XENOBLADE CHRONICLES 2 - Its sales and why they are relevant

2007 - The Acquisition

It's 2007 and the Nintendo Wii is rocking the videogame world with its novelty/gimmick, but also thanks to its huge sales numbers. Among all the news, there is something that somehow goes undernoticed, at least in terms of mass market appeal. Nintendo acquired Monolith Soft. - a Bandai-Nacmo owned JRPG team. The relationship between Kyoto-based company and Takahashi team was already pretty close and positive, thanks to a couple of exclusive products developed by Monolith Soft. for the previous Nintendo home console (specifically, Baten Kaitos and Baten Kaitos Origins), as testified also by the fact that the team was already developing a Nintendo owned IP (as second party), with Disaster - Day of Crisis, a weird action game published in 2008 as Wii esclusive. But Nintendo gola wasn't to transform Monolith Soft. into a westernized action oriented team: on the contrary, the idea was to focus them exaclty on what they were well know for: classic but very ambitious JRPG.

2010 - The Beginning

Monolith Soft. was responsible for the classic and belowed Xeno-saga, a very deep role-playing-game saga, and Nintendo back in the days wanted to exploit their expertise to fill a possible void in their lineup, with them focusing their know-how on this kind of production. The actual proof for this goal is that in 2010 they published the first episode of a new saga, still keeping the "Xeno" word in the title: Xeboblade Chronicles (previously known as Monado: Beginning of the World), named after Takahashi's team love for the Xeno-saga products developed under Namco ownership (also to commercially exploit the already beloved IP). This game put Monolith Soft. on the map, among Nintendo fans and worldwide critic, with an ambitious open world (even more impressive considering the limit of the Wii hardware, compared to the existing competitor consoles), a deep storytelling and an amazing OST, that lead a critically acclaimed Metacritic score of 92/100. But, at the same time, something went wrong about it, commercially: despite the huge install base, due to a problematic distribution west-side and due to a declining phase of Wii's performances (that affected negatively also bigger games marketing-wise like The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword) the game was unable to sell at least 1 million copies and in fact its actual LT sales numbers are still a mistery (not being reported by Nintendo in none of their financial report, exactly because it was unable to break that milestone). Ambitious game, critically acclaimed, but commercially problematic. Was the partnership already in danger? Was the saga already buried among better-selling Nintendo owned IPs?

2015 - Monolith flexes its muscles

Was Monolith soft. parntership with Nintendo jeopardized? Takahashi: "Hold my beer" - exactly when the misunderstanding around the release of the first game and its tepid mass market response could have generated issues, Nintendo decided to invest in Monolith Soft. programming abilities and funded two projects, both released in 2015, to testify the potential of their hardwares: Xenoblade Chronicles X was a graphical and technical showcase for the Wii U HD capabilities, with an even bigger and completely free-to-explore (even flying!) open world, that for some is still unmatched nowadays, while Xenoblade Chronicles 3D (a remake of the first Wii episode) was chosen to push the portable device revision: only the improved processor and bigger RAM of the New 3DS was able to properly sustain Takahashi's vision for his own game (with the help by Monster Games, being the main tam at Monolith hard at work for Xenoblade X). Unfortunately, despite being technically impressive, due especially to the struggles of the Wii U and the limited install base of the 3DS hardware revision, none of these projects were able to cross that (in)famous million mark.

2017 - Time to shine!


January 2017, the official Nintendo Switch presentation event. For the first time ever for the franchise, a good portion of the unveil of a brand new Nintendo hardware features a good spot light for Monolith Soft. efforts. Among the games presented, there is also Xenoblade Chronicles 2, new episode of the franchise, planned for the end of the year. The game actually launched in December of the same year, as planned and its pace in terms of sales is on another level. Within the end of the year (so in just three weeks) it crosses the million mark (1.06 million distributed worldwide), beating what its predecessors weren't able to reach in a "life-time" time lapse. Even better: the game continues to sell in a steady way (something not so common among JRPG) and its official numbers at the end of 2020 are around 2,17 millions copies distributed worldwide. Now, since then 1 year and a half has passed and from InstallBase own experts, this number will surely increased when, in 1/2 months from today, we will get access to CESA White Paper 2022, with updated numbers at the end of 2021. What we can anticipate now is that, in any case, the game didn't stop selling; on the contrary! In 2021 at retail in the Japanese market (official numbers tracked MediaCreate agency) it sold another 30k copies; it ranked 27th in the eshop digital chart for the first half on that year, in that market; it has been capable almost every week of this year 2022 to stay within the top 50 of the most downloaded game on the Japanese eshop; it was able to chart in the Famitsu retail week 23 chart, with another 1k copies sold physically. With it being within the voucher program (a deal particularly good for the Japanese market) and with its protagonist Pyra/Mythra added to the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate roster, its popularity even increased somehow and (even without giving a proper estimate) it's pretty safe to imagine that its LtD global copies shipped worldwide are even significantly higher than the official 2020 figures.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 success: why?!

