Fire Emblem Echoes sold less on its first week in Japan than either Shadow Dragon or New Mystery did.

[Slumber]

Also, haven't physical sales in Japan been steadily dropping over the last decade or so(I mean, obviously Fates saw an improvement over Awakening, but that game will always be difficult to classify the sales of)?

Edited April 27, 2017 by Slumber

[eclipse]

23 minutes ago, Thran Starcrod said:

Your opinion.

This isn't a good response to Jedi's quote.  Either take it to PM, explain your stance better, or don't respond at all.

---

My response to the actual topic is "eh".  Since it's already confirmed for a Western release, I'm happy.  What this holds for the future of the series is nigh-impossible to say - we know Warrioris is later this year, and some vague Switch game is in the distant future.  Heroes seems to be doing well enough.  I see no reason to worry.

[Yula]

Just now, eclipse said:

This isn't a good response to Jedi's quote.  Either take it to PM, explain your stance better, or don't respond at all.

No, no it wasn't. I took it to discord instead. Sort of explained everything and yeah, I am optimistic that Fire Emblem will continue to be strong. Plus I'm going to be able to play Echoes alongside my best friend as he's getting it too(We're both super excited for the game).

[Folt]

45 minutes ago, Quintessence said:

Hahaha that's typcial. SF likes to light fires everywhere . I think it's a matter of competitiveness in which devs aspire to surpass previous titles' first week sales. Personally, I think they're decent, yet I understand why people are worried about it, since FE is supposedly on its pinnacle of popularity.

Now that I see this thread, it reminds me of the article I read at IGN in which they (generally) said IS made a risk move by changing "drastically" the way of playing FE from one version to another. FE14 had a lot of hype around it, pair up, marriage, avatar and whatnot, and now they bring us to a polished version of old school FE, in which case I feel people (or newbies) are hesitant to make such change and get out of their comfort zone by experiencing something new (ironic!).

That being said, I will always support FE and will definitely get the game on its digital version, because I don't want to mess up with shipping, handling, taxes and whatnot.

Please; they have always been rather risky with this series. While the core gameplay has been firmly established, there's still been that one thing (or more things) that makes me remember them all separately.

[Harvey]

I guess there's no future for FE9 and FE6 remakes.....or no future with FE remakes in general.... :(

Ok..on a more serious note. Those who say that lack of marriage is why it isn't doing well, I think you need to compare this with heroes here.

1. Both games have topped charts.

2. Both games don't have marriage and yet are still doing well.

The reason why Echoes isn't doing wonders as much as its suppose to is according to my theories. To me, its not because of it being called as the black sheep of the series and its not because its trying to be faithful as the original.

The main problem this game has to me is lack of marketing. The game was just announced a few months ago without a whole lot of gameplay footage or info for that matter. All they did was just announce the game at the direct and left very few tidbits of the game here and there. Fates as soon as it was revealed not only had a lot of hype going but had an actual interview from IS as soon as it was revealed, had constant info revealed  and was up for the hype despite it being released a year later for other regions.

That's my theory to it.

 

Edited April 27, 2017 by Harvey

[Retyl]

.

Edited September 6, 2018 by Retyl

[Dinar87]

That's...pretty disappointing tbh. I just hope IS doesn't see this and goes "welp we tried but it looks like waifu stuff is the way to go if we want to sell well". I desperately want path of radiance or something like that in the future and the sales of this game, despite not including europe and america yet, have me kind of worried so far. 

Also, yes heroes has just gotten the "world of radiance" stuff but I don't know....I'd of much preferred something a bit more substantial like a re release or even a remake or sequel. Ah well, maybe in the future....I hope :'(

[Thane]

24 minutes ago, Dinar87 said:

That's...pretty disappointing tbh. I just hope IS doesn't see this and goes "welp we tried but it looks like waifu stuff is the way to go if we want to sell well".

If Echoes does end up selling poorly and people blame that solely on waifu mechanics, then they're being delusional. People have already explained many other, more likely reasons as to why the sales could end up being worse, and for as good as the presentation is, the gameplay feels rather dated and has several glaring issues.

[Sunwoo]

Just now, Thane said:

If Echoes does end up selling poorly and people blame that solely on waifu mechanics, then they're being delusional.

Thane, you and I (and the whole world) are full aware that some people are just delusional

[Thane]

4 minutes ago, Sunwoo said:

Thane, you and I (and the whole world) are full aware that some people are just delusional

Hah, fair enough. I'm always surprised by this fanbase's obsession with "waifu" mechanics, and by that I don't mean the people who are actually into that stuff, but the people who use it as a scapegoat.

[Harvey]

Its also worth pointing out that some games like Blazing Blade sold higher in other regions than in Japan. So the real fate of Echoes lies in other territories. If it bombs hard....I mean...not to be a troll or anything but that might hint that Nintendo might do things like Awakening.

