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Discussion Kingdom Hearts 3 feels like the most low-key sales failure of the generation.

Mbolibombo said:
It's not that black and white.

Development and advertisement cost for KH3 vs another game with similar sales like already mentioned Nier Automata are night and day.
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Even if you compare the two games like that, it's more apt to say that Nier Automata was a monumental sales success than it is to say Kingdom Hearts III didn't do really well.

Someone else mentioned it here, but I think there's a strange obsession nowadays with big games needing to massively grow their audience in order to be successful. You can't plan to double the sales of the previous best-selling game with every new entry in a prolific series. It's just not sustainable, and if that's the base case, that's more of an issue with a company's executives and the targets they're setting. There are exceptions of course: FromSoft was obviously expecting big growth with the direction they took Eldin Ring (but to continue this point, if they put out Eldin Ring 2, they would be insane to expect the same level of growth: much like Tears of the Kingdom, you would call the sequel a massive success if it was just flat to the previous game when all is said and done). Kingdom Hearts III was not that kind of evolution for the series, so I don't know why SE or fans would expect that kind of sales growth.
 
Yeah, so what? Who cares? And why the vitriolic comments against Kingdom Hearts? This is such an insane thread and as other people are pointing out, we're getting a sequel anyway.
 
People vastly overestimate how difficult the story is to follow for newcomers.

If you can understand the MCU, you can understand Kingdom Hearts.

The collections literally list every game in the ideal order to play/watch them. Maybe it was a problem decades ago when you had to hunt down different systems to play each game, but that literally hasnt been a problem since the PS3 when the first collection released. Anyone coming into the series since the PS3 has had the entire series consumable in the easiest way possible.
 
Agnezenn said:
Even if you compare the two games like that, it's more apt to say that Nier Automata was a monumental sales success than it is to say Kingdom Hearts III didn't do really well.

Someone else mentioned it here, but I think there's a strange obsession nowadays with big games needing to massively grow their audience in order to be successful. You can't plan to double the sales of the previous best-selling game with every new entry in a prolific series. It's just not sustainable, and if that's the base case, that's more of an issue with a company's executives and the targets they're setting. There are exceptions of course: FromSoft was obviously expecting big growth with the direction they took Eldin Ring (but to continue this point, if they put out Eldin Ring 2, they would be insane to expect the same level of growth: much like Tears of the Kingdom, you would call the sequel a massive success if it was just flat to the previous game when all is said and done). Kingdom Hearts III was not that kind of evolution for the series, so I don't know why SE or fans would expect that kind of sales growth.
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Suit mentality is starting to impact consumers. It's not enough for a game to do well! We need growth, or corporate will be on our ass!
 
OP u have my sword. completely normal to feel a dissonance with how certain franchises are treated as historical blockbuster releases then they release and have the sales trajectory of a kirby game. I still think how ff7r was hyped for a good decade or so but then it got outsold by a funky fitness rpg. like i know nintendo is built different but that still lives rent free in my head. maybe people online just overhype games or maybe there's an actual disconnect with general audiences idk but its very funny to me.
 
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At the end of the day it sold well enough to not kill the franchise and that's mostly all that matters. We're not only getting an actual direct sequel relatively soon, but they even put out a nice spin-off game and yet more woefully plot critical mobile games per usual.

It probably would've done better had they called BBS something more obviously a prequel like "KH -1" and then instead of making DDD on 3DS, do that plot as the first half of KH3 on the PS3, and then make the current KH3 plot as the second part where you do a round of revisiting the worlds.
 
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They should have rebooted the game with 4. It's a complete mess storywise. After 2 it went downhill and while playing 3 I stopped trying to understand who is who and what is going on.
 
FeiFongWong said:
They should have rebooted the game with 4. It's a complete mess storywise. After 2 it went downhill and while playing 3 I stopped trying to understand who is who and what is going on.
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Have you played the other Kingdom Hearts games? Because you'd know who's who if you played the other Kingdom Hearts games.

It's not because they aren't numbered titles that they're spin-offs, they're just as important to the story as the 1, 2 and 3.
 
Considering the Kingdom Hearts series has sold 36 million copies total and Kingdom Hearts 3 represents a little under 20% of total series sales based off the OPs numbers. No, I don't think I'd consider it a failure unless you personally wanted it to sell more.
 
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SirShorse said:
Have you played the other Kingdom Hearts games? Because you'd know who's who if you played the other Kingdom Hearts games.

It's not because they aren't numbered titles that they're spin-offs, they're just as important to the story as the 1, 2 and 3.
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The 3ds one is the only one I haven't played and I was still confused at some points. Dont ask me what I was confused about, cause I already forgot. At some point in 3 I just stopped caring and turned my brain off. The plot is too convoluted at this point.
 
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ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
... But Metroid Dread significantly grew the franchise?

If Prime 4 only sells like 3m copies, then that would be the hypothetical game to use as an example, but Dread outsold every 2D game in the series, massively outselling every 2D game in the series other than the original.
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Metroid Dread actually strugged to sell 3 milions
 
Zeal543 said:
3 was built on top of the mediocrity of the "side" games leading up to it, the fact that it did as well as it did is impressive. I think 4 will do even worse given how divisive 3 was.


