelda, and Kirby because it's aimed at a more core audience. But that doesn't mean they're close to reaching their sales potential, or that 3 million is some hard cap.

Regardless Prime 1R has sold 1/3rd of what Dread has in the same system. While it's a remake, Prime is also a more wildly appealing game (big budget FPS vs 2D). That's marketing's fault.
 
It's gonna be the same song and dance when Paper Mario TTYD and F-Zero GX release to mild success but fail to hit the inflated targets fans of those games have set because they've spent the last 20 years talking to the same 4 people about how many people actually want them.
 
SirArthur said:
Its one if not the best Unity game on switch (Cuphead is also good). I might be misremembering but IS also use propriety tech? Again could be misremembering, I am not familiar with Unity.
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yes, this is their first Unity game, so it's a good outing. I wouldn't expect improvements on the Switch though. would have to wait until Drake for a significant change
 
Engage not doing particularly well is not that surprising - poor marketing and word-of-mouth, the removal of social elements and seemingly less interesting characters didn't seem to be sufficient to winning over new audiences (no i refuse to accept that 3H's story is that brilliant. Admittedly how people perceive it is another thing). It does feel somewhat contradictory to X3 whereby it had a lot of fanfare and critical acclaim, but eventually dipped out to the more "controversial" X2.

Still alright results, but hopefully IS tries to take the strengths of both engage and 3H and apply it to the next mainline game.
 
I may have gotten my hopes up too high for Metroid Prime Remastered, but 1 million in a month and a half is still nothing to sneeze at. It's already outsold Bayonetta 3.

I did expect more considering how long it spent at the top of the eShop best sellers page. It's possible we'll see the numbers greatly increase in the next earnings report.
 
cheesecake said:
Engage not doing particularly well is not that surprising - poor marketing and word-of-mouth, the removal of social elements and seemingly less interesting characters didn't seem to be sufficient to winning over new audiences (no i refuse to accept that 3H's story is that brilliant. Admittedly how people perceive it is another thing). It does feel somewhat contradictory to X3 whereby it had a lot of fanfare and critical acclaim, but eventually dipped out to the more "controversial" X2.

Still alright results, but hopefully IS tries to take the strengths of both engage and 3H and apply it to the next mainline game.
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It does feel a lot like, if they've really been working on a FE4 remake, and it seems really likely at this point, that they really failed to capitalise on the growth three houses brought to the series. It's already been nearly 4 years since three houses and it's seeming like it's going to be several more before they make another game to actually try and build on what pushed the series to new heights.
 
1.6 million is still successful for Fire Emblem compared to the full history of the series and is really only disappointing if you compare it to the games that sold more. But yeah, it's difficult to see Engage getting good word of mouth like Three Houses did because the story is just far too simplistic, the characters are lacking in depth, and cutscene quality is routinely bad.

As an anniversary title, it was fun to see the legacy lords, but at the end of the day, this game has a lot working against it.
 
Adulfzen said:
poor marketing is just copium at this point for the fact that there seems to be a hard limit for Metroid as a franchise to grow (unless it wildly changes to the point of being unrecognizable from what it used to be) which doesn't mean they can't still keep making those games since Nintendo does a good job of budgeting those releases usually.
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To be honest I hope mp4 is a botw level shake up, it needs it to really live up to its potential.

Nintendo right now are hard focusing on making Metroid and dk larger franchises at the end of the switch life span it seems.

Also imo pikmin 4 will probably do better than the disappointment trio from this quarter, theirs more hype for that than there ever was for those (not that mpr could even build hype)
 
cheesecake said:
Engage not doing particularly well is not that surprising - poor marketing and word-of-mouth, the removal of social elements and seemingly less interesting characters didn't seem to be sufficient to winning over new audiences (no i refuse to accept that 3H's story is that brilliant. Admittedly how people perceive it is another thing). It does feel somewhat contradictory to X3 whereby it had a lot of fanfare and critical acclaim, but eventually dipped out to the more "controversial" X2.

Still alright results, but hopefully IS tries to take the strengths of both engage and 3H and apply it to the next mainline game.
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Engage is the 4th best selling game in the franchise even if it never sells another copy. Engage has done very well even if it hasn't done as well as 3H. People in here talking like it sold 600k in it's first quarter, which was the life time sales of games like Path of Radiance and Shadow Dragon.
 