But numbers aren't what's worrying. I wonder what crappy statements reviewers from IGN and Gamespot are going to give for whatever flaws this game had? Is ign's con for this game going to be "No waifu?" or "bland story"?

 

 

[Dr. Tarrasque]

2 hours ago, Harvey said:

I guess there's no future for FE9 and FE6 remakes.....or no future with FE remakes in general.... :(

Ok..on a more serious note. Those who say that lack of marriage is why it isn't doing well, I think you need to compare this with heroes here.

1. Both games have topped charts.

2. Both games don't have marriage and yet are still doing well.

The reason why Echoes isn't doing wonders as much as its suppose to is according to my theories. To me, its not because of it being called as the black sheep of the series and its not because its trying to be faithful as the original.

The main problem this game has to me is lack of marketing. The game was just announced a few months ago without a whole lot of gameplay footage or info for that matter. All they did was just announce the game at the direct and left very few tidbits of the game here and there. Fates as soon as it was revealed not only had a lot of hype going but had an actual interview from IS as soon as it was revealed, had constant info revealed  and was up for the hype despite it being released a year later for other regions.

That's my theory to it.

 

I do not believe that, in the context of financial success, Heroes is comparable to Echoes or any other game in the series. Reasons being...

1. Heroes is on a different business model than the other games in the series. Echoes is under the standard business model where you have to pay to have access to the game's content while Heroes is on the Free-to-play and gacha model. The main distinction here is that the standard business model has the obvious barrier of entry that is the cost of purchasing the game and as well as a "price ceiling" for how much money you can make from a single individual. The Free to Play part of the business model for Heroes does not have the barrier of entry and lacks the "price ceiling" that the default model has, I'm sure you've heard of the man who's spend thousands of dollars and has a +10 Takumi in his team for example and this is further supported by the nature of the gacha games where people can succumb to the "dopamine effect" and before they know it, spend hundreds or thousands of dollars just to get a trivial item in a video game because they give it too much value and seek immediate gratification. This is why the Free-to-Play model is so popular, because they can get so much more money from so many people than they'd get if they go with the standard model and the price ceiling, plus, they have to do very little to get more of your money.

2. Echoes requires a "dedicated" a specific device to be played on. Heroes can be played on any damn smartphone that can run it so there's even less investment involved from the consumer to just try the damn game (Heroes) and potentially end up hooked on it and pay more money than the "price ceiling" of heroes just cause they wanted to satisfy their urge to fulfill a trivial wish in the game. Just the fact that it's on a smartphone as a free-to-play game gives it a huge audience already that will stomp anything Echoes could hope to achieve.

3. The nature of the games. Echoes is a game with its already established plot, world, characters, etc all contained in one package and in many cases, people may not be interested in the game simply because they just don't care about its content as it means nothing to them (doesn't have Ike, Roy, Marth, favorite character, etc). Heroes on the other hand is pretty much a gacha fanservice game so you'll have people playing the game just because it packages popular character they already know they like into a video game.

As for the marriage crap I've been tossing around, I'm kinda half-joking and half-serious about it because on the one hand, marriage is such a silly thing that the series should not need in order to make a good game and you'd hope that the games from a series you once enjoyed would just sell because it's a good game. On the other hand, the 2 most financially successful games as of late (not counting Heroes) are the 2 recent ones that have "revived" the series and both include the marriage and visual novel-like factors in play. Now, there probably isn't anything that can factually state that the marriage and visual novel crap IS the main cause of the success Fates and Awakening have received but at the same time, you can't deny that these aspects seem to be what has the most discussion/attention, what newcomers ask about the most and are some of the biggest differences in these games with the rest of the series. It's really sad if these factors are the main cause of the success, specially when you look at how many people shit on core aspects of Awakening and Fates after the hype has gone down.

Oh and Marketing does play a role in sales too, just not necessarily as significant as you may believe.

It's all up in the air right now and there's still numbers outside of Japan to see before saying "ECHOES FAILED, END OF THE LINE FOR FIRE EMBLEM REMAKES". It's just a shame.

Edited April 27, 2017 by Dr. Tarrasque

[Harvey]

6 minutes ago, Dr. Tarrasque said:

Heroes is on a different business model than the other games in the series. Echoes is under the standard business model where you have to pay to have access to the game's content while Heroes is on the Free-to-play and gacha model. The main distinction here is that the standard business model has the obvious barrier of entry that is the cost of purchasing the game and as well as a "price ceiling" for how much money you can make from a single individual. The Free to Play part of the business model for Heroes does not have the barrier of entry and lacks the "price ceiling" that the default model has, I'm sure you've heard of the man who's spend thousands of dollars and has a +10 Takumi in his team for example and this is further supported by the nature of the gacha games where people can succumb to the "dopamine effect" and before they know it, spend hundreds or thousands of dollars just to get a trivial item in a video game because they give it too much value and seek immediate gratification. This is why the Free-to-Play model is so popular, because they can get so much more money from so many people than they'd get if they go with the standard model and the price ceiling, plus, they have to do very little to get more of your money

I was talking about it interms of the chart positions. I agree that both have different business models and I personally prefer the one time pay model. But that's not what I was saying..I was just trying to say to those who think that marriage is absent so sales are bad(it actually isn't bad so far when you consider that the game was out on 20th...hardly lasting a week) should look at Heroes where marriage isn't there and yet the game managed to top charts..how it did is something we have to wait and see though.