3 million on the switch isn't really growing the series, especially when you consider it was co-marketed/released alongside a new switch model. Metroid saw the lowest increase in growth of any nintendo series on the switch, arguably it wasn't even growth worth mentioning. I also don't see how the situation would be different for prime 4, the sales of prime 1 vs 2/3 are fairly similar to that of NEStroid vs the other 2D games prior to dread.
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3 Million is growing the series. 2D Metroid games used to sell around 1 and 1.5M before Dread, that's a crazy increase. We are talking about 2D games.
Nobody expects 2D Zelda to outsell 3d Zelda. Same for 3D and 2D Mario never having the same expectations. Dread is an amazing success for a 2D game at $60 in a genre where most fans are used to pay $20 or less for the best and most popular metroidvanias.

* Nes Metroid was an outlier from like 35 years so lets not bring that up. That's like bringing up some Atari games that sold amazing. It doesn't matter cuz those were trash games and people didn't know better or didn't really have standard yet.
 
xV_twist said:
3 Million is growing the series. 2D Metroid games used to sell around 1 and 1.5M before Dread, that's a crazy increase. We are talking about 2D games.
Nobody expects 2D Zelda to outsell 3d Zelda. Same for 3D and 2D Mario never having the same expectations. Dread is an amazing success for a 2D game at $60 in a genre where most fans are used to pay $20 or less for the best and most popular metroidvanias.

* Nes Metroid was an outlier from like 35 years so lets not bring that up. That's like bringing up some Atari games that sold amazing. It doesn't matter cuz those were trash games and people didn't know better or didn't really have standard yet.
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Sure, but if Metroid NES is to be ignored, Kingdom Hearts 1 probably should be too, given that game is 20 years old, and multiple generations of gamer.
 
Dolce said:
Sure, but if Metroid NES is to be ignored, Kingdom Hearts 1 probably should be too, given that game is 20 years old, and multiple generations of gamer.
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Exactly. Take away the original Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts III is the best-selling by a good margin.
 
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Joy-Boy said:
People vastly overestimate how difficult the story is to follow for newcomers.

If you can understand the MCU, you can understand Kingdom Hearts.

The collections literally list every game in the ideal order to play/watch them. Maybe it was a problem decades ago when you had to hunt down different systems to play each game, but that literally hasnt been a problem since the PS3 when the first collection released. Anyone coming into the series since the PS3 has had the entire series consumable in the easiest way possible.
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the MCU is also becoming a convuluted mess though
 
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There's a lot of counter-arguments that can be used, and I'm going to try to not get sucked in BUT

Disney Infinity sold 3 million copies. Epic Mickey sold 3 million copies. Aladdin on Genesis sold about 4 million copies.
 
Canas Renvall said:
There is no world where almost 7m copies is not a success. Not selling as much as another game does not mean it is not successful, and growing the brand.
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That depends on many points. Production costs, marketing costs. Has most if these sales been at full price or from garbage bin prices?

Anyway Square was disappointed by FF16 sales but there will surely be a FF17 nonetheless.
 
smoothies said:
There's a lot of counter-arguments that can be used, and I'm going to try to not get sucked in BUT

Disney Infinity sold 3 million copies. Epic Mickey sold 3 million copies. Aladdin on Genesis sold about 4 million copies.
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Didn't the first 2 get sequels? Maybe it's the sequels that bombed, if that's what you were trying to say.
 
I saw physical copies in the bargain bin at a drug store near me only three months later. Thats not a place where succesfull titles end up, thats where stock gets dumped. At the very least it underperformed vs Squares expectations.
 
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I don’t get this talk of “rebooting” the series, when technically, it’s getting rebooted. The previous saga’s story closed. There’s a new plot being developed, with dashes of FFXIII Versus. The closest, I think, we’ll get to a “reboot” is a new story that will work as a spiritual successor to the OG cast. Assuming Nomura ever let’s go of Sora, seeing as how he wants to stick with him.

In terms or sales, if KH3 wasn’t successful, they wouldn’t have greenlit a sequel so immediately after the game’s release
 
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Lucifer said:
Didn't the first 2 get sequels? Maybe it's the sequels that bombed, if that's what you were trying to say.
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No, I'm just saying like... How high do you think sales should have been for a Disney-related game around this general time period?

I think it did pretty well.
 
smoothies said:
No, I'm just saying like... How high do you think sales should have been for a Disney-related game around this general time period?

I think it did pretty well.
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Ah I see, yeah Disney should be hanging on for dear life to KH, their gaming presence isn't amazing.
 
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There sure are a lot of people in this thread doing a lot of mental gymnastics to explain why big sales numbers aren’t actually that big.

idk if you hate the KH story just don’t play the games and move on with your life rather than doing whatever this is.
 
To preface my honesty, Kingdom Hearts 2 is in my top 5 favorite games of all time; I love it to absolute death (and is actually a proper conclusion to the arc if they chose it). Kingdom Hearts 3 is lucky it sold as well as it did. Absolute fucking mess of a video game. It had moments of fun and hype for long-time KH fans but it was a pacing disaster even with acknowledging that it had lots of story threads to tie together. I knew people who bought KH3 but only ever heard of KH at all and saw Donald and Goofy on the cover and thought it'd be fun but stopped and returned it literally a half hour in because they didn't know what was going on.

The amount of licensing involved means they probably didn't make as much money with it as they would've liked to but idk that you'd call it a failure. I honestly don't even know how you quantify sales expectations for it. It's such a weird product to market.

I actually have more faith in 4 being good because it has less to pull from and more room in front of it to breathe. Hopefully we get something truly special again.
 
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