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Sales Story

Article  A Sales Story | E14 | Tales of Arise
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Context after Berseria

We touched the subject rather quickly in the previous article but the Tales of series was left in a rather odd situation after the team wrapped up Tales of Berseria development.

First the Tales of Studio was no more since 2012 and merged with Bandai Namco Studio, while it probably had minimal impact on Tales of Xillia and Xillia 2’s development, its effects began with Tales of Zestiria which featured a bigger amount of outsourcing partners than usual. Tales of Berseria proceeded to have an even larger share of external partners (including Tri-Crescendo, ironically², which also took care of Symphonia PS3 port before that) and the series sort of went into hiatus after that.

The official stance on the merge effects, coming from series general producer Makoto Yoshizumi a decade ago, was that “staff would now come and go, people from the former Tales studio would work on other Bandai-Namco projects and people from Bandai Namco Studios could now work on Tales of with each individual bringing his own experience to new projects they would join”

Second, at the time the Tales of team was left without a leader following Hideo Baba’s departure, Yasuhiro Fukaya filled the Producer job for Tales of Berseria but he was apparently only a stopgap and for years it seemed like there was no one filling that role and championing the IP within Bandai-Namco.

Third, Bandai Namco Studio were at the time on a heavy restructuring plan regarding their technical staff, lead by freshly recruited CTO Julien Merceron (Anvil, Crystal Engine, Luminous, Fox Engine…) which mainly enticed switching almost all of their internal projects to Unreal Engine 4 (Tekken, Soul Calibur, Ace Combat, Code Vein, Scarlet Nexus…), the Tales team until then had only used their own internal tools (which caused some messy development issues, but that’s another story) and even industry standard middlewares were barely used.

Fourth, there was at the time a sort of rejuvenated optimism towards the creation of new projects that were shooting for an audience not entirely dissimilar to the one Tales of was going for : God Eater 3 (2018) was making the jump to home consoles on PS4, Code Vein (2019) was an ambitious new action rpg anime IP and Scarlet Nexus (2021) was being in development and lead by former Tales of developers.
While it’s not like the Tales of team went on to work on another project unrelated to Tales of entirely, it’s more accurate to say the “Tales of” team didn’t exist anymore and there was some overlap of staff allocation between all of these projects

In the midst of this turmoil we do know a small core team was probably prototyping a new project with Unreal Engine 4 that would end up being Tales of Arise, but it wasn’t a top priority at this moment and there was no direct continuation of staff between Tales of Berseria and Tales of Arise.

But things started getting clearer in late 2018 when Yusuke Tomizawa was officially announced as the new series producer, he was already the God Eater producer before as well as involved with Code Vein (which basically looked like a God Eater X Dark Souls crossover of sort) but with God Eater 3 about to be released and Code Vein in the polishing phase it seemed clear that his main focus was shifted on the new Tales of entry that was teased in Summer 2018 at the Tales of Festival. Something we got a confirmation later on when Tomizawa was “only” credited as “General IP Producer” and not producer anymore for the two previously mentioned games.

With Tales of Vesperia Remastered/Definitive Edition (2019) release date also coming fast (January 2019) the Tales of series was once again back in the spotlights at Bandai Namco Studio and it was only a matter of months before we would hear more about their next main project.

A convincing first reveal and a promise of a WW day 1 release

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Tales of Arise was finally unveiled at Microsoft E3 2019 conference for Xbox One, PS4 and Steam : shiny new graphics, Unreal Engine 4, hollywood type of music (not from an ingame track) english narrator using keywords and giving a pretty different vibe than what the Tales games usually do… although the process wasn’t new by any mean (see 1 2 3) having it being the first reveal of the game, the first thing anyone would hear about when Tales of Arise came to their attention made a huge difference.
Reason being that Tales of games were always revealed for the japanese audience first and foremost before that, it often entailed some “quirky” details that may put off a wider audience outside Japan : flashy character designs, cute mascot, jpop songs, japanese voice acting… while all of these have their fans in and outside Japan there is no doubt it could cut off part of a broader audience the game could reach if it didn't put such a huge emphasis on these aspects (see the 3 previous E3 trailers as examples), when questioned about it the producer basically said as much and that most of what made the Tales of games would come back but that they would talk about it “at a later date”
Tales of western releases also coming as long as 2 years after the game was made available in Japan (if they came at all) meant that western branch/marketing potential was hampered as the japanese market focused all attentions and required a different approach than WW (a rather predictable marketing entry after entry, progressively revealing playable characters and their voice actors, theme song, opening sequence, a story trailer and a gameplay trailer at the yearly Tales of Festival etc)
What was fine in a pre internet era where info was hard to get, media/marketing was mostly a physical affair (paper, vhs/dvd, store ads..) and Japan a distant country with a cryptical impossible to understand language… suddenly became a burden if the plan was to sell the title differently : by the time promotion would kick off outside Japan, the game would’ve been out for months, all characters revealed long ago, all gameplay system thoroughly dissected, all cutscenes available on youtube (or nico nico douga), and any potential surprises known since long ago : to make it short it’s harder to create excitement and control the marketing narrative for what is an already available project out there, even if not in your preferred language, and especially if marketing costs have to be split between regions.

And this is where Tales of Arise differed since a day 1 worldwide release in 2020 was promised from the get go, practically a first for the series²² and while it’s a bit of a struggle and entailed changes in development practice (arguably it probably meant that the game could have ship earlier in Japan) allowing a global worldwide marketing budget meant a more concentrated effort could be done towards where the biggest bulk of the Tales of audience now was : outside Japan
As we saw previously, while for nearly 20 years the bulk of each entry's sales came from Japan, a major shift, years in the making, happened with Zestiria with western markets accounting for around 75% of the game sales, making higher up at Bandai-Namco see the (white) light
Every step taken for Tales of Arise discussed so far were taking that into account, it also encompassed skipping entirely historical character designers Inomata and Fujishima (though for the latter it could be for another reason) and having Minoru Iwamoto (Radiant Mythology, Zestiria, Berseria) doing all character designs as well as being the overall art director for the game, a position he already occupied on Tales of Vesperia, allowing for a more unified look for the whole game universe
Seemingly the very first concept for some characters went as far as using Dark Souls for inspiration, a giant leap in style from what the series used to do (1 2) and even Iwamoto himself (1 2)
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Another huge emphasis was put early in development into researching what would make Tales of stand out amongst the many Unreal Engine games out there since, while the engine allowed for some ease of development and use of an incredible variety of middlewares, without proper care and customization the game visual identity would vanish, and with Tales having dropped 2D a decade ago, cel shading, sd models and fixed camera angles being a non starter the series also left in the past there was no quick method to devise an unique visual flair that would immediately makes you think “ok this is different and definitely and Tales of game”
This is where the Atmos shader was born in an attempt to harmonize the game visuals in a slight watercolor style and lay the foundations for Tales of Arise as well as any future title, and while this is the outcome it was to keep evolving in the future to redefine what is now the visual benchmark of Tales identity

