Mr Khan said:
Yakuza is of niche appeal compared to Sonic. The PC games are a better point, and probably a boon to Sega's balance sheet, but is there room for growth there? |
Yakuza is certainly more niche, but I don't see how Sonic is more consistent or reliable.
Sonic games/skus/sales
2007: 4 / 4 / 13.13m
2008: 4 / 8 / 11.57m
2009: 2 / 3 / 8.82m (if we count the genesis collection 3 / 5 / 11.96)
2010: 4 / 8 / 8.99m
2011: 2 / 5 / 6.82m
2012: 2 / 6 / 2.45m
2013: 2 / 3 / 0.77m
Now obviously this is somewhat tilted towards earlier years since those games had more time to sell, but I don't think breaking every game down by yearly sales would make the trend look significantly different. The only consistency I see is decline. Now those early years were also helped significantly by the olympic and racing games, but despite the low numbers, the same is true of the recent years.
Yakuza has also declined since the PS2 games, but it hasn't seen the massive drop that Sonic games have. It is especially more reliable if we are looking at Japanese sales of the mainline games. It has only fluctuated between 591k-838k across 5 games over 8 years. Even the spinoffs seem pretty consistent. 357k for Kenzan, 423k for Dead Souls, and with ~220k first week for Ishin it'll probably fall in a similar range.
