Ubisoft projects sales of 500,000 for Red Steel 2 as the game prepares for launch in March of this year.

Ubisoft has set low sales expectations for its MotionPlus infused Wii game, Red Steel 2, by stating that initial expectations of 1 million sales for the title have now been cut in half to a meagre 500,000 units as the game prepares for launch in March.

During a financial conference call earlier this week, Ubisoft's CEO, Yves Guillemot fielded a question on Avatar sales and expectations for Red Steel 2 with the following response: "For Avatar we said 2.5 million units and our expectations were more in the 3.5-4 million [region].  On Red Steel we decided, in our expectations, to divide the quantity by two and previously we had around a million."

Despite the fact that these sales expectations are low, they aren't necessarily representative of Red Steel 2's quality. Ubisoft may simply be accounting for the poor performance of other core titles on the Wii (e.g. MadWorld, The Conduit, and Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles), as well as a 50% drop-off in Ubisoft's own casual market during the current financial year.

http://www.totalvideogames.com/Red-Steel-2/news/Ubisoft-Cuts-Sales-Projections-In-Half-For-Red-Steel-2-14904.html

Oh no, please please don't send this one out to die too..

I wonder what their reasoning might be. Though I'm surprised they thought that highly of Avatar...

I guess this means half the advertising too, so they will have more money for Assassins Creed for PS360, right?

500k is my expectation for this game too. Don't expect much if any advertising for a game they've lost hope in.

Not having split-screen local multiplayer was a huge oversight for this game. The original had it but it would have been even better in this one with 1:1 sword fighting. That alone would have pushed a lot of sales to the more casual consumer.

As is, I'm sure it'll outsell Conduit but not match CoD so 500k seems just about right.

I'm worried since day 1 I saw videos that this game will suck.

I hope not, but I have that feeling...

If Madworld can sell 400k ("poor performance" my ass), Red Steel 2 which looks much more mainstream should sell quite a lot more.

Not that I will be crying a river if it doesn't...

considering the continuing failing of first person shooting genre, dispite much hype and developer's dedication (and I'm talking about Conduit)

Does it take a genius in Ubisoft to realize the game probably won't sell like hotcake first party games??

Why didn't you choose one of the better-performing Wii FPSs as your example? Like for example COD at 1.40 million?

You don't really have to answer.

Yet another game that looked like a serious effort for Wii has it's publishers lose faith in it. If they don't see it as a big game, they won't market it as hard and they won't make sure it's polished to the same standard. And this leads to the circular fulfillment of the "core games can't sell on Wii".

Hopefully it's good enough that it sells in spite of this, and in spite of Red Steel 1. I think it's pretty obvious that people would want to play a first person swordfighter on Wii with WM+.