God you know it’s bad when people say “hey at least it’s better than x game nobody played from 20 years ago.” (This is an exaggeration)

The point isn’t that it sold 700k better than a 20 year game, the pout. Is it sold 600k worse than the last game and looks to have much worse legs. It’s very clear that the franchise has shrunk since th.
 
Djehuty said:
God you know it’s bad when people say “hey at least it’s better than x game nobody played from 20 years ago.” (This is an exaggeration)

The point isn’t that it sold 700k better than a 20 year game, the pout. Is it sold 600k worse than the last game and looks to have much worse legs. It’s very clear that the franchise has shrunk since th.
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The point is the franchise has still grown significantly from when it was on the verge of being permanently shelved. That despite the game having not as good reception, the floor of what these games sell has raised significantly.
 
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BassForever said:
Engage is the 4th best selling game in the franchise even if it never sells another copy. Engage has done very well even if it hasn't done as well as 3H. People in here talking like it sold 600k in it's first quarter, which was the life time sales of games like Path of Radiance and Shadow Dragon.
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4th best selling game when there’s been 5 games since the series was almost put to death by Nintendo for its poor sales. Comparing post-Awakening game sales to pre-Awakening game sales is next to meaningless. If a FE game ever sales at pre-Awakening levels again we got much bigger problems to worry about.
 
Common Knowledge said:
4th best selling game when there’s been 5 games since the series was almost put to death by Nintendo for its poor sales. Comparing post-Awakening game sales to pre-Awakening game sales is next to meaningless. If a FE game ever sales at pre-Awakening levels again we got much bigger problems to worry about.
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Shadows of Valentia sold pre-awakening numbers 🙈
 
Djehuty said:
Is it sold 600k worse than the last game and looks to have much worse legs. It’s very clear that the franchise has shrunk since th
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Sorry but this is overdramatic. Just because it’s not gonna do as well as 3H doesn’t mean “the franchise has shrunk”. Engage still did 1.6M, by all accounts it’s a healthy performance. It shows Fire Emblem has a stable audience.
 
Linkstrikesback said:
It does feel a lot like, if they've really been working on a FE4 remake, and it seems really likely at this point, that they really failed to capitalise on the growth three houses brought to the series. It's already been nearly 4 years since three houses and it's seeming like it's going to be several more before they make another game to actually try and build on what pushed the series to new heights.
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While this is true, you have to remember that Threehouses never stopped selling, it still has pretty good legs even 4 years after release, I don't think they've missed the boat with this game especially because the next original game will probably be on a new console with more eyes on it. Of course if that game also does numbers similar to engage then they've probably missed the boat.
 
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Djehuty said:
To be honest I hope mp4 is a botw level shake up, it needs it to really live up to its potential.

Nintendo right now are hard focusing on making Metroid and dk larger franchises at the end of the switch life span it seems.

Also imo pikmin 4 will probably do better than the disappointment trio from this quarter, theirs more hype for that than there ever was for those (not that mpr could even build hype)
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Issues with Metroid Prime as a franchise is that there is the expectations of a relatively solid 60 fps framerate which while it doesn't prevent gameplay innovations makes it much harder to shake things up as you say compared to BOTW more manageable 30 fps target (with some occasional slowdowns). I'm sure Retro has decent ideas so hopefully it works out tho again I personally don't see an issue if Metroid remains a smaller franchise even if growth is the more desirable outcome.
 
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meatbag said:
Sorry but this is overdramatic. Just because it’s not gonna do as well as 3H doesn’t mean “the franchise has shrunk”. Engage still did 1.6M, by all accounts it’s a healthy performance. It shows Fire Emblem has a stable audience.
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Three houses will probably pull 4mil in its lifespan, this isn’t getting much past 2, a decline by half is not stable. It’s very clear that engage did not appeal to the fire emblem casual fanbase.
 
Barely Able said:
I say we wait until next quarter to see Prime Remastered numbers. The late physical release compared to digital plus the inability to get a copy due to seemingly low initial print probably artificially deflated the numbers. I know a lot of people waited for the boxed copy and the. Couldn’t find it. The game has been much more readily available as of late, so makes me think that the retail shipped numbers will be decent next quarter. Not saying gangbusters, but the release strategy sort of blunted the sales of this game.
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We probably can't. This is the end of fiscal year report. Next quarter is the start of the new one, which mean the million seller list will be reset. And that mean Prime Remastered had to shipped another million copies in April-June alone to even show up at the next quarter.

