| Aquamarine said: It's a toxic cocktail of reasons: 1) It wasn't what people expected which turned off a lot of Nintendo diehards who were initially interested in it 2) Wii U is completely irrelevant in the retail market that's dominated by PlayStation and Xbox so it gets very little retail exposure 3) The whole JPOP market that #FE captures plays their games on the Vita, PS4, and PS3 to a lesser extent....nobody buys a Wii U for a JPOP-inspired JRPG...or any traditional JRPG for that matter. 4) Nintendo of America pretty much sent it out to die. The marketing budget for this game was tiny-to-non-existent. For example, Nintendo didn't have a single TV spot for the game according to real-time TV ad metrics. 5) NoA's asinine censorship pissed off some otakus who refused to support it...aka the core base of those who would buy this game...and you really can't do that in 2016. 6) Piracy on the Wii U (and now Wii U emulation on PCs) hurts software sales 7) It doesn't have the best reviews in the world with only an 81 on Metacritic...some people have a lot of fun with it, but it's not universally acclaimed like Persona 4 was....so you don't get much of a word-of-mouth effect |
I agree with every reason you gave here except for reason 5. I feel as though Fire Emblem Fates kind of rid us of the idea that vocal minority on the Internet can really impact the sales of of these types of games. Fates ended up being the best selling game in the series by a longshot and now Nintendo considers it a bigger franchise than they ever have.
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