The general sentiment seems to be XC and X sold a million or less - just from everything I’ve read over the years. XC2 sold more than that in its first month.
Xb1 sold roughly a million worldwide. I think it's actually a little less like .9
my memory says XcX was 800k, although I am not as sure as this one. I haven't looked it up as much
Xb 3d sold a little over half a million something like .54
XbDE sold 1.5 or 6 something before public updates stopped xb2 I want to say is 2.5 million.
DE released onto a MUCH larger install-base and fell off quickly afterwards.
There’s so many factors at play.
Sure is. For the entire franchise. The second hand market clearly shows there is an excess in demand for the second game in physical, which, Nintendo, once again doesn't seem to care to meet.
That said, when people say the art style hurt XC2 they’ve got no evidence outside of impassioned forum posts and online chatter.
None whatsoever.
Of course, some people were put off. I’m not oblivious to that.
At the same time, you can say XC2 outsold XC and X. It became the best selling Xeno, and will likely double the sales of Xenogears when all is said and done.
It‘s also continued to sell. It‘s sold the equivalent of 200K+ each year since it’s release. And even though that’s front-loaded, it’s sold over a long period of time.
1m in the first month
1.73m as of March 2019
1.92m as of December 2019
2.05m as of June 2020
Ah, I guess I misremembered the sales for xb2, it wasn't 2.5 it was 2.05. if it indeed kept selling at 200k+ a month, we would still be getting public updates on its sales, as it would meet the quarterly sales threshold of Nintendo's public reports.
Word of mouth has been very good for XC2 and it has charted in multiple countries since those latest figures.
Charting is relative to the rest of the market. One thing we do know, it wasn't enough to keep the title in the reports.
If your gut tells you the game would have sold more with a different art style, that’s fine. But there’s no evidence to support that. To argue it would have sold more if it looked different is a nothing argument because it can’t proven one way or another.
If this post is in response to me, I haven't posted anything about what I believe, aside from what I believe is solid proof and what is not. I made a reverse premise of the post I quoted.
Also not sure we should start arguing XC2 vs like 4/5 versions of XC. Despite Xenoblade having a tough release (only in one region, mind you), it’s been purchasable for literally hundreds of millions of people. Several times the market XC2 has had. And even then, there’s not a single release that passes XC2.
Is there a typo in here? The first one was supposed to be xb1? I think I grok this
I think the take away here from a countering sales standpoint isnt the fact that xb2 sold more than any 1 release of Xenoblade 1, but the fact that it released not just unshackled compared to the other releases, but in an amazingly perfect sales environment, and barely managed to get more units moved than the fourth release of the first game. It's about scale, it didn't increase appreciably compared to the sales environment advantage it had.
I don't think the art style of 2 is that different, or is really that much of an issue. The art style of 2, and torna, is very similar to XbDE, which I do remember a small murmer over the change from the original games hardware restricted aesthetic, and is again, very similar to the art style of XB3, which I generally see no pushback on. The game finally has a cohesive identifiable art style ballpark for the characters, where previously the only main cohesive visual identity was the world design. That was definitely started with 2. The big difference comes from the tone of the game, and the treatment of the characters.