Many are the reasons behind this explosion in success, compared to previous entries. Opinions can vary, so we are not going ahead to make a chart, but simply listing different topics that as a matter of fact helped the game is gaining market share/mind share among the mass market, improving Xenoblade brand awareness.
1) The Switch-effect: it is clear how popular the Switch is, and how massive its software sales are, even compared to the most succesfull Nintendo console of the past. So, for Xenoblade 2 being available on the Switch was a competitive advantage compared to Xenoblade 1 (released on the Wii, a very sucessfull console but during its declining phase), Xenoblade X (available as a Wii U exclusive, the least appealing Nintendo console ever, for the mass market) and Xenoblade 3D (available only on the hardware upgrade of the 3DS).
2) Fully promoted: unlike Xenoblade 1 (the only game of this group that could have had the potential of selling well) that was badly promoted (it was not present during that year E3 presentation, but unveiled right after, with just a simple "PR", separated by the main event; it was not distributed by NoA as a total market product for the NA market), Xenoblade 2 was in the center of the spotlight of the most important Nintendo Switch presentation ever (the very first one in January 2017, where they actually presented the console, the price, the launch-window lineup and so on), getting TONS of attention from everyone; it was also distributed as one of the main exclusives for the Holiday period (December 2017), as one of the main selling point of the console, during its first Holiday spending time.
3) Anime-style at its best/worst: this topic has been discussed to death, with many people complaining againts it and its oversexualized approach; this is not the right place where to discuss it, but for the blade design many anime/manga Japanese artists have been involved (the most famous one being Nomura, probably) and the result has been a rich cast of side-characters, alongside the main protagonists of course; this has generated tons of fan made activities spread all over the social media channels (Twitter and so on) that contributed to some sort of viral marketing campaign, that helped in increasing mind share about the product itself. The "anime-manga" style, in the meantime, found a very solid resonance on a global scale, with projects like Persona 5 (2016; Atlus-Sega; more than 5 milllions sold with the "P5R" revised version), Nier Automata (2017; Square-Enix; 6.5 millions), Fire Emblem Three Houses (2019; Nintendo; 3.4 millions at the end of 2020), all the best selling episodes in their franchise history.
4) Gatcha-like system: another mixed topic, considering how for many this unlocking-system was tedious at best, damaging at worst, but it is possible/likely that for the Japanese market at least this somehow helped in generating buzz around the product, especially among content creators
5) Content and promotional continued support by Monolith Soft. and Nintendo: Xenoblade life cycle has been sustained in a very strong way by the developers, thanks to a very meaty post launch support; new heroes, new quests, even an entire new story arch (so meaningful that has been also distributed separately, on cart, as a standalone game). This surely helped the game legs in the mid-long term, alongside Nintendo's decision to continue supporting the Voucher program in both EU and Japan markets; in Japan especially, this digital promotion program is very valuable for pricy games like Xenoblade 2 is in that country (for example, it will be soon possible to buy Xenoblade 2 and Xenoblade 3 together for ¥9.980 instead of ¥17.556, in Japan).
6) Smash Bros effect: among Nintendo continue support to the game and the franchise there is also the decision to include both Pyra/Mythra (protagonists of Xenoblade 2) as playable characters in one of their most successfull games ever (28,17 million at March 2022), dedicating also two still-to-be-released amiibo to them. A very good way of increasing the visibility of the cast and consequently of the franchise (it is well-known for example how Sakurai love for the Fire Emblem franchise and its consequent inclusion "en masse" in his fighting games helped the SRPG brand in increasing its awareness among the mass market)

Of course, it being a very good, solid, long, and rich game helped too! (83% on Metacritic)