1y delay to add XS/PS5 SKU and polish the title
But somehow all promotion grinded to a halt rather quickly a few months later after a quick trailer at Tokyo Games Show 2019 that showed briefly the back of a third playable character as well as the game mascot (because there had to be one).
It’s only after long months of silence that in June 2020 an official delay to 2021 was given and while COVID-19 was mentioned it wasn’t exactly being blamed as the sole and unique reason and the wording was rather vague which is a bit… odd as the pandemics was an easy, and legitimate, way out for many publishers/developers struggling with it worldwide.
It took half a year again to hear a few more words in Winter 2020, only alluding to more concrete news happening in the coming months as well as reiterating that development of the game was nearly done. The March 2021 Tales of Festival trailer wasn’t any better, made of old footages and committing this time to more news “this spring”.
The drought finally ended in late April with the game release date trailer (whose style and cuts were similar to the E3 2019 footage), September 2021, that also contained the third and fourth playable characters as well as confirming the existence of PS5 and Xbox Series SKU (JP version, notice the title difference), in-game visuals effects were also a bit toned down compared to its reveal trailer, not a shocking process by any mean considering how it helped building a first strong impression whose lingering effects were still being felt to this day.
Adding new generation consoles SKU was undoubtedly a wise move, although it arguably came a bit late in the first place, japanese developers usually being slow to make transitions (Tales of Zestiria was originally a PS3 exclusive, in 2015 more than two years after PS4 release)
The complete removal of multiplayer, although not entirely unexpected as it was more and more of an afterthought, was also made official following a decade of game design choices culminating with complete camera control and the disappearance of the LMBS in Arise, at this point the feature was probably deemed to not have enough appeal anymore and Bandai Namco most likely had plenty of data to support that view, it certainly left some players saddened but as far as a wider audience is concerned it's likely the impact was fairly minimal.
Starting this point everything went rather smoothly as far as marketing and development is concerned, most likely because the bulk of the development was already wrapped up for some time (probably holding the release date for multiple reasons like adding next-gen SKU, accommodating the worldwide release and possibly targeting a strategic release date), the western audience was again the primary target and the fifth and sixth playable characters were announced rather unceremoniously in a new trailer in June, days after the press had access to an early demo of the game containing all playable characters, ramping up the marketing with positive previews from gaming outlets being published worldwide.

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A second preview shared with the press in midsummer featured this time the whole first part of the game, so a few hours within a 40h game, it included the first cinematic movie done by Ufotable showed this far, confirmed the absence of individual character portraits (only a, literally, obscured group one) but also unveiling, as is worded in the official trailer, “lifestyle features” which were made of a fishing mini-game, some basic animal ranch management, cooking and the skits which the series was known in a completely revamped presentation that used in-game 3D models and was more akin to a comic panel oddly reminding a sort of more advanced version of what Valkyria Chronicles did in 2008.
The banter of victory poses was replaced by less interactive short dialogues at the bottom left of the screen, allowing for quicker gameplay transitions between battle and exploration, also despite allowing free camera control the game had a relatively simple and restricted level design (mostly corridors to be blunt) some camera angles were obviously tinkered with to focus on the surrounding sceneries using a day/night cycle, it ended up giving the impression of playing a third person action game with behind the shoulder camera at times and not exactly a typical JRPG anymore, to keep up with current standards a bunch of quality of life features also made their way in including fast travel, auto save, quick retry/reload.
But most of all the first chapter was both narratively and in terms of pacing a rather strong hook, with a boss battle that was intended to be as climactic as a final boss fight, including multiple QTE cinematics in the middle of the fight (a trend of setpieces you’ll find in more boss battles), the motive was clear and it grabbed a lot of people early on instead of an, often criticised, approach of slow ramp up that the genra was known for.

Overall it followed the general “inheritance and evolution” mantra that was set early on during development, keeping what was deemed essential to the series and evolving what seemed necessary to keep up with evolving standards in the videogame industry (although arguably how many of the design choices were bold evolutions and how many were just the consequences of lost knowledge due to staff departure is up in the air)
A final note on the more “traditional” approach to marketing/game design the series was known for because, you know, it’s still a Tales of, the game featured the usual :
While most of it was kept under wraps for a long time to accommodate western marketing, it was still in there and ended up being slowly and carefully introduced only rather close to release once the time came to comfort long time fans.
And despite not being directly confronted to it as part of the western audience (me and most of the readers who got this far) the approach to commercials aired in Japan was also completely different : putting a bigger emphasis on characters, the romance between its two protagonists while using what was one of the most popular song of the 90’s (1 2 3)

The final nail in the coffin in a very classical approach to building up anticipation ended up being the release of the first demo the press had access to months ago, merely 3 weeks before release, long enough to let interested people get a taste of what’s to come but late enough to allow for a quick turnaround between demo and full game availability.

The release

A convincing metacritic/opencritic score and explosive start
Following multiple good showings, a well round up coordinated marketing plan, an overall well polished product, a day 1 worldwide multi platform release on nearly every single hardware it’s no surprise that the game ended up extremely well received, scoring a 87 on metacritic with nearly non existing negative reviews (99% recommended on opencritic) and unanimous praising
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Words cloud for the game review, see methodology in annex²²²²

Some reviews did have complaints, mostly minor and related to the scale of the game, its last act that seemingly didn’t deliver as much as the reviewers expected it to and its very nature as a Tales that was bound to being unable to satisfy equally both newcomers and long times fan alike

“some rough edges” ‘missteps and a few bumps” “not an all time classic”
“not [...] innovative in any way” “far more style over substance” “outdated ideas and conventions”
“Tales flavour both good and bad” “bad old habits” “storytelling tends to be inconsistent” “takes a while to get going” “lot of technical problems” “some problems in character creation and story logic”
“Bland side quests” “side content isn’t always quite as interesting” “we can blame it for his clipping, its talkative side, or its redundant bestiary” “combat [...] comes at the cost of losing some depth” “narrative [...] not all beats hit their mark” “switch from game graphics to anime cutscenes is actually rather jarring” “excessive linearity and the removal of multiplayer” “game isn’t able to skirt around the issues that often plague JRPGs” “awkward pauses and stiff cutscene animations threatened to break immersion” “lacklustre finale”

^ but all of this is just complete cherry picking from the overall tones of the reviews that is better associated with the word cloud picture you can see above. By doing cherry picking on the opposite spectrum we would probably get 5 to 10 times more quotes and in the end this is what mattered when Tales of Arise won best roleplaying game at The Game Awards two months later, it wasn’t the busiest year for the genre (it’s unlikely it would’ve won against any of the three previous and two following winners) but it still got the award against the likes of Monster Hunter Rise, Shin Megami Tensei V, Cyberpunk 2077 and Scarlet Nexus by being the right game at the right time, something multiple other media outlets agreed on to some degree

Sales obviously immediately followed suit with the game first reaching 1M less than a week after release then 1.5M after less than two months and 2M in approximately 7 months.
Funnily enough it’s easy to speculate that the publisher expected to reach 2M sooner or latter as each one of these milestone was associated with one of the three duo of playable characters the game has to offer (Alphen/Shionne, Law/Rinwell and Kisara/Dohalim respectively) and there was no further update for some time (notably missing 2.5M).

