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Prediction about Sales Figures


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With Shadows of Valentia on the horizon, I've decided to make my predictions about the sales figures. After the roaring success of Awakening. I don't count fates because we know them sales figures are skewed to include Revelation despite being a DLC and not an actual standalone title, that and it's like lumping together all parts of an episodic release to say that you sold more copies than a full title. Anyhow, you'd think that I'd say that Echoes will be a roaring success.

 

Wrong. Echoes will not meet the sales expectations of Nintendo. This is a remake that is nearly a 1:1 remake of Gaiden. While they are adding new things in like supports, a new character and casual mode... Gaiden was already a divisive game. Many people will be turned off with how bizarre that this "new" title feels, both old hats to the fire emblem community and the newcomers to the fandom. I'm hyped for this game, because it fixes literally the only problem that I have with Gaiden, my best friend is going to get the game because he always wanted to experience Gaiden.

 

However, I believe that the fandom that claims to love Fire Emblem so much will be its own worst enemy. Why? How many people in the fandom ever bothered to touch Gaiden. Even out of the people who play the NES games? A few thousand? Maybe a few tens of thousands? Out of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people. Look around this forum and you can find topics about how Echoes can save the franchise as well as conditions for people even purchasing the game.

 

Before anyone brings up what the previous installments have done wrong in this topic, like it or not what Awakening and Fates has done has no bearing on what a near 1:1 remake of a 20+ year old game is currently doing and they have little to no influence on the sales figures of this remake.

 

In summation, at best, Echoes will barely miss the mark. At worst, Echoes will be a financial failure. At the end of the day, all Nintendo will see out of this is either, take one more risk with Fire Emblem, or start canning the entire franchise, like they did with so many others(F-Zero, Chibi Robo, Metroid(Federation Force put the final nail in that coffin)).

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I think marketing will be more important than the mechanics of the game. Up until recently I'd say the marketing had been done very poorly, and even now it's not really enough. Compare it to the immense hype machine behind Fates and it's no wonder some of the more casual fans will not even know a new game is coming. 

I think if they manage to promote it in Heroes, something they really ought to be doing as soon as we enter April at the latest, it might catch people's attention. 

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Couldn't disagree more. Using the "fandoms" views on Gaiden doesn't work at all because the majority of people who are buying these games don't belong to a dedicated fansite such as Serenes or any other alternative. How we feel is not representative of how the population at large does, most of whom I wouldn't be surprised to find out didn't know Gaiden existed until this announcement. 

Additionally, what Fates and Awakening did have a ton of bearing on how this will sell. In fact, I could argue that a lot of Fate's success is due to Awakening's success, but that's neither here nor there. The short version is that we're coming hot off a financially successful release that for the most part left people wanting more. Therefore, this game already has a better shot than it would if it were coming off a less successful title, say, Radiant Dawn for example. 

The real issue that might hurt Echoes in terms of sales is how they market it. Fates was Awakening 2.0 whereas SoV seems to be taking the route of calling it like it is: a remake. Also, it doesn't seem like it's being advertised as heavily which hurts in the public market a lot more than any gameplay decision ever could. 

Edited by Deltre
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I agree that it'll probably sell like hot garbage if there ends up being no supports or anything modern like that. And the amount of advertising for this game compared to fates and awakening? Fucking piss poor. 

This game is practically dead on arrival. It's a shame because it looks pretty good. Oh well, it'll have a comfortable seat next to the tellius series in the "games that are good but sold like fucking dogshite" camp.

I REALLY don't want it to sell horribly but I'm just calling it like I see it. People are fine to disagree though.

Edited by Dinar87
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Don't forget, there really wasn't a whole lot of marketing or advertising for Fire Emblem: Awakening. It was an unexpected sleeper hit. Yes, it sold extremely well, but I don't remember hearing any sort of news (at least not a whole lot) about this game until the December before Awakening came out.

That being said, I don't think Echoes will reach the same sale numbers as Awakening or Fates. It might sell slightly under a million copies in North America and Europe.

Also, using the argument that "dedicated fans don't give a shit about Gaiden" is ridiculous. Yes, not a whole lot of people have played Gaiden, but that can easily be attributed to it never being localized/not aging well to where some people are turned off from playing the game. Doesn't mean that people don't care about the game. I haven't played Gaiden myself, but I still acknowledge it and I still care about it. I've wanted to play it, but haven't had the chance to until the upcoming release of Echoes.