It might leg out to another million at the end of this fiscal year, but three months is unlikely in my opinion.
 
Djehuty said:
Three houses will probably pull 4mil in its lifespan, this isn’t getting much past 2, a decline by half is not stable. It’s very clear that engage did not appeal to the fire emblem casual fanbase.
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That is stable, in line with post-Awakening titles. If anything, 3H is the outlier.

And so what if Engage didn’t appeal to the 3H fanbase. No, seriously, so what? Three Houses is evidently still selling well so there’s little reason to believe that the FE fanbase is shrinking. And we’re reasonably sure that FE will still keep being made.
 
It's already been rumored for a while that IS is working on an FE4 remake, and now that Engage is out (and has been finished for over a year) they're probably at least in planning for the next non-remake as well. Fire Emblem's continuation is in no danger.
 
It's gonna be the same song and dance when Paper Mario TTYD and F-Zero GX release to mild success but fail to hit the inflated targets fans of those games have set because they've spent the last 20 years talking to the same 4 people about how many people actually want them.
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It depends on if Nintendo actually markets those remasters or not.

TTYD/F-Zero GX HD are going to sell better by appearing in multiple Directs and being hyped up versus shadowdropping them unceremoniously on the eShop.
 
Luke88 said:
Wild that Metroid Prime Remastered only sold 1M, it felt like a really big launch. I guess the shadowdrop aproach doesn't pay off all that much.
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It's a remaster that was shadowdropped in the middle of a direct. These numbers are huge - and remember metroid games never sold all that well.
 
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meatbag said:
That is stable, in line with post-Awakening titles. If anything, 3H is the outlier.

And so what if Engage didn’t appeal to the 3H fanbase. No, seriously, so what? Three Houses is evidently still selling well so there’s little reason to believe that the FE fanbase is shrinking. And we’re reasonably sure that FE will still keep being made.
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That’s the problem, it didn’t grow it shrunk back to 2015 it’s likely engage will be a hiccup as they realize that three houses is the way to go. Imo three houses isn’t the upper limit, just a new begging for the franchise.


I’m not arguing it won’t continue that’s stupid, it will very clearly continue but engage will be the last of its kind. They won’t willingly choose to make less money. Engage was a dissapointment, being a nothing entry that regressed the series.
 
Gingerbread Man said:
Wasn't Metroid Prime sold out in several US stores? This suggests that the game exceeded Nintendo's expectations. I think that the shadow drop + budget price combo generated a good buzz among hardcore gamers, that is, the kind of audience that might be interested in Metroid Prime. Why did Dread sell a lot more? Maybe because it had demo, maybe because "2D Metroidvania" is now a relatively popular genre thanks to indie games, maybe because it was more action-focused. I think "2D Action Metroidvania" is an easier sell than "First Person Adventure, that is, an FPS focused on exploring and... scanning things, but you also shoot, and there are good bosses and enemies".

Ultimately, we don't know. But I think Nintendo made peace with the fact that Metroid (and especially Metroid Prime) is a relatively niche franchise. What it doesn't bring in terms of sales and perhaps money, it brings in terms of prestige. On the other hand, every Kirby game sells many copies among the general public, and that's without considering Kirby's merchandise. 99% of high-profile Western outlets don't care about Kirby or even have a dismissive attitude towards it, though.
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You can leave that word out :p

But yeah, Metroid Prime is Nintendo's most hardcore franchise imo. It costs a lot of devotion and attention to play through those games without a guide. Navigating through a 3D maze with a grim atmosphere in first-person while keeping an eye out for secrets is simply not for the general audience. I often found it difficult to play the games for longer than an hour when I first played them back in 2020, because of how much attention I needed to pay to my surroundings, and the map reading and scariness. So to me it makes perfect sense that these games don't sell gangbusters like Mario or Zelda and 1 million in a couple months as a shadowdropped remaster is perfectly fine, maybe even more than perfectly fine.
 
Luke88 said:
Wild that Metroid Prime Remastered only sold 1M, it felt like a really big launch. I guess the shadowdrop aproach doesn't pay off all that much.
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I shared this over in the totk thread, but this video made me worry for Prime Remastered's sales a few days ago.
 
