IIRC there wasn't even a TV spot. It was shown briefly at the reveal, E3, and then in highlight reels/montages but the advertising for the game itself was indeed very minimal.

I don't know about you, but where I live we saw tons of Knack commercials, both before and after release. It was the one game Sony had to appeal to casuals and family audiences, so they hyped the hell out of it.

I don't know where you live, but there was no specific Knack TV spot that aired in the US from what I can tell, though there was one for the UK. I don't know anyone around here who has ever even heard or seen anything about the game.

I live in the USA and I saw tons of Knack on televisions in PS4 demo commercials, it was one of the biggest emphasis. Also, dedicated internet advertisments by Sony were abundant enough. 

What is a PS4 demo commercial? And Sony releases internet ads for all of their first party games, so that's not a very good argument.

This thread would be much easier if it was about games that fell below my expectations. I could actually come up with some.

It still is a sony game so of course it will sell reasonably well  especially when on a platform with well no games. (thats what new platforms usually have no games)

Whats more suprising is that ZombiU sold ~700k (digital not counting) 

Because  its a third party game on nintendo
it is low budget
its a single player shooter on nintendo
etc.

Yet ZombiU a low budget title was NOWHERE near profitable on a single platform that obviously launches with 0 install base (so 1.5m or so were expected because I am sure its at almost 1m physical+digital and for me 1m being nowhere near profitable means at least 1.5m if not 2m were expected) 

Its funny because at the same time WatchDogs a AAA big budget title is expected to sell only 6m on 6 systems combined even tho porting alone costs millions of dollars for 6 systems (Expecting 6m automatically means quite successful because noone would expect their multiplat AAA game to be barely profitable)

thats 6m on 165m PS3+360 consoles + ??m PC's + 7,6m PS4's + 4,6m X1's + 6,2m WiiU's
Thats a potential userbase of ~185m (when we assume that only 1.6m gaming PC's exist without PC its 183,4m consoles)


So ZombiU fails at almost 1m and Watchdogs is a success at 6m? how does that work?

It is a good argument, you said they didn't do enough to get it recognition, but seeing as that they had ads plastered all over the internet, they did.

And commercials dedicated to the PS4 in general, with gameplay bits from other games mixed in. Knack was a huge focus for them since they wanted to appeal to casual audiences. It along with Killzone were the only notable exclusive AAA launch titles, so yeah, they gave it a lot of love. 

You do realise that Hunter x Hunter has been one of the most outragously popular mangas since it got going in 1998, often only being beaten in popularity by one piece, all whilst having one of the shittiest consistancy of chapter releases, and if it had been even 80% as consistant at getting chapters out as One Piece (as apposed to less than half) the manga sales would be around 200m right now (assuming the manga continues to be as long as One Piece is currently) as apposed to the 65m as of Febuary 2013 (probably 70m right now). Also Attack on Titan was fairly popular in its own right before the anime hit as you don't survive 5 years as a monthly manga without good sale. Granted the Anime helped the series explode, giving the series the second highest manga sales in 2013 at ~15m.

Wasnt saying both was not known before the anime, HxH had an anime starting at 1999. Its the fact like you said it exploded! The animes did there job very very well