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 success: consequences

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has been a success, this is obvious. But what does it imply for Monolith Soft and the Xenoblade franchise? Well, surely good things. We have already seen at least a couple of actual facts, that can testify the positive effect of Xeno2 sales.
1) Increased brand awareness for the Xenoblade brand: this is easy to check. In 2020 Nintendo published Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition; this was the third version of the original first episode of the series, after the Wii version and the N3DS one (not counting the downloadable Wii version on the Wii U eShop). Despite it being a "remaster" (not a full remake, at least) of an old game, already sold in many occasions, it was able to achieve a significant market response: at March 31st, 2021 its updated number of distributed copies worldwide was 1.52 millions, way better than any previous iteration of this episode. Its legs slowed down, unlike Xenoblade 2, but the result was already more than satisfying, cementing Xenoblade as a "million seller" franchise among Nintendo IPs portfolio
2) Increased investments into Monolith Soft team by Nintendo: this is undoubtedly a matter of fact; since 2017 (the year when Xenoblade 2 was released) the number of Monolith Soft staff continue to increase; the official number of employees was 150 and, at the end of 2021 it was up to 273. For a company like Nintendo, usually averse to acquisition and unctontrolled increase in internal work force, surely Monolith Soft has been a nice exception. More employees mean the ability to improve their output, or keeping it constant despite the general increase in developing/programming leadtimes, and testifies Nintendo HQ confidence in Takahashi's team efforts

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - The future (connected?)

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is almost here: it is clear how its sales potential changed compared to the beginning of this gen, thanks to all the reasons listed and the clear commercial success of Xenoblade 2. The goal? 3 millions mark, minimum.
Unlike 2010, after the struggles of Xenoblade 1 on the market and 2015, when the fate of such "smaller" sellers could have seen them disappear due to Nintendo general struggles during the Wii U - late 3DS era, nowadays it seems clear that Xenoblade is among those series among Nintendo IP portfolio that can be seen as pillars of their software offer (or at least a Monolith Soft. JRPG ambitious project, if they will decide to drop the franchise and try the path of new IP: but if Xenoblade 3 will push the brand into the 3 millions mark territory, it will be hard for them to not develop ALSO a new Xenoblade game, for the next Nintendo console!)

XENOBLADE SERIES: its sales so far

• Xenoblade Chronicles 2: 2.17 mil (31/12/2020)
• Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition: 1.52 mil (31/03/2021)
• Xenoblade Chronicles: < 1 mil
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3D: < 1 mil
• Xenoblade Chronicles X: < 1 mil

XENOBLADE CHRONICLES 2: its legs

• December2017 - 1.06m
• March 2018 - 1.31m (+250k)
• June 2018 - 1.42m (+110k)
• September 2018 - 1.53m (+110k)
• December 2018 - 1.65m (+120k)
• March2019 - 1.73m (+80k)
• December 2019 - 1.92m (+190k in 9 months)
• June 2020 - 2.05m (+130k in 6 months)
• December 2020 - 2.17m (+120k in 6 months)

Looking at the sales numbers and popularity of the Fire Emblem series today, it might be hard to believe the series was on the verge of death a little over ten years ago. The latest release, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, has 3.4 million total sales as of December 2020. During the Game Awards of 2019 there was a 100% fan-voted award where users would decide their favorite game of the year out of 30 selected titles in a competitive vote; Fire Emblem: Three Houses was the winner of the first Player's Voice award. In 2021 around 50,000 Japanese citizens voted for their favorite TV videogame software throughout the years, Fire Emblem: Three Houses receiving an impressive 23rd place of the top 100 games revealed. Clearly, across the world there is appeal and a sizable following for Fire Emblem games currently. Looking back there’s one factor that altered the course of this franchise into its growing popularity- and its name is Fire Emblem Awakening.

Context

With the GameCube, the Fire Emblem series had made its triumphant return to home consoles after three GBA titles. Path of Radiance had required more time and money to develop compared to the portable games, and unfortunately hadn’t sold better despite the increased cost. It sold 100,357 copies in its first week in Japan. That game would receive a sequel Radiant Dawn which was developed for Wii hardware instead. When producing a sequel game, one would assume that development and production cost would be reduced due to returning characters, reusing assets, maps and mechanics, etc. However developing for the Wii had required the developers at Intelligent Systems to scale up, doubling its staff, just to produce the title. Despite the increased effort Radiant Dawn released on Wii to first week sales of 73,337 in Japan.

The next two Fire Emblem games had smaller budgets and moved back to portable systems, with Fire Emblems 11 and 12 being Shadow Dragon and New Mystery of the Emblem. These were remakes of the 1st and 3rd FE games, with the original Mystery of the Emblem being the bestselling FE of the franchise before the series was localized. These remakes were also released on the Nintendo DS, a gaming system flying off the shelves worldwide. Despite these boons, Japan’s first week sales of both titles was 147,704 for Shadow Dragon and 147,045 for New Mystery of the Emblem. Overseas Nintendo didn’t bother translating the 12th FE game, New Mystery of the Emblem.

After seeing the sales trend of the recent FE games Shinji Hatano, the former head of Nintendo’s sales department, gave the development staff at Intelligent Systems his verdict. "The Emblem series isn't making the numbers, so this is going to be the last one."

