One Year Later, Metroid Samus Returns Still Not Sold Over 500k

[curl-6]

Snoorlax said:

curl-6 said:

You continue to miss the point; PS2 was merely an example that a "larger userbase" is meaningless when that userbase has moved on.

The 3DS's days of relevance are long gone. Almost every game released on it since the Switch came out has underperformed or outright bombed.

Let's compare some sales of games that released side-by-side on both 3DS and Switch:

Captain Toad

Switch: 400k

3DS: 80k

Fire Emblem Warriors

Switch: 480k

3DS: 140k

The conclusion is obvious; Samus Returns would have sold far better on Switch, and it's failure is entirely Nintendo's fault for releasing it on an obsolete platform that gamers were moving on from instead of the far superior new platform they were flocking to and hungry for games for.

Dragon Quest XI (3DS)

Released: 29 July 2017

Sales: 1,82m (physical)

*less than 2 months later*

Metroid: Samus Returns (3DS)

Released: 15 september 2017

Sales: 0.48m (physical)

The conclusion is obvious: You can release games on a still relevant system if there is still demand for them, Metroid is not supported anywhere not even by it's loud NA market.

Dragon Quest, like Pokemon, is a freak outlier, it's so religiously popular in Japan it would sell on anything. 

Metroid will be supported when Nintendo bring it to a relevant platform that gamers actually want it on.