AstroBot sold badly because they haven't built an audience for those types of games in Japan. The same reason why Metroid Prime 4 will likely bomb in Japan as well.

Did astro bot sell particularly well anywhere, last I saw it had only sold around 2.3 million worldwide. Which for a game that won goty, was extremely critically acclaimed and was marketed pretty heavily seems kind of low.

Well, the PS5 is popular WW because of AAA and live service games, people didn't buy their PS5 to play cartoony platforming games, which is why the audience for AstroBot didn't exist to a large extent on PS5.

Every single PS5 comes pre-installed with Astro's Playroom. You can't ask for better exposure, advertisement, or audience building than that. Players who don't check out Astrobot for $60 are the ones missing out. Sony has done a great job promoting it. Astro Bot merchandise is becoming more ubiquitous.

PS is going after a mass market audience, people buying PS do it to play mainstream stuff such as EA sports, CoD and Fortnite, not niche stuff like Astrobot.

Just as people buying Switch doesn't do it to play Xenoblade.

Are platformers really that niche? It takes 2 over 23 million, split fiction over 4 million in 2 months, nsane trilogy over 20 million, mario odyssey 29 million, reignited trilogy over 10 million. I'm not sure how you can compare a easy pick up and play platformer to a very difficult to get into jrpg series. 

I don't think it weird to expect astro bot to have sold a bit better. It's not like there isn't any overlap between Switch owners and ps5 owners, millions of people own both.

With Christmas, the release of Metroid Prime 4 and no big PS5 release, it's quite possible to have a 30/30 Switch split and maybe more than one.

Astro Bot is a great game, but yeah PS5 owners typically prefer big M-rated cinematic blockbusters and live service games, not cartoony platformers, same as Nintendo's audience generally prefers cartoony platformers over cinematic blockbusters.

It's a shame it didn't do better, as it is superb, but it makes sense.

I think you're using the wrongs words there though. "mass market audience", and "mainstream stuff" aren't the right words to use. Makes more sense to say "sports games and shooters", as that indeed is the main audience for the PS. And platformers and RPGs are by no means not mainstream so can't exactly call those "niche stuff".

Astrobot is just different fare than the sports-and-shooters crowd that dominates the PS fandom. Astrobot would do great on Nintendo, and considering the Switch was the second best selling system of all time, it'd be crazy to call that audience anything but mass market, it's more mass market than PS is. But with Nintendo pretty much having been denied most of the "AAA" third party sports and shooters for a bunch of years now (or getting downgraded versions and/or years-late ports) the people who mostly just play shooters and sports make up a significant amount of the PS fanbase. While the people who can live without that stuff and stuck with the system whose mascot is still a platformer, would be a much better fit for an awesome platformer like Astrobot.

Both audiences are mass market, but the overall gaming audience has been split the past couple decades over those who can live without AAA shooters/sports and those who can live without AAA Nintendo games (or those who want to spend their money on both), and Astrobot obviously has a Nintendo style gameplay not a shooters/sports style gameplay. But yeah you are right at least in general about Astrobot not appealing to the type of gamer that the Sony brand has built it's base around.

In 2018 over 70% of Switch owners had a ps4 or xbox1. In 2023 sony reported that 50% of ps5 owners in the US also owned a Switch, I imagine almost all ps5 owners in Japan own a Switch, the number is likely lower in Europe. These consoles are not completely separate markets. I don't think the idea that playstation gamers don't play these games makes any sense.