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Further confirmed by legs and average price staying high
Further milestones were shared later on, notably 2.7M in November 2023 and 3M in February 2024, a bit more than two years after release and giving the confirmation that, while the game had great sales, it obviously slowed down a bit after an explosive start (by series standards).
Rough platform/region split
*** Hidden text: You do not have sufficient rights to view the hidden text. Visit the forum thread! ***
What was also important though was that it reached these numbers while keeping a relatively high average price especially compared to its direct predecessor Tales of Berseria (2M LTD)

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PSN historical price for Tales of Arise up to the 3M milestone (NA/EU pricing are identical, JP is only slightly different)

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Tales of Berseria price on a similar timescale, the game only reached 2M in 09/21, it was sold at single digit prices at times by then

The same thing applied for the Steam keys lowest price as could be checked there for Arise or there for Berseria, Arise keys below 20€/$ only happening after 1y and 2 months against 9 months for Berseria and a similar pattern for reaching lower price milestones, even on the official Steam store.

But sales were slightly rejuvenated by the announcement of a DLC sequel of sort : Tales of Arise : Beyond the Dawn, scheduled to release in November 2023 a bit more than 2y after the game's original release.
The length of the DLC, its lateness, its limited retail release as well as its relatively small scope coupled with a high price (30$/30€) overall lead to slightly disappointed reviews and, most likely, muted sales which made you wonder what lead to the inception of it and what were its underlying motives²²²²²


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The last "bounce" making an upward trend in week 113 is due to the release of the DLC Beyond the Dawn

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The future

For Arise
With the game joining Gamepass and then PlayStation+ consecutively in February 2024, there is no doubt Bandai Namco has put on hold any expectation of extra sales for now. The reach of the game has probably been made wider by allowing free access to it to the subscribers of the aforementienned services, it also likely came with an interesting financial incentive that is making the project an even more profitable venture than it already was.

Its only remaining area of growth could be an eventual port on a Nintendo hardware, whether that is the Switch (which recently received another incredibly late port of a Bandai Namco Studio games : Ace Combat 7) or its successor that is expected to release sometimes in 2025, remains to be seen but things might be a little crowded however because...

For the series
... with the latest announcement of multiple future remasters (starting with Tales of Graces F) to celebrate the series 30th anniversary, current platforms are bound to receive multiple Tales of starting from early next year not leaving much space for yet another late port.
All PS3 titles are likely candidates (which means both Xillia games and potentially Zestiria and Berseria) but the "Remastered Project" wording mean any game they deem fit could be a candidate, Bandai Namco Studio 3 lead Yoshito Higuchi was potentially teasing something related to Tales of the Abyss on Twitter these last couple weeks (which will celebrate its 20th anniversary... in 2025 as well) for example.

For new main entries however, the former Tales of Arise's team lead by Hirokazu Kagawa (Director) and Minoru Iwamoto (Art Director/Character Designer) was looking for new employees back in April 2022, indicating they were probably about to enter full production for their next Tales of project that ran independantly of the Beyond the Dawn DLC (as neither of these two were credited in their respective role there).
Considering this and how development usually go, the likelihood of hearing something about a Tales of Arise successor in 2025 is fairly high as it would be 3+ years since the recruitment page went up and 5+ years since Tales of Arise's release itself, as for its release date things can still change but anything beyond 2026 would be unusually long unless something went wrong in the process.

I should also mention that the turnaround between Arise successor and another new entry will probably be much faster due to the probability of the return of a "two teams system" for the Tales of IP being fairly high.
That's what the whole interview with Kenji Anabuki (Scarlet Nexus Director) alludes to, as he's seemingly been brought back to work on Tales of for a project he's leading, project than can't be Arise successor as Kagawa is reprising his role as Director there, Anabuki, as well as a few others BNS staff that worked on Scarlet Nexus were also credited on Beyond the Dawn probably cementing their positions and inserting themselves within the new Tales of staff while getting familiar with the pipeline and tools put in place during Tales of Arise development.

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Speculated timeline for next entry(.es), even if true today it's obviously approximative and could still change

------------------------------------------------

Notes/Bibliography of sort

² Using “ironically” since Tri-Crescendo is a studio which was born spinning off from Tri-Ace which itself was born spinning off from Wolfteam which… was Tales studio former name. Basically they’ve come full circle

²² “Practically” because Tales of Vesperia on X360 nearly achieved it with a 3 weeks difference between JP and NA, EMEA being a distant 1y span due to the Atari’s buyout in these markets by Bandai Namco

²²² 4Gamer
 キサラの後ろ姿は最高ですよ。私は操作キャラクターをずっとキサラにしていました(笑)。

岩本氏:
 本当ですか? 美しい体にしたいと思ってデザインしたので,それは嬉しいです。

4Gamer:
 キサラは3Dモデルも美人ですし,あの鎧は後ろから眺めていたくなります。

²²²² generated on wordclouds from every excerpt of the 78 reviews on metacritic, curated words list removing terms that don’t add anything like “tales” “bandai” “namco” “just” “much” etc. fonts used Amarante and Helvetica

²²²²² Lookings at the DLC credits more than half of the original staff weren’t involved but a few veteran who went to make Scarlet Nexus were back in lead positions for this DLC, it’s possible that the DLC existence was also there as a sort of “training ground” for people coming (back) to make new Tales of games with the new engine/middleware environments that was set up for Arise

Disclaimer : All sales numbers are rounded up, for simplicity sake but also because some of them aren’t as accurate on top of never being made public. Still all of them were retrieved through trackers (Famitsu, Media Create in Japan, NPD GFK for other markets) official shipment numbers from the publisher (10M milestone of the series from Namco that detailed every SKU, milestones for a couple titles) or CESA. Some of these sometimes also contradict each other a bit so accuracy isn’t always the best, it’s still more than good enough and nothing that would change the tone or analysis made towards the series sales numbers

https://blog.tales-ch.jp/?_ga=2.9430581.1644708003.1560127813-96726022.1544788796&paged=10 Tales of blog