15 minutes ago, Dr. Tarrasque said:

2. Echoes requires a "dedicated" a specific device to be played on. Heroes can be played on any damn smartphone that can run it so there's even less investment involved from the consumer to just try the damn game (Heroes) and potentially end up hooked on it and pay more money than the "price ceiling" of heroes just cause they wanted to satisfy their urge to fulfill a trivial wish in the game. Just the fact that it's on a smartphone as a free-to-play game gives it a huge audience already that will stomp anything Echoes could hope to ach

Except the problem is that Heroes is region locked and just destroys the portability of Heroes cause you're stuck using emulators if the game isn't based on your region.

Echoes kinda is region locked too but we're getting a global release for both NA/EUR too so that's a whole lot better than Heroes still being region locked.

Also of not that despite the region lock for both games, they are still doing well.

18 minutes ago, Dr. Tarrasque said:

As for the marriage crap I've been tossing around, I'm kinda half-joking and half-serious about it because on the one hand, marriage is such a silly thing that the series should not need in order to make a good game and you'd hope that the games from a series you once enjoyed would just sell because it's a good game. On the other hand, the 2 most financially successful games as of late (not counting Heroes) are the 2 recent ones that have "revived" the series and both include the marriage and visual novel-like factors in play. Now, there probably isn't anything that can factually state that the marriage and visual novel crap IS the main cause of the success Fates and Awakening have received but at the same time, you can't deny that these aspects seem to be what has the most discussion/attention, what newcomers ask about the most and are some of the biggest differences in these games with the rest of the series. It's really sad if these factors are the main cause of the success, specially when you look at how many people shit on core aspects of Awakening and Fates after the hype has gone down.

Funny that you mentioned the marriage thing since FE has had marriage from the start of the series. Its just that marriage differed in each and every game. The only difference is that besides Holy war as well as Awakening and Fates, none of the games had units that had kids..even FE6 doesn't clarify with that kind of thing..sort of.

 

[Captain Karnage]

after many years of just sitting and watching I've learned that 90% of a reason a game sells so well is just pure hype, just look at No Mans Sky, that game sold like crazy on release just because of all the hype surrounding it.

As for Echoes, I really haven't seen this game get a lot of hype, or even that much press coverage

but, I'll also just go with the 3DS is getting old argument to go along with the lack of hype

[Harvey]

17 hours ago, Armagon said:

But as mentioned before, the game is releasing near the end of the 3DS' life.

I've seen a lot of games being released once the new console that showed up and still ended up doing well. Pokemon Black/White & 2 for example...

 

[Retyl]

.

Edited September 6, 2018 by Retyl

[Harvey]

30 minutes ago, Retyl said:

That's Pokémon, so of course it's going to sell. Nintendo could release a Pokémon game with barely any advertising and it would still sell well.

I disagree. The marketing behind Pokemon is EXACTLY the reason why Pokemon is doing wonders. The tv shows, trading card games, board games and even the mobile games alongside other merchandise combined is enough to hype people about the new pokemon game period.

 

[Armagon]

49 minutes ago, Harvey said:

I disagree. The marketing behind Pokemon is EXACTLY the reason why Pokemon is doing wonders. The tv shows, trading card games, board games and even the mobile games alongside other merchandise combined is enough to hype people about the new pokemon game period.

 

However, I disagree. Maybe this was true back when Pokemon was still young, but now, it's a different story. Nintendo could literally advertise Gen 4 remakes out of nowhere, never talk about it again, and the games would still sell amazingly.

[Retyl]

.

 

Edited September 6, 2018 by Retyl

[Ivy Wife Supremacy]

The waifu/husbando stuff is probably (most definitely) in the upcoming Switch game regardless of it obviously not being in the remake they aint gonna assume that's the reason if its gonna be in the next new game in the first place lets be real here. The sales won't be any better elsewhere I already estimated 450-550k total which is decent amount this game obviously wasn't meant to break or even tie with Awakening or Fates its to hold off to the glorious HD FE 16 people had waaaay too many expectations of Echoes.