If the thirteenth title of the Fire Emblem franchise did not sell at least 250,000 units, the series would come to an end.

Awakening

With their backs against the wall, the developers at Intelligent Systems discussed at length various ideas of what a final Fire Emblem should be. When looking at the number of copies sold for the Radiant FEs and the recent DS titles, they all sold similarly despite being on different systems with very different budgets. From this, one can concur that IS was able to capture and sell to the core FE fanbase who bought and supported each title in the series. But what could the developers do to improve Fire Emblem's selling power and capture a new, larger audience?

One direction was to move away from the old look of Fire Emblem, an example shared by staff was to set the next FE on Mars instead of being in medieval times. Moving away from the look of Fire Emblem games of the past also could be interpreted as utilizing an art direction for this final title that separated it from its predecessors and had the potential to bring in a new audience to Fire Emblem. The team at IS had a difficult time deciding what road to take but ultimately the idea that landed was to make a culmination of the series’ best features. After all, if this was the very last Fire Emblem game, the developers wanted to include their favorite features from the series’ long history.

Some notable inclusions and the Fire Emblem game its from:

Wanting to have a fresh start to the franchise, the team went with Awakening as the name. To have Awakening’s art direction be distinct from previous Fire Emblem titles the staff brought Toshiyuki Kusakihara as art director and Kozaki Yusuke in as character designer and illustrator, two people who had little to no involvement with Fire Emblem before Awakening. Additionally, there was a stronger focus on the characters in Fire Emblem Awakening through the new Pair Up mechanic easily forming bonds between units with quirkier personalities.


By combining beloved strategic features from past games which would satisfy longtime FE fans with a new, more contemporary art style with endearing characters that should capture a wider audience's interest into the Fire Emblem series, the developers at IS laid every chip on the table- bet everything and used all they had- to make Awakening.

Reception, Release, and Legacy

Fire Emblem Awakening was announced in September at Nintendo's 2011 3DS Conference with the first trailer shown at Tokyo Game Show that year.



The critical reception to Awakening was filled with high praise. Many critics were grateful for the inclusion of Casual Mode which lowered the entry bar of difficulty, while others commended the game for its story and characters. Overall, the title was recognized for its high production values while retaining strategic challenges and accommodations for people new to strategy games. Awakening is still the highest rated Fire Emblem title on Metacritic with a 92 metascore.

When the game released in April of 2012 in Japan the initial sale figures were staggering- Awakening was the fastest selling Fire Emblem in the series history, selling 81% of its initial shipment. With first week sales of 242k units it was fair to say the development team had ensured that the Fire Emblem series would not be canceled. Sales numbers overseas matched the fervor in Japan for Fire Emblem Awakening. In North America the game sold 180,000 units in the first month, which was the best first month sales for the franchise in NA.
As of December of 2020 Fire Emblem Awakening has reached total sale numbers of 2.33 million units, the first title in the series to surpass 1 million units sold.
The success of the game led to a revival of interest in the series and green-lit two games immediately; Awakening's successor game, Fire Emblem Fates, and an enhanced remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden, eventually being named Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. Additionally when DeNA and Nintendo partnered to create mobile games, Fire Emblem was chosen as the 2nd Nintendo property to be represented on mobile. Fire Emblem Heroes is the top-grossing mobile gaming title owned by Nintendo, generating close to $1 billion in revenue in 5 years since launch.


To restate the beginning statement, it can be difficult to believe that in 2010 this franchise could have been shelved for good due to low sales numbers.

The work Intelligent Systems put into Awakening was the turning point of the series, by taking a risk through changing the art direction of Fire Emblem and placing their focus on the characters, as well as providing easier options to play the game, the bar of entry was lowered significantly and the scope of consumers increased as well. The success of Awakening may have saved its franchise’s future, but it also provided an example of a SRPG that sold well in Japan and overseas. Without Fire Emblem Awakening and future FE games sparking consumer interest in the genre, new SRPG titles like Team Asano’s Triangle Strategy and Square Enix’s The Diofield Chronicle may not have been greenlit for production. As videogames get more expensive to develop it makes logical sense for larger publishers to create fewer titles that appeal to the widest variety of people, like funding an open world RPG instead of a game from a less popular genre.
The fact that Fire Emblem Awakening was a game so successful that it revitalized not only its franchise but a dying genre makes its Sales Story one to be remembered.