Interviews to read
https://news.denfaminicogamer.jp/interview/221221a
https://www.bandainamcostudios.com/en/behind-the-game/673
https://www.bandainamcostudios.com/en/behind-the-game/675
https://joshinweb.jp/game/cmt_191.html
Article  A Sales Story | E13 | Tales of Series
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Brief introduction
The Tales series is a JRPG series owned, developed and published by Bandai-Namco that started in 1995 on SFC with Tales of Phantasia, its main feature was to support a real time battle system on a separate plane which also allows multiplayer, pretty similar to a fighting game, unlike other JRPG who mostly used turn based battle systems. It remained a series staple for a long time, called “Linear Motion Battle System” due to the characters sticking to a single linear line to move at first (almost all 2D titles up to Hearts), then evolving to multiple lines (Rebirth, Tempest), 3D with as many lines as there are enemies (Symphonia), enabling free movement but with limitations (Abyss, Vesperia, Graces), free movement without any limitation but still linear movement as default (Xillia, Zestiria) until Berseria where complete free movement became the default moveset, a design choice that was kept on… Tales of Arise.

Otherwise the series sticked to what made classical JRPG at the end of the XXth century
  • Plenty of area and dungeons to explore
  • A colourful cast of playable characters designed by famous mangaka (Kosuke Fujishima, Mutsumi Inomata mainly) featured in multiple animation cutscenes made by Studio IG first and then Ufotable
  • An opening cinematic with a jpop song
  • A lengthy scenario often dealing with religion, racism, ecology and various moral dilemma with notable amount of side quests
  • Soundtrack composed by the renowned Motoi Sakuraba* (Valkyrie Profile, Golden Sun, Baten Kaitos, Dark Souls…)
  • etc.
While there are around** 17 main titles released in approximately 25 years, almost each entry is entirely separate from the others as they all are different stories with different characters set up in different worlds, like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest they only share a common “backbone” described before and various common gimmicks such as items used, secondary NPC, the cooking system, victory quotes, skit dialogues, vague common mythology references, cameo battles, each character having one/multiple super attack, some gameplay systems like the signature move 魔神剣 / Majinken / Demon Fang, characters from different episodes do happen to meet on crossover titles up to this day (1 2 3 4)

As such every new entry is mostly a clean slate, recognizable by its name and strong visual identity that made it stand out amongst others titles released at the same period

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Development process
Historically the development process at the inception of the series wasn’t a smooth affair at all, developed by Wolfteam, a subsidiary of Telenet Japan, Tales of Phantasia wasn’t intended to be the first episode of a series at all, it was also scheduled one year earlier than its original release and was to be named Tale Phantasia.
However due to strong disagreements between the developers and Telenet Japan, the game went through notable shifts in development and ended up pitched to different publishers, including Enix, before being picked up by Namco whose conditions ended up delaying the game release by a year as well as being the cause of the departure of a big part of the Wolfteam staff that left to create Tri-Ace (which went on to create Star Ocean, a brother game of sort to Tales of Phantasia).

From there on though, it’s a bit easier to follow :
  1. Wolfteam became a dedicated team that made Tales of titles
  2. Until 2003 where Namco became the majority owner of the studio and officially renamed it “Tales studio”
  3. Namco then became the sole owner a few years later
  4. And chose to merge the Tales Studio with its main Bandai Namco Studios in 2012 ending up nearly 15y of a rather strong independence for the team making Tales of games
  5. Finally a last (recent) development that we learned about is how Bandai Namco Studios itself is structured in multiple sub studios with Tales of being the prerogative of Studio 3 (alongside IP such as Blue Protocol, Idolm@ster or Scarlet Nexus) how long that structure has been there is unclear but it likely emerged in the last few years and doesn’t necessary mean any developer from one Bandai Namco Studio wouldn’t be able to move to another one.
It should be also be noted that for a decade or so Namco tried to diversify the IP and studio output, making unofficially two Tales team within the Tales studio, one lead by historical figures and unofficially named “Team Destiny” (which made all 2D titles as well as Tales of Graces) and another called “Team Symphonia” lead by Namco game designers (which made Symphonia, Abyss and Vesperia), the two teams having their own identity :
Fujishima’s character design for Team Symphonia, Inomata’s for Team Destiny, 2D games for Team Destiny, 3D for Team Symphonia and having their own strong points (battle gameplay for Team Destiny, story and writing for team Symphonia***)
Two main titles were also made almost entirely outside the Tales studio : Tales of Legendia from an internal team at Namco and Tales of Innocence from regular external partner Alfa System.
It all ended up with Tales of Xillia in the late 2000's where only a single team remained to make Tales of titles once again.

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Release strategies and sales
While the series initially had its debut on Super Famicom in late 1995 in Japan only, the reception sales wise wasn’t anything special, selling somewhere above 200 000 copies. But like most other third parties in Japan back then, Namco commissioned a second entry for the series due to release on PS1 in late 1997 : Tales of Destiny which mostly followed in its predecessor footsteps by retaining what made the core identity of Tales of Phantasia.
And it was a resounding success as the game got close to 1M lifetime in Japan only which is still to this day the best selling title in the country, thanks to North American (1999) and Asian releases it also crossed the 1M threshold but worldwide sales were a footnote in the overall picture.
Following that PS1 and PS2 got almost all following entries : first a japanese exclusive extended port of Tales of Phantasia (1998) got near 700 000 copies, then Tales of Eternia (2000) ended up around there as well with a North American release (2001)**** pushing its numbers by 100-200k, Tales of Destiny 2 (2002) followed on PS2 selling around 800 000 copies in Japan and close to 1M with its Asian SKU (with full Korean localization) and then came Tales of Symphonia (2003).

By most accounts it was a peculiar title :
  • First full 3D game in the series
  • First Tales of title not being directed by Wolfteam veterans (but instead a former Tekken/Soulcalibur developer : Yoshito Higuchi)
  • First time character designer Kosuke Fujishima returned after Tales of Phantasia
  • And… a game planned as a GC exclusive.

The same way Nintendo lost a fair amount of third party support during the transition from SFC to N64, it tried to build back up a lot of it going from N64 to GC, this is an entirely different story (whose most famous episode is the Capcom Five) so we won’t go into too much details but Tales of Symphonia was really treated as well as a first party title could on the console and that involved a console bundle, most likely financial incentives and, above all, a full localization/publishing/marketing effort led by Nintendo outside Japan.