Edited April 27, 2017 by Blade Lord Lyn

[Harvey]

@Armagon @Retyl

You are missing the point of Pokemon. Pokemon is a transmedia franchise where it has several types of merchandise that makes Nintendo a whopping TON of money.

Saying Nintendo/Game Freak/Creatures doesn't need Pokemon anime anymore doesn't mean they should stop it because it still prints them money.

Saying Nintendo/Game Freak/Creatures doesn't need Pokemon Trading Cards anymore doesn't mean they should stop it because it still prints them money.

Saying Nintendo/Game Freak/Creatures doesn't need Pokemon Mobile games anymore doesn't mean they should stop it because it still prints them money.

Saying Nintendo/Game Freak/Creatures doesn't need to put effort into Pokemon games anymore doesn't mean they should stop it because it still prints them money.

Basically, anything that makes money, it will be stupid to bench them later on since they still make money. So saying that Pokemon can easily sell with just the brand name is just silly because its the brand that is powerful because nearly every pokemon game has delivered quality(except the recent 3D ones that are glitchy).

If Pokemon were to just be about games with no anime and all, it'd be selling only on Zelda levels and nowhere on Mario levels and that's a bad thing because Nintendo values their IPs and if their IPs lag in sales, it only means that they will see it as people losing interest in Pokemon.

And while you can argue that Mario doesn't have as much of transmedia as Pokemon, the reason for that is because the Movies, TV shows etc didn't do so well and in the end just make Mario as Nintendo's main mascot and that already has made the plumber the biggest franchise there is.

 

[Armagon]

2 minutes ago, Harvey said:

@Armagon @Retyl

You are missing the point of Pokemon. Pokemon is a transmedia franchise where it has several types of merchandise that makes Nintendo a whopping TON of money.

Saying Nintendo/Game Freak/Creatures doesn't need Pokemon anime anymore doesn't mean they should stop it because it still prints them money.

Saying Nintendo/Game Freak/Creatures doesn't need Pokemon Trading Cards anymore doesn't mean they should stop it because it still prints them money.

Saying Nintendo/Game Freak/Creatures doesn't need Pokemon Mobile games anymore doesn't mean they should stop it because it still prints them money.

Saying Nintendo/Game Freak/Creatures doesn't need to put effort into Pokemon games anymore doesn't mean they should stop it because it still prints them money.

Basically, anything that makes money, it will be stupid to bench them later on since they still make money. So saying that Pokemon can easily sell with just the brand name is just silly because its the brand that is powerful because nearly every pokemon game has delivered quality(except the recent 3D ones that are glitchy).

If Pokemon were to just be about games with no anime and all, it'd be selling only on Zelda levels and nowhere on Mario levels and that's a bad thing because Nintendo values their IPs and if their IPs lag in sales, it only means that they will see it as people losing interest in Pokemon.

And while you can argue that Mario doesn't have as much of transmedia as Pokemon, the reason for that is because the Movies, TV shows etc didn't do so well and in the end just make Mario as Nintendo's main mascot and that already has made the plumber the biggest franchise there is.

 

I never denied that. What i was saying was that in the hypotheical sceneraio where Game Freak and Nintendo decide to NOT promote Pokemon, the games would still sell above expectations. 

Back when Sun&Moon was announced, the very first trailer, the one that just showed off concept art. That alone brough a bunch of hype. It had people talking about it for months, until the first proper trailer came out and the hype just skyrockted from there.

[Harvey]

2 minutes ago, Armagon said:

I never denied that. What i was saying was that in the hypotheical sceneraio where Game Freak and Nintendo decide to NOT promote Pokemon, the games would still sell above expectations. 

Back when Sun&Moon was announced, the very first trailer, the one that just showed off concept art. That alone brough a bunch of hype. It had people talking about it for months, until the first proper trailer came out and the hype just skyrockted from there.

And why oh why would any idiot decide to not promote something inorder to get not even sales, but awareness of the product? Infact, that's exactly one of the main reasons why Echoes didn't do as well, lack of marketing. 

As for Sun and Moon, ok..but what about the ones who never heard of Pokemon or even played games in general? What happens when they still see the anime or get into the trading card games or..dare I say it..what happens when they see Pokemon on phone? Don't you think those facts are good enough for them to get into the main pokemon games if they want?

I'll tell you that I have never known Pokemon until I ventured into the trading cards and the anime and it was around 2000s...a time that I still haven't gotten into the main games yet and finally...after I think around 2005 is when I got into the main pokemon games.

 

[Retyl]

 

.

Edited September 6, 2018 by Retyl

[Quintessence]

9 hours ago, Folt said:

Please; they have always been rather risky with this series. While the core gameplay has been firmly established, there's still been that one thing (or more things) that makes me remember them all separately.

I know,  but what I specifically mean is that the transition between Fates and Echoes might feel harsh for newcomers, which is probably the reason why it isn't being stellar in the sales aspect.