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Decent sales all along although is immensely disappointing that XC3 still doesn't sell as much as it deserves. Future Redeemed especially pushes it towards the "masterpiece" status.

And yet Scarlet&Violet sells more than it deserves (To be fair though, this annoys me less than Sword&Shield's sales).
 
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P.Scoop said:
We probably can't. This is the end of fiscal year report. Next quarter is the start of the new one, which mean the million seller list will be reset. And that mean Prime Remastered had to shipped another million copies in April-June alone to even show up at the next quarter.

It might leg out to another million at the end of this fiscal year, but three months is unlikely in my opinion.
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That’s true. Guess we wait for the white papers with the sale numbers a year plus out
 
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I think everyone here is scared after years of hearing other companies say that selling 10M was not enough to be considered a success (see: Square Enix) and think 1-2M are now bombas. Combined with an over-inflated view on certain franchises and suddenly games need to sell 4-5M to be considered successes. Both Engage and Prime Remastered did good for niche franchises that are lived on more by the developer than by sales. I don't think Nintendo was expecting the world from either one.
 
MrBones said:
TTYD/F-Zero GX HD are going to sell better by appearing in multiple Directs and being hyped up versus shadowdropping them unceremoniously on the eShop
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TTYD maybe but I have my doubts about F-Zero selling better even with a more substantial promotional push.

Djehuty said:
it didn’t grow it shrunk back to 2015 it’s likely engage will be a hiccup as they realize that three houses is the way to go
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Three Houses and Engage aren’t the only two choices in which Fire Emblem can develop. The next entry can take elements from both. I will reiterate that saying the franchise “shrunk” is a silly thing to say. That is a statement that requires more data points than two.
 
Linkstrikesback said:
It does feel a lot like, if they've really been working on a FE4 remake, and it seems really likely at this point, that they really failed to capitalise on the growth three houses brought to the series. It's already been nearly 4 years since three houses and it's seeming like it's going to be several more before they make another game to actually try and build on what pushed the series to new heights.
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Nah i think 3H was the kind of game where the perfect storm was at hand (2020 being the huge push for the switch, it encompassing different routes to reach out to different audiences, long marketing period) that really pushed the envelope of how far SRPGs can really go.
No doubt it did really well though.

BassForever said:
Engage is the 4th best selling game in the franchise even if it never sells another copy. Engage has done very well even if it hasn't done as well as 3H. People in here talking like it sold 600k in it's first quarter, which was the life time sales of games like Path of Radiance and Shadow Dragon.
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Yea true. Sometimes i feel like we get caught up too much in "big sales guud" but not realize that is a respective figure for an exclusive SRPG.
 
Man the FE sales talks have become rather unpleasant. The franchise was dead almost a decade ago and now they are releasing games that are multi-million sellers. Sure not every game is a masterpiece but man the franchise is in a good place.
 
MrBones said:
It depends on if Nintendo actually markets those remasters or not.

TTYD/F-Zero GX HD are going to sell better by appearing in multiple Directs and being hyped up versus shadowdropping them unceremoniously on the eShop.
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a million units for a shadow dropped, physically constrained budget release sounds damn good
 
meatbag said:
TTYD maybe but I have my doubts about F-Zero selling better even with a more substantial promotional push.


Three Houses and Engage aren’t the only two choices in which Fire Emblem can develop. The next entry can take elements from both. I will reiterate that saying the franchise “shrunk” is a silly thing to say. That is a statement that requires more data points than two.
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Would momentarily shrink be better? Engage is a dip for now but there is clearly a vast gulf from three houses, threee houses was and is still discussed regularly. People already discussed all there is too discuss about engage. Engage was basssically a bandaid to be ripped off, it was already in dev before three houses did three houses things. I’m sure the franchise will continue to grow from here but currently it is very noticeably smaller, both in sales and vitality, there isn’t an engage fan base like there is a three houses fanbase. The next game has to succeed in getting the three houses fans to continue with the series.
 
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SirArthur said:
Man the FE sales talks have become rather unpleasant. The franchise was dead almost a decade ago and now they are releasing games that are multi-million sellers. Sure not every game is a masterpiece but man the franchise is in a good place.
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Not really sure what’s unpleasant about pointing out the most common criticisms of Engage that are likely why, despite a hugely expanded Switch user base, it has very little word of mouth compared to TH and will likely end up selling just over half of what it’s predecessor does. Agree that the franchise is in a good place.
 
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