As Namco publishing arm was rather weak in NA and non existing in other regions it meant that for a good part of the world Tales of Symphonia was the first experience many would get of the series (a lingering effect that is still felt to this day… although getting smaller as time passed) and that’s what led to the foundations of the western audience of the IP.
The match between Tales of and the GC ended up as pretty mixed overall, while western sales exploded due to the strong push of Nintendo (somewhere between 600 000 and 700 000 copies), japanese sales turned out to be lackluster, barely surpassing 300 000 copies sold when at the same time, as we saw before, PS1 and PS2 titles were selling double to triple that amount.
Still, with more than 1M copies sold worldwide it was still remarkable numbers and it remained the best selling entry outside Japan, by far, for more than a decade after that.

Nevertheless Namco first concern was its home market, and Symphonia GC proved to be an anomaly that they quickly course corrected with a PS2 port (2004) that got around 400 000 copies followed by further games on the Sony console with Tales of Rebirth (2004) 600 000 copies, the weird experiment that was Tales of Legendia (2005) at 350 000 sales, Tales of the Abyss (2005) 700 000 copies too and finally Tales of Destiny Remake (2006) 400 000 copies.
Of all these games only Tales of Legendia & Tales of the Abyss left Japan and were released in North America (2006), both had negligible sales (<100 000) and the latter only at a budget price late into the PS2 lifecycle, 2D games back then being considered as unappealing for western audiences all 2D titles in the series stayed as Japan exclusive after Tales of Eternia on PS1 in 2001 (minus an EMEA only release for the PSP port of… Tales of Eternia (2006))

This is where things started getting confusing as far as support went for the Tales series.
First, due to a strong push for japanese support by Microsoft, the first HD title Tales of Vesperia (2008) ended up an Xbox 360 exclusive with near simultaneous JP+NA release (EMEA being left in a limbo for a year as Namco was in the process of buying Atari's publishing arm for these markets). It was one of the best selling title on the console in Japan***** but due to a limited install base it only meant somewhere above 200 000 copies which was nowhere near enough for the series especially as the western release fell short of Symphonia success only reaching around 300 000 sales.
At the same time spin off were still being released on PS2, PSP, while DS got main entries with Tales of Innocence (2007) / Tales of Hearts (2008), both selling 300 000 copies, and Wii was supported too with a spin-off sequel of Tales of Symphonia, Ratatroskr no Kishi/Dawn of the New World (2008), 250 000, and a completely original new title Tales of Graces (2009) at… 250 000 as well.

If you followed things well thus far (which isn’t an easy task by all means, so let me praise you if so) you would notice that almost all of those later numbers are clearly lower than what the series was used to on PS1 and PS2.
It was made worse by nearly all of them staying in Japan as well, except the Symphonia sequel which sold respectably in others markets, around 300 000, mostly riding on its predecessor popularity in western countries.
Namco then did the same thing that they did with Tales of Symphonia : recoup the costs by porting it to a more desirable hardware owned by their audience in Japan, that is to say the PS3.
Tales of Vesperia (2009) was first, it started stronger than on X360 and kept selling for years eventually surpassing 520 000 copies, it never left Japan.
Tales of Graces F (2010) came next, with the same outcome, ending up north of 400 000 copies, it had a, at first unplanned, rather late western release (2012) whose sales numbers are assumed to be in the usual 300 000 range

And came the turn of the first PS3 exclusive title, the grand return of Tales of in its home turf to celebrate the series 15th anniversary.
Featuring:
  • For the first time the collaboration of its two main character designers
  • A switch to Ufotable for its animated cutscenes following the studio growing popularity and its lauded anime adaptation of Tales of Symphonia (coincidentally, Haruo Sotozaki’s directorial debut before he, and others, worked on… Demon’s Slayer)
  • Dual protagonists with separate storylines (reminiscent of what was done with Tales of Destiny’s Director's Cut) and more…
Tales of Xillia (2011) had an explosive debut sales wise with ~500 000 copies sold first week****** before it petered off a bit, barely surpassing 700 000 copies in the end due to a middling reception, an overall lack of content, visually being unimpressive for a PS3 exclusive, the beginning of the end for the series multiplayer feature and a battle system that lacked “punch” coming after the super fast and stylish Tales of Graces.
Still, it was an incredible return to form for the series in Japan, back to where it was on PS2, the late (2013) worldwide localization didn’t set the charts on fire as much but sold in the same ballpark most previous attempts did, north of 400 000 copies, final shipment numbers seemingly ending up at 1.33M making it the best selling title worldwide to date.
Only one year later the game received a direct sequel, Tales of Xillia 2 (2012), an incredibly fast turnaround for a new entry due to its heavy reuse of assets and systems from its predecessor, it also featured a fair amount of new contents originally planned for the first game, plenty of improvements left and right and especially for the battle system (possibly due to the presence of Tales of Graces battle designer, Tatsuro Udo) but being a direct sequel to a slightly unpopular entry released so quickly meant that expectations and potential were lower, it ended up north of 450 000 copies in Japan and sales outside Japan (2014) were also lower, due to being a sequel but also the series hitting some kind of saturation with 3 titles in a 1 year span (Xillia, the Symphonia remasters and Xillia 2), data are getting less accurate but it sold notably less than Xillia, less than Graces F and WW shipment numbers didn’t reach 1M

It took a bit more than two years for a full new entry to come to PS3 once again, with Tales of Zestiria (2015) this time celebrating the series 20th anniversary.
It was pegged as the IP first foray into an “open world” design of sort with wider area and seamless transitions between exploration and battles. Due to fan requests, on top of the collaboration between multiple character designers continuing, the soundtrack also featured both Motooi Sakuraba and Go Shiina's works, the latter who was linked to Tales through Tales of Legendia mostly but who gained popularity due to its unusual sounding themes on God Eater and others Bandai-Namco IP featuring vocals like Idolm@ster.
Remember how things went a bit wrong between expectations and reality for Tales of Xillia? For Zestiria it was worse, much much worse.
While its opening week was decent, close to Xillia 2, for a title coming at the tail end of PS3 lifecycle, its sales absolutely cratered beyond anything the series ever knew before, merely selling 50 to 60 000 copies after a 340 000 opening week.
Why is that? A complete clash between ambition and execution:
  • The “open worldish” aspect was oversold (and mostly consisted of wide empty area that took a while to traverse)
  • The seamless transition lead to multiple technical and gameplay problems like framerate being cut to an unstable 30fps in battle, a first for the series whose main appeal was its dynamic battle system and a locked 60fps
  • The camera was catastrophically bad frequently due to that seamless aspects and poorly adapted level design, sometimes being stuck into the wall or background elements with the player barely seeing a thing
  • Multiplayer was even more an afterthought than before, its core gameplay mechanic, character fusion, entirely removing control from a potential player...
If you add a, japanese centric, huge controversy surrounding the identity of the main female protagonist and confusing marketing with the aforementioned characters which lead to a voice actress doing an extreme form of apology with a public dogeza in front of a crowd and, more likely than not, the series producer to leave Bandai-Namco*******, a “collaboration” of composers that was really about each one of them working on their end and Shiina providing 14 spectacular tracks in its own CD for the OST (the third that is) that didn’t blend with Sakuraba’s at all
You end up with an unfinished messy product that not only underperforms but also risks damaging your IP reputation long term.

