PS5 and Xbox Series X|S Sales on the Rise - Global Hardware Oct 24 to 30

[PAOerfulone]

RolStoppable said:

curl-6 said:

Sucks that we have to wait til early February to get numbers for Dread, I'm itching to know how well it has sold. I really think it will be to Metroid what Awakening was to Fire Emblem and elevate the sales ceiling for the franchise.

Very doubtful.

The most important factor for rising Fire Emblem sales was that the games prior to Awakening received only very minor marketing. The same doesn't hold true for the Metroid series, so if Dread merely matches the previous ceiling of 2.5-3.0m, it should be considered a satisfying result.

There are many more factors that go into a game's sales than just marketing.

The biggest thing that held Fire Emblem back, besides marking, was its permadeath feature in its games. Keep in mind, the series up to that point was a hard series meant for more experienced players. Hell, games like Radiant Dawn were way too damn hard for their own good. So to add a permadeath feature on top of that, that scared off potential newbies to the franchise until Awakening made it optional and toned down the difficulty.
That was going to be the last game in the series if it didn't sell 250k, so Intelligent Systems, as terrified as they were, gave that game everything they had and tried to make it as accessible as they could or that would've been it. The end result was a kick ass, strategy RPG that people could pick up and play and not worry about losing their characters midway through and actually connect with them and not pull your hair out ever 5 minutes you get your ass handed to you in a battle.

As for Metroid:

Consider that Prime 1 was on a limited install base in the GameCube, which as a borderline stinker in sales. And Prime 3 just wasn't the kind of game that appealed to casual players, the vast majority of the Wii's install base.

Dread doesn't have either of those problems. The Switch is more successful than either the Wii or GameCube were and will go on to outsell both of them combined (and by a comfortable margin from the looks of it). And it's a far more popular system amongst dedicated, hardcore gamers than the Wii ever was.