So Far, Nintendo's Arms Does Not Have Legs - What?

[DonFerrari]

h2ohno said:

DonFerrari said:

I don't think I can disagree with any of your points Rol.

Man... I'm not discussing this point. Sure a 1M sell on a new IP would usually mean it's successfull (we would need if it's making good profit or not to be sure).

But let's say new IP sells 5M on first month and 6M LTD after 3 years... probably a big success, but with weak legs.

Another game sell 1M first month and end up 3M LTD after 3 years... may not be a success, but had very good legs.

I'd consider both a success, though in different ways.  You're right that success and legs are not the same thing, though they're related.  Right now the only thing we have to go on with Arms is the initial succes since there is no information to even start talking about its legs.  Context matters.  A COD game selling 3 million units would be a flop given past success, expectations, being split over at least 3 platforms (XBOX, PS4, PC), and the likely high development and marketing budget for the game.  On the other hand Fire Emblem was considered a big success and a breakout hit when Awakening sold over 1 million after the series saw consistently declining sales.  Nintendo games have less people working on them and smaller budgets that most big AAA games like Mass Effect or GTA, and Arms would have had a smaller budget than other Nintendo games like BOTW and Mario Oddessey.  And it's on a system that still only has an install base of about 5 million.  It's hard to see how it could have possibly been expected to do better,

I sure wouldn't call Arms a Flop, and you are right about context.

On legs, each genre or phase of franchise have it's specifics.

Some games are very front loaded (like 70%+ of sales on First Month), others have good legs (let's say 40% first month and sales for over 1 or 2 years) and we have some of those Nintendo evergreens that seems to not care about how long it have been released will still put nice numbers almost every week (Minecraft does that as well).