Edited by KazeNinja17
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9 minutes ago, Deltre said:

Additionally, what Fates and Awakening did have a ton of bearing on how this will sell.

Fates was an "episodic" game that has all three "Episodes" have their sales figures lumped in to get the "total" sales. It's not hard to be financially more "Successful" when you sell three games for the price of two, but it costs you the price of a third of a game to make the other two. It's why I didn't count Fates.

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11 minutes ago, Dinar87 said:

I agree that it'll probably sell like hot garbage if there ends up being no supports or anything modern like that. And the amount of advertising for this game compared to fates and awakening? Fucking piss poor. 

This game is practically dead on arrival. It's a shame because it looks pretty good. Oh well, it'll have a comfortable seat next to the tellius series in the "games that are good but sold like fucking dogshite" camp.

I REALLY don't want it to sell horribly but I'm just calling it like I see it. People are fine to disagree though.

Considering it got preordered quite a bit, it probably already has better sales numbers than both Tellius games combined before it even launches.

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1 minute ago, Jedi said:

Considering it got preordered quite a bit, it probably already has better sales numbers than both Tellius games combined before it even launches.

Not to mention the original point is that even if it sells well, it will not meet expectations.

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1 minute ago, Thane said:

And what, pray tell, are those expectations?

After the success of Awakening and Fates and with how hard Nintendo seems to be pushing fire emblem? My educated guess would be a few million units.

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6 minutes ago, Jedi said:

Considering it got preordered quite a bit, it probably already has better sales numbers than both Tellius games combined before it even launches.

This is very true.

1 minute ago, Commander Xelon said:

After the success of Awakening and Fates and with how hard Nintendo seems to be pushing fire emblem? My educated guess would be a few million units.

I highly doubt they're expecting a few million units sold. Also, is that expected sales worldwide, in Japan, in North America, in Europe?

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Just now, KazeNinja17 said:

This is very true.

I highly doubt they're expecting a few million units sold. Also, is that expected sales worldwide, in Japan, in North America, in Europe?

Worldwide.

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Just now, Commander Xelon said:

Worldwide.

Honestly, at most I see their expected sales to be maybe a million units. It depends on how confident they are about the game.

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Just now, KazeNinja17 said:

Honestly, at most I see their expected sales to be maybe a million units. It depends on how confident they are about the game.

Hence my use of educated guess. I could be wrong, but from what I've seen in the games industry lately...

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16 minutes ago, Commander Xelon said:

After the success of Awakening and Fates and with how hard Nintendo seems to be pushing fire emblem? My educated guess would be a few million units.

I highly doubt this. Shadows of Valentia is so unlike the previous two titles that I figure nobody expects it to do exceptionally well. More than likely, it's just a side project to see if there might be a small market for potential remakes of older games.

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21 minutes ago, Jedi said:

Considering it got preordered quite a bit, it probably already has better sales numbers than both Tellius games combined before it even launches.

And it's already better than both of them, too

My big question is: why do we CARE SO FREAKIN' MUCH AS THOUGH THE SALES OF A GAME WILL AFFECT OUR ENJOYMENT OF SAID GAME.

You know, my biggest beef with all this, has been the tons of topics saying this game WON'T sell - have you ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy?

All. Good. Things. Eventually. Come. To. An. End. If this was the game that shitcans FE (and it won't be), our old favorites don't suddenly vanish.

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30 minutes ago, Commander Xelon said:

Fates was an "episodic" game that has all three "Episodes" have their sales figures lumped in to get the "total" sales. It's not hard to be financially more "Successful" when you sell three games for the price of two, but it costs you the price of a third of a game to make the other two. It's why I didn't count Fates.

On the other hand, it very much is one single game in a lot of ways. However, you're completely correct in saying that the necessity to make 3 separate purchases to complete one game is going to skew the data a bit. At the end of the day though, Fates is one game. But whether or not you agree with that wasn't my point anyways. What I said was, that their success will influence Shadows of Valentia's success in a positive way. Which is exactly why, as Jedi said, despite this game's smaller spotlight it's already received a ton of pre-orders. 