If you're still interested in learning more about Fire Emblem Awakening, I would recommend reading through the Iwata Asks for FE Awakening and Fates found here. The First Week numbers used in the Context Section was sourced from the Game Data Library, linked below as well. A table organizing the sale figures of all the Fire Emblem titles is in the fourth link, and a comment and link below that about FE's history:

The story of Persona 5 is a fascinating one, for a multitude of reasons – not only does it mark one of those rare occasions where a cult classic property gains momentum through sheer word of mouth and fan evangelizing over a period of years, it is also one of the first games that showed there is still a market for full priced turn based games in the west, as well as a market for quintessentially Japanese content, after the rapid shift to western themed content that we saw in the HD era. The PS4 era has often been seen as a return to form for Japanese games (outside of the obvious exception of Nintendo products of course) – in a lot of ways, you can say Persona 5 is emblematic and representative of this by itself. It was an anime themed turn based JRPG set in the most Japanese of settings (the high school) and addressing social ills and issues in Japanese society. And yet, it ended up becoming one of the most beloved games of the modern era (and indeed, of all time).

This is the story of how that happened.

THE CONTEXT

The story of Persona 5 does not begin with Persona 5 – you’d actually have to go back ten years in time to get to the start of the line that can be traced through to Persona’s eventual mainstream success. In 2006, after a more than half a decade long hiatus for the series, Atlus released Persona 3 for the PlayStation 2, a total rethinking and structural reboot of the IP that had given them their most successful game to date. Persona 3 was fairly successful – its game sales weren’t that high (in part because it came in the middle of the decade of “gamer drift”, a phenomenon in the Japanese market that Ishaan covered well in the previous episode), in part because Atlus was still a small company developing low budget niche games with little to no marketing, and probably because the Japanese market was in the midst of multiple transitions – the transition to HD gaming and the PS3, the transition to blue ocean console gaming with the Wii, and the transition to portables with the DS and PSP.

Nonetheless, Persona 3 ended up doing well enough. Most importantly, it provided a lot of merchandising and trans media opportunities to Atlus, opening up a whole new avenue for revenue for the company – and kickstarting what would snowball into Persona becoming what it eventually did.

Persona 3’s western release was generally well-received as well, and Atlus followed up P3 relatively quickly with Persona 4 (releasing in Japan in mid 2008, and the west at the tail end of that same year, more than two years after the PS3 had launched).

Persona 4 did pretty well in Japan – but it underperformed relative to expectations pretty severely in the west, which had moved on from the PS2 far quicker than Japan had (the transition from the PS2 would end up being arguably the most eventful generational transition Japan has seen to date).

In spite of its poor performance in the west, however, Persona 4 became a beloved cult classic. It had won rave reviews, and almost everyone who played it recommended it wholeheartedly. Longform Let’s Plays (remember when those were a thing?) such as Giant Bomb’s further contributed to the game’s popularity, and the anime adaptation and Persona 4 Arena both kept it in the limelight, albeit as a decidedly niche, cult hit property.

Until the PlayStation Vita.



Arguably the biggest beneficiary of the failed Vita was not Sony, but Atlus – more specifically, Persona. Even more specifically, Persona 4 Golden. An enhanced re-release of the 2008 game (much in the vein of Persona 3 FES and Persona 3 Portable), Persona 4 Golden released exclusively for the Vita relatively early on in its life cycle, and it would go on to become the system’s signature game, as well as its highest rated one to this day. Persona 4 Golden sold well in Japan, but it marked the first time on record that a mainline Persona game posted more sales from the west than it did in Japan. It also ended up contributing to a massive lift in awareness for the series’ profile. It was the game to get with the PS Vita (a system that was otherwise lacking in must-own games for most of the market), and winning rave acclaim like Persona 4 Golden had, a lot more people suddenly found themselves aware of this niche Japanese role playing game series.

FROM REVEAL TO LAUNCH

The rave acclaim and sudden limelight for Persona 4 Golden, combined with the zealously evangelical fanbase that would not stop talking about how incredible this game (and indeed, this series) was, as well as a slew of spinoff and transmedia releases, kept Persona in the limelight for years. Overwhelmingly positive coverage from mainstream western outlets increased the hype and profile for the series – and right in the middle of all this, Atlus finally announced Persona 5, as a PS3 exclusive, due out in late 2014.



From the very first real showing, Persona 5 caught everyone’s attention. It helped that it looked overwhelmingly stylish to a frankly absurd degree – even the menus looked like they were dripping with style and movement. The sense of style, character designs, striking color scheme, the quick battles, and the Phantom Thief-esque superhero story trappings about trying to fix a broken society bound by the corruption and inertia of the generations that had come before, all made the game seem instantly captivating and arresting.