The irony however is that Zestiria was a big moment for the series worldwide, not due to the game itself but due to timing and platform strategy as it was the first time Tales of adopted a day 1 multiplatform release of sort outside Japan.
The game debuted on PS3, as you’d expect, but also got a decent up port on PS4 and a satisfying Steam release for the series platform debut.
Following an often noticed pattern of “First game of a series on Steam getting explosive sales” it was a big performer in both Europe and North America, official Bandai-Namco sales numbers at the end of 2020 putting it as the best selling title for the former at 481 000 sales and best selling single release of the series for the latter at 600.000 sales bringing its total WW number somewhere between 1.5M and 1.7M mark in 2020 (including the 400 000 copies of the PS3 SKU in Japan and later 20 000 copies of PS4 SKU + every sales it got in Asia and other regions, making it for a time the best selling Tales of worldwide)

18 months later came Tales of Berseria (2016) on PS3/PS4, its job was simple : fix everything that went wrong with Zestiria and build on what worked in its systems and lore. The extra development time it got compared to Xillia 2 allowed the game to feel much more “unique”, something necessary for what was story wise a distant 1000y prequel of Zestiria. It built back up some good will, had cross promotion with the currently airing Tales of Zestiria the X anime with a special Berseria episode and both game and anime featuring an opening by popular group Flow, they removed the seamless transition between exploration and battles, allowing 60fps gameplay once again, and featured an “anti hero” type of story that resonated well overall with the audience which meant that despite disappointing first week numbers in Japan, ~250 000, it was able to finish close to 400 000 copies sold in the end.
Its fate in others markets was similar to Zestiria, an added Steam SKU, better reviews (79 to 72 for Zestiria on metacritic) meant that it mirrored Zestiria sales outcome, only being slightly behind in total worldwide sales in 2020 before, thanks to digital discounts, reaching 2M in September 2021 (while no further data was given for Zestiria it’s unlikely that it didn’t reach 2M at some point too), officially the first single release of a Tales of to do so, a milestone that was soon gonna be surpassed but that's another story, another tales to write down about...

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In blue the Original SKU sales in Japan, in red sales of late ports in Japan (not inc remasters), in yellow sales outside Japan

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By order of appearance for each color besides yellow (sales outside Japan again) : SFC, PS1, PS2, GC, DS, X360, PS3, Wii, PS4

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Despite some hiccups here and there you can clearly see the long term trend of sales in the country

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The numbers mainly reflect which entry was localized and in which context, naturally Symphonia and Zestiria stand out

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Notes/Bibliography of sort

* Shinji Tamura/Hibiki Aoyama was co-composer for a few titles up to Tales of Vesperia, his works included famous battle themes such as Fighting of the Spirit, Fatalize or Fury Sparks, in Tales of the Abyss a couple tracks were also done by Motoo Fujiwara, leader of music group Bump of Chicken, like Meaning of Birth or Finish the Promise, finally Tales of Innocence soundtrack was made by Kazuhiro Nakamura and Tales of Legendia by Go Shiina.

** The exact number is up to debate, as it’s not clear whether the full blown remake of Tales of Destiny on PS2 should count, or whether Tales of the Tempest is a main title (it was, until it wasn’t, and recently was reconsidered as being one…) and the status of others various others games that used to be considered as escort titles before.
To be clear these 17 include, by order of release in Japan : Phantasia, Destiny, Eternia, Destiny 2, Symphonia, Rebirth, Legendia, Abyss, Innocence, Vesperia, Hearts, Graces, Xillia, Xillia 2, Zestiria, Berseria and Arise

*** Ironically though the scenario often had to be “protected” by her writer Takumi Miyajima and producer Makoto Yoshizumi against the will of a notable part of the development staff

**** The game was also called Tales of Destiny II in order to show clear continuity despite not being related to Tales of Destiny story wise at all

***** Only below Blue Dragon and marginally beaten afterwards by a long old rival : Star Ocean IV and long after by the MMO Monster Hunter Frontier as well as the long tail of Ace Combat 6 due to its budget reprints

****** At the time its FW was awfully close to another major JRPG released close to it two months later, Final Fantasy XIII-2, from a series considered to be clearly one or two steps above Tales of sales wise

******* Hideo Baba that is, he tried to bounce back at Square-Enix with his own studio that closed less than 2y after being established and, while never made official, he supposedly went on to work as executive producer of the rather unsuccessful Sakura Kakumei at Delightworks afterwards.
As for Tales of Zestiria it should be added that Alisha being “sidelined” of sort was even directly addressed and changed in the anime adaptation Tales of Zestiria the X by having Alisha and Rose being of equal importance (1 - 2 - 3)

Disclaimer :
- All sales numbers are rounded up, for simplicity sake but also because some of them aren’t as accurate on top of never being made public. Still all of them were retrieved through trackers (Famitsu, Media Create in Japan, NPD GFK for other markets) official shipment numbers from the publisher (10M milestone of the series from Namco that detailed every SKU, milestones for a couple titles) or CESA.
- Spin off titles (like the World subseries), remasters (Symphonia, Vesperia...), handheld late ports (Eternia, Destiny 2 & Rebirth PSP, Abyss 3DS) or... Reimagined entries (Innocence and Hearts on Vita) aren't discussed there because the focus was on the series main entries. Tales of Destiny Remake is a particular case as well but I chose not to mention it either, data for it is available so feel free to ask if curious
- Some of those numbers sometimes also contradict each other a bit so accuracy isn’t 100%, it’s still more than good enough and the margin of error is slim enough that nothing would change the tone or analysis made towards the series sales numbers

https://blog.tales-ch.jp/?_ga=2.9430581.1644708003.1560127813-96726022.1544788796&paged=10 Tales of blog

Source for Studio 3 headcount https://www.bandainamcostudios.com/recruit/career/interview/12235

Article  A Sales Story | E12 | Cities: Skylines

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An inventive, original game is released into the world by a creative and highly-motivated studio. Through critical acclaim and gradual word of mouth, said game proceeds to become a hit franchise, eventually inspiring spin-offs, copycats, and heralding an entirely new genre. But some of these franchises lose their way leaving a hole in the industry. Recognizing the opportunity to fill this hole, an enterprising team of independent developers begins work on its own game, intended as a spiritual successor to capture the magic of the original.