Also I think you're greatly overestimating Nintendo's expectations for this game. Most of the assets already exist since from what I can tell, SoV is just a slightly modified Fates engine. Because they didn't have to invest nearly as much resources into this title as they would in say, a brand new Fire Emblem title, they can definitely afford to set the bar a little bit lower. It's not nearly the same as a AAA title where to even break even they need to move millions of units. 

Edited by Deltre
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Why is everyone so pessimistic about the sales? Never underestimate a growing fanbase fire emblem is getting bigger than it's ever been. I am sure Fire Emblem Heroes sparked even more people's interest as well I have seen people who have played Heroes and then bought the actual games. I am of course not implying this will sell phenomenally but I do think the section of the fanbase that whines on forums about features they dislike are a smaller part of the fanbase than you think. I am personally just going to wait and see me and all my fire emblem friends already have ours pre-ordered but I think it will do fine.

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16 minutes ago, ChibiToastExplosion said:

And it's already better than both of them, too

My big question is: why do we CARE SO FREAKIN' MUCH AS THOUGH THE SALES OF A GAME WILL AFFECT OUR ENJOYMENT OF SAID GAME.

You know, my biggest beef with all this, has been the tons of topics saying this game WON'T sell - have you ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy?

All. Good. Things. Eventually. Come. To. An. End. If this was the game that shitcans FE (and it won't be), our old favorites don't suddenly vanish.

I don't know about that yet! I love PoR & RD, and my opinion of Gaiden is more in the middle so we'll see!

Some of us just want to be sure this FE success train continues, I can understand it, but I don't understand the pessimism at the same time.

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24 minutes ago, ChibiToastExplosion said:

And it's already better than both of them, too

My big question is: why do we CARE SO FREAKIN' MUCH AS THOUGH THE SALES OF A GAME WILL AFFECT OUR ENJOYMENT OF SAID GAME.

You know, my biggest beef with all this, has been the tons of topics saying this game WON'T sell - have you ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy?

All. Good. Things. Eventually. Come. To. An. End. If this was the game that shitcans FE (and it won't be), our old favorites don't suddenly vanish.

Sales numbers do affect whether we get more entries in the titles/those titles getting localized. Of course, I'm not counting the already announced and confirmed for localization titles like Fire Emblem Warriors and Fire Emblem Switch. It'll probably mostly determine if we get more entries into the Echoes side-series (what I'm referring to the possible remakes as)

16 minutes ago, Sarahtoga104 said:

Why is everyone so pessimistic about the sales? Never underestimate a growing fanbase fire emblem is getting bigger than it's ever been. I am sure Fire Emblem Heroes sparked even more people's interest as well I have seen people who have played Heroes and then bought the actual games. I am of course not implying this will sell phenomenally but I do think the section of the fanbase that whines on forums about features they dislike are a smaller part of the fanbase than you think. I am personally just going to wait and see me and all my fire emblem friends already have ours pre-ordered but I think it will do fine.

There are those in the Fire Emblem fandom that hate how successful that the series has become. Don't ask me why that is, but that's the case sadly. I want this game to do well since it might lead to more Fire Emblem remakes.

6 minutes ago, Jedi said:

I don't know about that yet! I love PoR & RD, and my opinion of Gaiden is more in the middle so we'll see!

Some of us just want to be sure this FE success train continues, I can understand it, but I don't understand the pessimism at the same time.

I'm just trying to be cautiously optimistic with my sales prediction being slightly under a million units in North America. Perhaps just over a million units worldwide.

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3 minutes ago, KazeNinja17 said:

I'm just trying to be cautiously optimistic with my sales prediction being slightly under a million units in North America. Perhaps just over a million units worldwide.

Cautiously optimistic is probably the best way to go about it honestly.

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32 minutes ago, Sarahtoga104 said:

Why is everyone so pessimistic about the sales? Never underestimate a growing fanbase fire emblem is getting bigger than it's ever been. I am sure Fire Emblem Heroes sparked even more people's interest as well I have seen people who have played Heroes and then bought the actual games.

Maybe this is the pessimistic suppressed OG suspicions coming out, but how much of the people that are playing Heroes (in the west at least) are playing to be able to use their favorite Awakening/Fates characters rather than because they're huge fans of the series as a whole? Considering that the Awakening/Fates characters are heavily, heavily pushed and marketed, to the point of only Awakening/Fates characters appearing in the opening cinematic iirc and the slew of already-released Awakening and Fates characters in the game....

