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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Financially, was ARMS a flop?

 

Was ARMS a flop or a success?

A success 62 72.09%
 
Neither a flop nor a success 21 24.42%
 
A flop 3 3.49%
 
Total:86

If Nintendo says they can make make back BotW's development cost selling one million copies, they definitely made money on ARMS.



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It sold pretty well especially for a genre at closest to being a fighting game.



Unless they severely mismanaged their finances, there's no way Arms was a flop given it probably sold around 2 million with digital included. For a new and fairly simple fighter genre title on a platform they didn't even know would be an enormous hit while the game was in production, it would be rather silly for them to expect more than that.

Given this is Nintendo who almost always air on the side of caution when it comes to making a profit, I doubt they spent so much on development and marketing to actually come away from that game in the red. While not as huge as Splatoon, I can't imagine they thought it would reach that level.



AngryLittleAlchemist said:
Jumpin said:
Games cost a lot of money to develop these days. How much does it cost? Like 60 USD? Multiply that by 1.67, and you only get about 100 million in total revenue, likely a less money than it cost to develop the game. Nintendo probably only got a chunk of that, I'd say 40,000 USD. So yes, a bit flop, Nintendo lost over 1 million dollars on it.

FLOOP!

#Exposed

I would be extremely surprised if they spent anywhere near $100 million on this game. It's not BotW or Mario Kart or anything... it featured, what, ten(?) characters in a few tiny settings that would hit one another with their arms? You're also probably also missing quite a few digital sales, and they've managed to establish a new franchise that they can build on going forward.

Few companies are bigger sticklers for making sure things remain profitable than Nintendo... this was clearly one of their low budget titles.



I think it sold plenty.

It's only a flop in the sense that it probably has lost a lot of players



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It's going to sell around 2.5m lifetime. The budget would have to be absolutely absurd for that not to be a success. Like GTA V level budget. I highly doubt Nintendo has ever made a game that cost too much to be a success at 2.5m copies sold.



Here's an article where Nintendo said BotW would only need to sell 2m before being profitable.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarder/2016/06/30/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-needs-to-sell-2-million-copies-to-break-even/#62ee2354615f

Obviously Arms didn't cost even a fraction as much as BOTW (I'd bet money on BOTW being Nintendo's most expensive game ever by a decent margin). So yes it should be very profitable at 2.5m sold. Definitely enough to continue the franchise. 

Last edited by HyrulianScrolls - on 14 April 2018

It is not incredible but it is a fair success, it will sell 2,5M probably, for a first episode of a complete new and exotic thing, it is great. When they will announce the 2nd episode in some years, people will get hysterical on youtube on their reaction videos.

It will soon outsell Secret of Mana (1993), and in 1 year...So Secret of Mana was a flop ?



After playing party crash last night I can safely say ARMS is a success both financially and by being a freaking awesome game.



Nuvendil said:
The_Liquid_Laser said:
Neither really a success or failure. For a console maker, the type of software that they'd want to make is something that will really move hardware. The best money for the big 3 is in licensing fees, which means they want to make first party games that will move the hardware. Arms didn't really do that.

On the other hand it does round out their library some more and it's a reasonably enjoyable game, so its not really a failure either. Plus I think it's good for Nintendo to keep trying out new games. The more they can do that the better. They aren't going to knock it out of the park every time they make a new game, but it's good that they keep trying.

I mean, as I explained earlier, exclusive games make good money on their own.  $7 more per copy than a 3rd party dev makes.  So Arms brought in I would guess 50 to 60 million in revenue.   I can't imagine the budget was close to that high.  So yeah, moving hardware is always nice but midtier exclusives like Kirby, Yoshi, Arms, etc exist fkr a reason.

Ok, I just want to reiterate that I wouldn't call Arms a success or failure.  Having said that:


It's not really a success, because of
opportunity cost.  Sure they made some profit, but they would have made a lot more profit if they made a game that would move hardware.  I don't want to call Arms a failure either though, because at least they are trying out new IP, which is something that Nintendo needs to keep doing.


But Kirby and Yoshi games are much better examples to use when talking about opportunity cost.  These games really should never be made.  Why?  Because people buy them because they like 2D platformers.  But 2D Mario and Donkey Kong Country are 2D platformers that always sell a lot more than Kirby and Yoshi, and more importantly Mario and Donkey Kong move hardware.  They are wasting resources making Kirby and Yoshi, because Nintendo gets much better returns when they make Mario or Donkey Kong.  So these Kirby and Yoshi games might technically make a profit, but Nintendo is leaving a lot of money on the table by making them.