It's a tale as old as video games themselves, and is also the story of SimCity and Cities: Skylines.

For those unaware, Cities: Skylines is by far the most popular city-building game ever to have existed. It has held this record since 2015, and no other game in the genre has ever come close to matching its sales. However, for Cities: Skylines to exist in the first place, it required the rise and fall of SimCity, one of the most unique and influential franchises in the history of video games.

The Birth and Death of SimCity

Released in 1989, SimCity was a city-building game developed by game designer Will Wright at Maxis. It began as a level editor for another game he was working on and it grew into a city-builder and created our modern understanding of the genre. Despite doubts about its potential, SimCity became a huge commercial and critical success. The first game sold extremely well on both PC and console selling a total of 1.98 million on the SNES, with 900,000 of those sales coming from Japan.

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An image of the original SimCity showing what would be iconic features such as the zoning system and traffic management.

Over the next decade, the franchise continued to receive games that built upon the success of the first, with SimCity 2000 released in 1993, selling 3.4 million copies. SimCity 3000 was released a few years later in 1999 and sold 5 million units, with SimCity 4 following in 2003. But after that the franchise took an extended leave of absence, and outside of a handful of spin-offs and smaller games for other platforms, a period of quiet ensued for SimCity.

In 2012, after nearly a decade of silence, it was leaked and then announced that Maxis Emeryville was developing a new game titled simply "SimCity". The game was presented as a return to form, and an E3 2012 gameplay trailer that showed off actual footage was generally well received. But, some noted a curious feature that was being advertised: SimCity was going to be an online game and require a persistent Internet connection to play. This led to concerns about access to the game and how the online DRM mechanism might impact the user experience. For its part, Maxis assured fans and industry watchers that the online component was necessary for the game to function, and attempted to assuage concerns.

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SimCity with its modern UI and visuals, as well as its small map, which would be a major complaint about the game.

This new SimCity launched in March 2013, despite concerns over the stability of Maxis's servers, in what would become one of the most infamous online launch disasters in the history of video games. So overloaded were the servers for the title that media publications couldn’t even access the game to review it. And once they could, SimCity's systems and design were heavily criticized, leading to a firestorm that would torpedo any chance of success. The game continued to limp along, with post-launch support fixing some of its issues, and received one last update in 2014, which finally added an option to play offline. Unfortunately, this was too little too late, and while SimCity did end up managing to sell 2 million units over the course of its life, this was far below the franchise's prior heights and Maxis Emeryville was shut down in 2015.

However, just a week after Maxis Emeryville was shut down, an entirely new city-building game was released into the world—one that would rise from the ashes of SimCity to achieve what it had failed to do and it began in the most unlikely of places.

The Road to Cities: Skylines

Colossal Order is a Finnish studio that was relatively unknown in the early 2000s. The company was founded in 2009, largely by mobile game developers, and began development on its first game, Cities in Motion. Colossal's early projects were smaller-scale games focused specifically on designing transportation systems within a city. While they contained some of the features that define city-building games, they weren't nearly as complex as a feature-complete city-builder.

While developing Cities in Motion, Colossal Order required a publisher and ended up partnering with Paradox Interactive, a company best known for grand strategy games. Paradox was still a small company, with their newest game being Victoria II, and Crusader Kings II coming out in 2012 between the two Cities in Motion games. Around this time Paradox had begun to expand its publishing business and would publish other successful games like Mount & Blade and Magicka. The Cities in Motion games fit well into Paradox's catalog as another PC game built around strategy and simulation, and while the first Cities in Motion didn’t have a particularly notable launch in 2011, peaking at only 1,170 users on Steam and a Metacritic score of 70, the small team and modest development budget meant that it was enough for a sequel to be greenlit.

Cities in Motion 2 fared slightly better with 1,783 peak concurrent users and a 72 on Metacritic, but this modest growth compelled Colossal Order to aim higher with its next project. This is where the story of SimCity intersects with Colossal Order's.

Just a month before Cities in Motion 2, the 2013 SimCity released, and its failure sunk the franchise, leaving a significant hole in the market for a new city-builder to take its place. In an interview, the CEO of Colossal Order, Mariina Hallikainen, discussed how the studio had wanted to make a city-builder previously, but that Paradox Interactive had been concerned about having to compete with the juggernaut that was SimCity. As luck would have it, after SimCity's failure, Paradox did see the potential to address a gap in the market, and Cities: Skylines was greenlit for development.

Launching Cities: Skylines

After a year of development, Cities: Skylines was revealed in August 2014 with a trailer at Gamescom that showed off a game similar to SimCity but advertised a major change in the ability to play offline—a clear swipe at the competition. The trailer amassed an impressive 629,000 views on Paradox’s YouTube channel—more than the trailer for Europa Universalis IV and far more than any trailer for Cities in Motion.

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This screenshot shows Cities: Skylines' strong similarities to SimCity as well as one of its defining new features, districts.

Cities: Skylines
also benefited from effective marketing on Paradox Interactive's part. The publisher had grown a fair bit since its early days, and the success of Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV would work to the advantage of Cities: Skylines. (As an aside, both Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV would also establish the famous—and sometimes infamous—DLC model that Paradox is now known for and which would later be applied to Cities: Skylines).

Following its release in March 2015, Cities: Skylines was an immediate smash hit. It peaked at 60,386 users on Steam and sold 250,00 units on its first day on the market; a new record for Paradox Interactive. Sales only continued to grow, doubling to 500,000 by the end of the week and doubling again to one million a month after release, making it by far the fastest-selling game that Paradox has ever published.

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Cities: Skylines far outdid Colossal Order's previous games on Steam.

Strong reviews contributed to these incredible numbers, with the game receiving an 85 on Metacritic and an excellent user reception. Cities: Skylines was praised for being a true successor to SimCity while also bringing new ideas to the table. The game also had a strong impact on Paradox’s financials with them reporting a 241% increase in revenue and 442% increase in profits in 2015, and Cities: Skylines being credited as a major contributor to that increase. Such jaw-dropping numbers seem to have contributed to Paradox’s decision to go public in 2016 as in their IPO brochure they featured a graph demonstrating just how much they had grown in the past year, in part due to Cities: Skylines, and these remarkable results were only just getting started as Colossal Order continued to work on additional content.

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Paradox’s financials show the dramatic impact of Cities: Skylines.