I mean, speaking personally, I wasn't exactly hyped to pull Klein, even though I did turn out happy with his performance.
 

13 minutes ago, KazeNinja17 said:

There are those in the Fire Emblem fandom that hate how successful that the series has become. Don't ask me why that is, but that's the case sadly. I want this game to do well since it might lead to more Fire Emblem remakes.

Not necessarily how successful it has become, but the current direction of the series and a lot of the newer mechanics added in. Not saying that either side is right, just speaking from my experience people are happy that FE didn't die out, but wish that older FE games and mechanics were more popular/more focused.

But yeah, I really hope it does well, even with the newer fans who are used to Awakening/Fates style... I'm not trying to rag on anyone not used to the older games, because it's personal taste whether you like the older mechanics and games are not. I just think it would be a real shame for this game not to do well and "convince" IS that there's no money in remaking/pushing the older games and mechanics.
 

36 minutes ago, Deltre said:

Also I think you're greatly overestimating Nintendo's expectations for this game. Most of the assets already exist since from what I can tell, SoV is just a slightly modified Fates engine. Because they didn't have to invest nearly as much resources into this title as they would in say, a brand new Fire Emblem title, they can definitely afford to set the bar a little bit lower. It's not nearly the same as a AAA title where to even break even they need to move millions of units. 

Yeah, if anything, I see this as a project to tide fans over and give fans of Gaiden a little something during the development period of FE Switch. Not that this game looks subpar or rushed - it looks great. Just saying I don't think they're expecting it to be blockbuster or anything. If it does become one, even better, and we might get more remakes - and localized ones, at that - in the future.
 

1 hour ago, Thane said:

Up until recently I'd say the marketing had been done very poorly, and even now it's not really enough. Compare it to the immense hype machine behind Fates and it's no wonder some of the more casual fans will not even know a new game is coming. 

I think they definitely could be pushing the game more, but it's a hell of a lot better than games pre-Awakening got... Those were barely a blip on the radar, despite the Tellius series' immense quality (imo). I believe that had more people known of their existence, they would have sold better. Blazing Blade sold pretty well when FE was a new thing in the west completely (granted...a lot of people thought Eliwood was Roy from SSBM, but still...)

Edited by Extrasolar
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8 minutes ago, Jedi said:

Cautiously optimistic is probably the best way to go about it honestly.

That's usually how I try to go about any game in general. I'm naturally a pessimistic person, but I try to be cautiously optimistic about games.

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I believe it'll be fine. Not spectacular like Fates and Awakening, but probably better than FE9-12. It seems they're trying to cater to the veteran half of the fandom this time around, and maybe some newcomers will pick it up because they liked the last two games in the series. Recently I watched a discussion video with two guys who seemed to be new fans. Although they've said that it seems like too much Fire Emblem recently, once they saw the PAX East gameplay, they were hyped and now they want to play badly. But those are only 2 guys though, so take that with a pinch of salt. I'm pretty sure both halves will be happy with the game if it has interesting supports. So hopefully they made Mae cheeky enough. 

But we just can't factor established fans of the series alone. We must also take into account that this game may also attract newcomers, and maybe some people that usually stick to the JRPG/RPG genre. Maybe people will see it on the shelf and be like "Hey, there's a Fire Emblem game I've been hearing about a lot of recently." So you never know.

I would also like to point out that it sold out on pre-orders, and literally the only big name 3DS game coming out soon, so it's not like it has huge competition to compete with.

What needs to be done is more marketing. Fates had a ton of YouTube ads, so they need to do the same with Echoes. 

TLDR; don't stress out yet. Just enjoy the finished product when it arrives.

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While I don't think it will sell amazing I do think it will sell well enough. Nintendo really does need to step up the advertisement for it though because so far that has been really lackluster.

But most more casual fans I know who have just played Awakening/Fates is looking forward to it. The problem is more I know some missed that it was actually a thing until told by friends, and then saying they naturally will want to get a new Fire Emblem game.

Basically I don't think the fact that it is a remake will work against it because the majority will just see it as the third Fire Emblem game and get it because they liked the first two.

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