People are talking about the possibility of Gow4 outselling Smash 5?
God of War sales (as of 2012)
God of War - 4.62 million
God of War 2 - 4.25 million
God of War 3 - 5.20 million
Super Smash Bros sales (as of 2017)
Super Smash Bros - 5.55 million
Super Smash Bros. Melee - 7.41 million
Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 13.25 million
Super Smash Bros. 4 - 14.51 million
First, let's already start saying that the best selling GoW game isn't even as big as the worst selling Smash game, which was also the first...
Second, no doubt both series had a growh, but we are in a different level there, like, God of War was selling pretty much 4/5 million for game, with GOW3 being the best selling, and the new God of War has a new formula which will help to be way bigger... it may possible sell 10 million or more, not saying it can't.
But Smash? I mean, let's start saying EVERY GAME sold better than the previus entry. But the true story of smash is pretty much that every game has something which hold down the sales.
First, Smash 64, easy to understand, it was the first entry and as a new IP it wasn't that big. (even though it included famous IP, but people were not confident with the gameplay)
Smash melee, well outside of the fact that it had A LOT of new mechanics, and was 100 times better than Smash 64, it was the launch game of a console, which surely helped the sales. What didn't help? The fact that the console was the gamecube. On a biggest console, it could have sold SO much more...
Brawl, It comes after amazing word of mouch from Melee, and on a BIG userbase. So far all good. What went wrong? Bad word of mouth, for reasons that most Smash fans already know. The game the biggest launch ever for a Nintendo game, it was huge (2.7 million in one month in USA, 800K first week in Japan ecc) , but the legs were pretty bad for a Nintendo game, indeed with a launch like this people would have expect way more (like 20 million considering the big success of the Wii and the big launch, some people were predicting it to outsell GTA IV lifetime) and it only stopped at 13 million.
Smash 4, the good thing is that it comes on 2 platforms. The bad thing is that the combined sales of the 2 platforms are still below the Wii, and also it comes after the not so good reception of Brawl. It was Smash, so it still has a very strong launch, but nowhere as big as Brawl. Guess what? In the end, the game was able to outsell Smash Brawl, and become the biggest game of the franchise. Smaller launch, but good word of mouch helped it for having better legs.
Now, Smash 5. The "bad thing" is that it won't have 2 versions... but i don't think it will hurt sales so much. The good things, however:
- It comes after Smash 4, which had a good word of mouth
- Literally every Smash sold better than the previus one, the series is growing every games
- It's on the Switch, which is most likely gonna be the best selling console of a Smash game, or at least super close to the Wii
- Literally every Nintendo series had a big growh on Switch. It is just looks like Nintendo IP are stronger than ever right now, and if Mario 3D can ship 9 million in 2 months, what can we expect from Smash?
- It will be good? Why not? Basically, Smash 5 could be what Brawl should have been. If Smash 5 has good word of mouth, comes out after Smash 4 and on a successful platform, it will do insane.