Persona 5 ended up getting delayed numerous times, but in the end, even that ended up working in its favor. The delays meant that it would also launch on PS4 alongside PS3 (the first time a new mainline Persona game had released on a “current” system since the original), and the repeated delays, combined with the tantalizing showings for it, just fomented hype even further. Persona 5 was topping lists of the most anticipated game of the year every year from mainstream western outlets such as Game Trailers, over major titles such as Final Fantasy XV and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. All eyes were now on the game. A decade of word of mouth, evangelizing, and slew of quality releases, meant that the timing was right. Now all that was left was for Persona 5 to actually deliver on its promise.

THE RELEASE – PERSONA 5 DELIVERS ON ITS PROMISE

Persona 5 released in Japan in September 2016. Among other things, it benefitted from a last-minute delay of the eagerly awaited Final Fantasy XV, an opening that allowed it to sell 550,000 copies in Japan across the PS3 and PS4 – finally breaking the record for fastest selling game in the series held by the original Persona game until Persona 5. Those sales also represented something else, something that was vanishingly rare in Japan at the time, and still remains rare for the PlayStation ecosystem – it represented a series not in decline, but actively growing. In a generation that saw so many long running franchises see some pretty severe declines in Japan (including, but not limited to, Final Fantasy, Tales, Yakuza, Resident Evil, and Metal Gear Solid), Persona saw growth, and pretty convincing growth at that.

Persona 5’s true success, and what established it as a big player, however, came with the western release. The long awaitedwestern release finally happened in April 2017. The game launched, as expected, to incredible reviews, with its 93 at the time making it stand out in a ridiculously crowded release window and suddenly drawing more eyes to it. Rather than getting drowned out in a release period which included titles such as Resident Evil 7, Ghost Recon Wildlands, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Mass Effect Andromeda, as well as other niche Japanese IPs, including Nioh, Nier Automata, and Yakuza 0, as well as a major heavy hitting PS4 exclusive from Sony in the guise of Horizon Zero Dawn, Persona 5’s incredible quality and reviews led to insane word of mouth, and extremely strong sales, as well as mainstream end of year awards consideration.



Out of the gate, Persona 5 sold strongly, with Atlus announcing just days after its western release that global sales had reached 1.5 million. Unlike most JRPGs, Persona 5 also exhibited ridiculously long legs. By the end of 2017, global sales stood at 2 million units. By the end of 2019, sales had risen to 3.2 million units globally. Persona 5 was selling massive numbers, far bigger than anyone may have imagined from a turn-based anime styled entry in a niche series that is dripping with how quintessentially steeped in Japanese society and culture it is.

Those numbers only continued to go up. Persona 5 Royal, the enhanced re-release for P5, released on the PS4 in Japan in 2019, and while the system choice kept its Japanese performance relatively muted, its incredible reviews (it has a 95 on Metacritic, making it the single highest rated JRPG of all time, and one of the highest rated games ever) caused it to see strong sales in the west. The reviews, as well as the series being a known quantity by now, plus stronger localization efforts (Persona 5 Royal becoming the first Atlus game to get a proper EFIGS localization, suddenly opening up entirely new markets for it) led to surprisingly sharp sales results for what was ultimately a re-release – with 1.8 million units sold as of June 2021, bringing the total for Persona 5 to 5 million copies.

LEGACY – THE “PERSONA 5 MOMENT”

Persona 5’s success suddenly made the brand a hot commodity, and the series’ profile was irrevocably raised, to the point that a full-priced re-release like Royal sold almost 2 million units, and spin-offs like Persona 5 Strikers sold 1.5 million (becoming among the highest selling games in Atlus’ history – the brand was so strong now that a Persona 5 spin off was outselling almost every other game Atlus had ever made). Persona 5’s imagery became iconic and essentially shorthand (to this day, look at how many JRPGs and anime styled games get described relative to Persona 5), with everything from its color scheme, music, characters, story, to, yes, the aforementioned menus, becoming embedded in gaming and enthusiast culture.

Its popularity is reflected not only in the sales numbers or the reviews, or the performance of the spin-offs – but also in the reaction that Persona 5’s protagonist, Joker, coming to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate elicited. Or the relentless requests for the game to be ported to other systems (to date it remains a PS4 exclusive) that continue day in and day out. Persona 5 ended up becoming somewhat of a fixture of “nerd culture” (such as it is), and became a standard bearer for its genre to such a degree that comparing things to Persona 5 has almost become a meme – a bit like “the Dark Souls of __” or “the BOTW of __”.