Long-Term Sales and Support

Since this was a game published by Paradox Interactive, the launch was just the beginning. Over the following years, Cities: Skylines would continue to receive numerous pieces of DLC that added meaningful new content to the game, including new features, mechanics, objects, and more. Mod support played a role in its success, too, with user mods featuring everything from original assets to major overhauls of the game's traffic system, keeping a passionate community engaged and happy. After an already impressive launch, both official and unofficial improvements and additions to Cities: Skylines helped the game maintain strong momentum, resulting in it selling 2 million units by the end of its first year on the market, surpassing the SimCity reboot, and eventually growing to 3.5 million units by its second anniversary in 2017. These numbers put it far above Paradox’s other successful games at the time with other games not even coming close. Despite being released a year earlier Europa Universalis IV had only sold 1 million copies by its third anniversary with Crusader Kings II taking two years to reach the 1 million milestone. Even newer games like Stellaris and Crusader Kings III needed 4 and 3 years respectively to reach 3 million copies, which was still far slower than Cities: Skylines.

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Cities: Skylines and all its major expansion packs (the dozens of smaller cosmetic DLC are not pictured).

The game also received console ports from Tantalus around this time with an Xbox One version released in April 2017 and a PlayStation 4 and Switch version following a year later. While the console versions appear to have had minimal impact on sales (the next milestone announced was 5 million units on PC alone and 6 million units on all platforms a year after), Cities: Skylines eventually grew to sales of an astonishing 12 million units sold across all platforms in 2022, which puts it far ahead of any other city-builder. An especially remarkable feat if you pause to consider the relatively small development team and the amount of DLC that has been purchased.

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Cities: Skylines sales milestones, showing its incredible consistency in sales over time.

Conclusion

Games that try to follow in the footsteps of a more popular and established franchise often fail, but Cities: Skylines is one of a handful of exceptions where an "imitator" has far surpassed the original.

Ironically, the success of Cities: Skylines is now what would make it difficult for SimCity to ever attempt a meaningful comeback, due to just how dominant it has become in the market. Even more interesting is the fact that in March 2023, Paradox Interactive announced Paralives, a life-sim game not unlike The Sims, which itself spun out of SimCity back in the day. The announcement was also accompanied by the reveal of Cities: Skylines II, a game that saw its debut in October and, despite a rough launch, enjoyed an all-time peak of 104,697 concurrent users on Steam cemented the future of the franchise for many more years to come.

Article  A Sales Story | E11 | Donkey Konga

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As an executive, I hated Donkey Konga[...] The first game actually sold reasonably well, but boy was I not a fan.
—Reggie Fils-Aimé​

I'm going to take you back to the past. To a past in which the combined top 30 software charts in Japan would routinely sell over 400,000 units even with no major releases, and in which Nintendo were not nearly as ubiquitious as they are now. Yes my friend, the world was different then.

The year is 2003. The headlines about Nintendo in the press feature the GameCube and the GBA. The Nitro (codename of the Nintendo DS) and the Revolution (codename of the Wii) are products in development. Sony Playstation 2 dominates the charts in Japan and the Xbox is quickly becoming a powerhouse in the West. Super Mario Sunshine failed to light up the charts and so did The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. More than ever, Nintendo is #3 in the video game market. Enter now Donkey Konga.

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Donkey Konga is a rhythm game and the first Nintendo game that took advantage of the conga accessories, used also in Donkey Kong Jungle Beat (the first game produced by the Super Mario Galaxy team). These are two drums that you plug into your GameCube and which allow for a few basic actions.

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Front shot of the congas. Pay attention to the Start button in the middle part.

Though limited in scope, this control scheme is quite effective to reinforce immersion. In particular, the team behind Donkey Kong Jungle Beat found ingenious ways to adapt its gameplay to the controller. Go play the game if you haven't.

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The passing icons indicate which bongo (left, right, both) and position (center, rim) you should hit with your hand.

Not many could predict the evolution of Donkey Konga's sales when it hit Japan in December. It was supposed to be a product of its time, which back then, meant a game that would be gobbled up by the Nintendo loyal, and no one else. And that's what happened.

However, what sets apart Donkey Konga's sales from other games of that period is its trajectory; launched on Dec, 12th, it had a respectable debut of 61k which was enough to reach spot #9 on its launch week, while 14 other new releases charted as well (I told you the world was different then).

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Top 10 during the launch week of Donkey Konga (Famitsu weekly sales for Wk. 50 in 2003 - credit: Nichebarrier.com)

At that time, there were no sign yet that Donkey Konga would eventually become one of the stars of the holiday period. Back then (much like today), any newly released game would rapidly decrease in sales and exit the charts after just a few weeks. However, our game would not follow the norm. The next week, its sales increased and reached 79k. That was good enough to climb two places to now be #7.

Charting above the game is another title that should be familar to most here: Taiko no Tatsujin on the PS2, which, like Donkey Konga, also saw its sales increase compared to the week prio. A juggernaut, it had a life-to-date tally of 357,000 units at that point, while Donkey Konga would stand at 141,000. There was no contest as to which was the more popular game.

However, things would begin to change the week after. While Donkey Konga managed to increase its sales again, topping 97k, Taiko no Tatsujin's weekly sales dropped by 4%. And while Donkey Konga's weekly sales did finally begin to decrease in its fourth week in the market (but by merely 10%), it was clear to observers that the game was the surprise of the year. With a total tally of more than 400,000 units, it eventually landed not too far from Taiko (about 580k), which occupied the same niche on a much more popular console.

2023-08-3017_17_47-doh3cy6.png

Donkey Konga weekly sales in Japan (credit: Nichebarrier.com, Famitsu figures)

The game's encouraging sales prompted Nintendo to release a sequel only eight months later. Unfortunately, Donkey Konga 2 didn't make as much of an impression on the charts and only reached a quarter of its predecessor's total sales—a result that could be largely attributed to the GameCube's rapid decline in Japan, as well as to a fatigue effect due to coming so soon after the first game. A dual pack 'Donkey Konga 1+2' was released at the same time as the sequel and added 27k copies to DK1's LTD tally. A third game, Donkey Konga 3: Tabehōdai! Haru Mogitate 50 Kyoku, a Japan-only title, sold even less. And so, like many Nintendo series, Donkey Konga eventually got shelved.

As far as reptrospectives go, Donkey Konga was also (infamously) remembered for not having its best tracks featured in the Western releases; in particular, the absence of 'Ambitious Japan!' in Donkey Konga 2 hurt fans badly (well me, at least). This is just one example. Many forums voiced their concerns with each installement released, and that certainly didn't help with the popularity of the series overseas.

But still. Globally, Donkey Konga went on to sell 1.18 million, enough to beat Metroid Prime 2. It earned its place in the top 25 most-sold Nintendo-published games on the GameCube. And while it is a largely obscure game as far as the sales community is concerned, I felt its sales trajectory was striking enough to be deserving of its own feature.

I hope you enjoyed this piece, and that it brought back memories from a time when being a Nintendo fan was anything but easy. Thank you.
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