Atlus suddenly found their profile raised too, with a lot more attention and scrutiny being placed upon what had until P5 been a small publisher of niche products. Major Atlus games and products now get all eyes on them from the get go, because “from the makers of Persona 5” kind of demands your attention. A rising tide lifts all boats, and Persona 5’s incredible success and Atlus’ enhanced profile ended up trickling down to their other games as well – in addition to the already mentioned Persona 5 Strikers, Shin Megami Tensei V ended up selling over 1 million units in less than six months (a result flat out unimaginable for the IP until just a few years ago), and the belated PC port of Persona 4 Golden also sold a million units.



The fact that so much of Persona 5’s success came from outside of Japan was extremely important as well. It opened Atlus’ eyes to the fact that there is a huge market for its games outside of Japan as well, leading to Atlus’ efforts to have simultaneous releases for their games, and also for them to start exploring multiplatform development. How those initiatives bear out for Atlus remain to be seen in the long run. In various ways, Atlus has experimented with both already – SMTV was their first simultaneous global release, albeit Nintendo assisted them with it, while Persona 5 Strikers, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, and SMT: Nocturne HD were all simultaneous multiplatform releases – albeit all outsourced to external parties. Atlus’ first fully internally developed and published simultaneous global and multiplatform release is Soul Hackers 2, a new game by them hoping to launch Soul Hackers as a flagship brand that sits besides Persona and SMT. Whether or not it ends up being successful, however, is going to bear no reflection on Persona 5’s place in history.

This was a game and IP that brute forced its way out of niche obscurity to mainstream success and acclaim on the back of nothing but its intrinsic quality, and insane fan goodwill earned over a decade of great releases, with very little marketing or support from either the publisher or platform holder of the system the game was going to release on. We have not seen anything like it happen since, and who knows when it will happen again.

That’s the thing about a “Persona 5 moment”. It happens organically, it can’t be manufactured.

What if I told you that Breath of the Wild wouldn’t exist without Twilight Princess? Or that Zelda as a whole may not exist today without it? For the uninitiated, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess may be among the most important games Nintendo has ever developed, for a variety of reasons:

1. It was the game that saved the Zelda series from being shelved after the poor reception of The Wind Waker in the west and the onset of “gamer drift” in Japan. (Gamer drift was a term used by Nintendo to refer to the decline of the Japanese video game market.)
2. It played a key role in Nintendo better understanding their western audience, and was also the game that helped Nintendo understand what it takes to develop a large-scale, big-budget, narrative-heavy title from a time, resource, and management standpoint.
3. Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma himself has stated that Breath of the Wild wouldn’t exist without Twilight Princess having come first, as a lot of their ideas in BOTW were originally intended for TP.

The Context:

Late 2003. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker has not sold to expectations. The game has proven unpopular with western audiences due to its super-deformed style, and has not sold especially well in Japan, either. Development of the game needed to be sped up in order to release on time, resulting in cut content and a lack of polish. Furthermore, by Nintendo’s own admission, The Wind Waker isn’t a particularly novel product, being structured largely after Ocarina of Time but with a visual style that proved to be less popular than that of its two predecessors. In short, it is a game that took away a major element of the franchise that the market was acclimated to—especially after the Gamecube tech demo teaser that preceded it—and didn’t add enough other appealing elements that sufficiently made up for the shift in visual style.

Nintendo as a whole has seen a difficult 8 years amidst stiff competition from the PS1 and PS2, and the shortcomings of the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube. Under these circumstances, Shigeru Miyamoto believes that spending a large amount of resources on developing large-scale games is not the way Nintendo should approach game development, and the past few years have been spent experimenting with alternative approaches to Zelda games, in the hopes of chancing upon a more novel idea. Ideas such as multiplayer (Four Swords) and GBA-to-Gamecube connectivity (Four Swords Adventures) have been at the forefront of these experiments over the past two years, but aren’t proving particularly popular. Zelda is suffering from an identity crisis and the series is under the very real threat of being shelved if the next game can’t turn its fortunes around.

At this point, Nintendo is working on a sequel to The Wind Waker, using a similar visual style to that game. However, having worked on a number of Zelda titles by this point and having been in touch with Nintendo of America to better understand the series’ audience, producer Eiji Aonuma believes that this isn’t a wise course of action. Aonuma has correctly pinpointed that Zelda’s western audience—its largest audience by far—largely wants three things out of a Zelda game, first and foremost:

1. A cooler-looking, and more realistically-proportioned Link
2. A convincing fantasy backdrop similar to movies like Lord of the Rings
3. The ability to explore a large world on horseback

Aonuma discusses the matter with Miyamoto and convinces him that Nintendo needs to develop a more “realistic” Zelda game to bring its western audience back on board. Miyamoto is skeptical, but trusts Aonuma’s instincts and the Wind Waker 2 project is rebooted into what would become Twilight Princess. By this point, Wind Waker 2 has already fallen into a rut, and the reboot provides the development team with a much-needed burst of enthusiasm.


From Development to Launch:

During the development of Twilight Princess, the Zelda team encounters a large number of well-documented hurdles, ranging from the team having far too many ideas that couldn’t all realistically be incorporated within a reasonable timeframe, to the project simply being too large to manage. Twilight Princess quickly balloons out of control, and a number of the ideas that the team has need to be scaled back or abandoned entirely. To help get the project back on track, Aonuma steps in as director, while Miyamoto steps in as producer. And even then, there are creative disagreements—Aonuma wants the game to begin with a cold open with Link already in wolf form, whilst Miyamoto vetoes the idea and suggests that the team begin with a tutorial in Ordon Village instead, to help the player get acclimated to all the different mechanics that would be featured in the game.

However, certain key ideas are preserved, and would contribute not only to Twilight Princess’s appeal, but also the way Nintendo would approach future Zelda games. Among these is the idea of more fluid world design, with areas of the overworld featuring dungeon-like gameplay, and the entrances to the actual dungeons themselves being better integrated into the world. A great deal of attention is also lavished upon Link and his horse, with character designer Keisuke Nishimori going horse-riding himself to better understand how horses in the game should behave. Finally, Twilight Princess also features a fairly large world to explore on horseback, with a number of little nooks and crannies to investigate, giving the entire game a moody sense of adventure and world-building.

Along the way, Twilight Princess is also made compatible with Nintendo’s upcoming Wii console, and motion controls are created for sword fighting, as well as aiming with the bow and arrow. While the Wii port complicates the game’s development cycle even further, it goes on to play a large role in its marketing campaign and subsequent success.



Success & Legacy:

Aonuma’s hunch pays off, and when Twilight Princess is eventually released in 2006, it is met with both acclaim and success. Buoyed by its more “realistic” (and I use that term loosely) design, as well as the success of the Wii, Twilight Princess goes on to sell over 8.85 million units over the next several years, making it the second-best-selling Zelda game of all time. The year after its release, it also receives an award for “Outstanding Achievement in Story and Character Development” from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences.

In a GDC keynote following its release, Aonuma reveals: "When it was announced with a surprise trailer at the 2004 E3, it received a standing ovation from the media audience. This was a very exciting moment for us, but we were still in the very early stages of converting the game into something more realistic. We knew that we had to create a Zelda game that would live up to the expectations of fans in North America, and that if we didn’t, it could mean the end of the franchise."

The game’s influence doesn’t stop there. Twilight Princess’s Link goes on to become the Zelda brand’s mascot for a number of years to follow, even after the release of 2011’s The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Twilight Princess’s Link is the face of Zelda across Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Super Smash Bros. for 3DS and Wii U, the inspiration behind Link’s design in Hyrule Warriors, and also the face of the long-running and incredibly successful Twilight Princess manga by Akira Himekawa. (Meanwhile, Twilight Princess itself has received two spin-off games in Link’s Crossbow Training and Twilight Princess Picross.)


Twilight Princess’s more obvious legacy is the fact that Breath of the Wild takes a number of cues from it in terms of both visual design and world design. Twilight Princess’s approach to Link with a heavy focus on realistic proportions and detailed animations carries over to BOTW, as does the idea of the world being built to-scale and explorable on horseback. This more “realistic” approach has been acknowledged by members of the Zelda team as the one audiences find most appealing for third-person Zelda games, and one that wouldn’t have come about without Twilight Princess.

In fact, when the time came to work on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the actual in-game map of Twilight Princess was used to help prototype BOTW’s seamless open world from a technological standpoint. The Zelda team placed the entirety of the Twilight Princess map within the BOTW engine to figure out how to create a seamless environment using the Wii U hardware. During prototyping, the TP map occupied the upper-left corner of the world, with the remainder of the world being based on the layout of Kyoto.

Regarding the design of Breath of the Wild, Aonuma would state: "I'm working on a new Legend of Zelda game now. One thing I've realized as I've been working on it is that a lot of the things I want to do with this new 'Zelda' game are things I thought of while making Twilight Princess. I can't talk specifics, but to me, Twilight Princess was a starting point, making it possible to do what I'm doing now."

Note: A great deal of time and effort has gone into researching these facts, all of which I can personally guarantee are accurate (or as close to accurate as we will ever possibly get using information in the public domain). All of the information cited above is from a dissertation/eBook/Wiki entry I wrote on the development history of the Zelda series, researched and compiled over a period of 4 years, using hundreds of developer interviews spanning several different languages, behind-the-scenes features, and GDC keynotes. If you’d like a better understanding of Zelda dev history, you can read it here.