A Sales Story | E09 | Hyrule Warriors

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A Sales Story | E09 | HYRULE WARRIORS​

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A LITTLE BIT OF CONTEXT
It is the year 2014, in the middle of the Wii U era
: one of the darkest periods for Nintendo, in terms of financial results, with great difficulties mainly due to the enormous commercial problems of the latest born in the womb of the Japanese production house. After the enormous success of the Wii, what will be the last pure home console developed in Kyoto has not been able to capitalize on the enormous potential user base obtained by its predecessor and, due to questionable hardware choices and a bizarre marketing campaign (both attributable to a single selling proposition that is incomplete, not well defined and, in essence, not very convincing among a vast mass audience), will end up proving to be a substantially unsuccessful project. Yet, as later demonstrated by the enormous success of the games originally conceived and proposed on that console, when they were re-proposed on Switch, not all the experience gained during those difficult and complicated years is to be thrown away and, indeed, it is evident how the maturity of development in the HD environment obtained precisely in the Wii U era proved to be fundamental to affirming such a constant and complete software library among the key elements of the current hybrid hardware. But, beyond the purely internal production on which the development teams have been able to rely for several years up to now, both in quantitative and qualitative terms, there is another element that was born amid a thousand travails in the Wii U era but which it later proved to be important as one of the pillars of the "comeback" carried out with enormous success by Nintendo Switch. And this unexpected and too often underestimated element was born with a project that, especially back in the days, was considered as a mere spinoff with small ambtition, or even as a sign of the Kyoto house's difficulties in finding a sufficiently ambitious and decisive planning . We are talking about Hyrule Warriors. One of the many external collaborations that Nintendo set up at the time, to flesh out its production of titles dedicated to the home console, also suffering due to the output of the internal teams, struggling with two separate production lines (still having to support the 3DS, real cash-cow on the Japanese market) but also with the difficulties of the first leap into HD era. But if on the one hand some of them judged in hindsight really appear as desperate attempts to attract the attention of third parties and a certain slice of users otherwise not served by titles dedicated to certain segments (see the HD porting of first two Yakuza, by SEGA), others had a more long-term planning and, on the contrary, proved to be far more strategic, in the mid-long term plan of the company.
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THE PROJECT: NINTENDO AND KOEI RELATIONSHIP OF MUTUAL TRUST
The project was announced in December 2013, in a Nintendo Direct which unveiled the first original Zelda title for Wii U: not one of the usual adventures divided between exploration and puzzles, fights and boss battles, but an external collaboration with Koei-Tecmo which , entrusting the game to the expert hands of Omega Force, proposed for the first time the adrenaline dynamics of the Musou genre, however setting them in the world of Link and his companions. An original Hyrule, borrowed from the saga as a whole and not referring to a specific episode of the Zelda brand, which proposed several innovative elements for the series, allowing many "first times" to its longtime fans. On the one hand, it was possible to master a wide, varied and deep combat system, very oriented towards the wildest action; on the other hand it was possible to play the role of many characters extrapolated from the various chapters of the saga, impersonating for the first time even characters who were not directly Link. All within an original narrative frame, made up of multiverses and "what if" scenarios and, therefore, perhaps not very coherent or accustomed to the more traditional public, but undoubtedly fun. With great longevity and rich in content, the project differed greatly from a typical "The Legend of Zelda", and probably also for this reason it was entitled in a different way, focusing on the entire fictional universe of reference, as much as on the more adrenaline-pumping combat aspect, coining thus the title of Hyrule Warriors. This collaboration, by admission of the two parties involved, has allowed Nintendo to get to know the strengths and weaknesses of the external team more closely, also closely studying their passion for adrenaline-pumping rhythms and an action imprint, while Koei-Tecmo granted the privilege of entering into the management dynamics of one of the most prestigious brands in the videogame landscape, coming to understand the importance of elements such as the stylistic and narrative coherence of the Aonuma first party team. A process of mutual growth that is no small feat, as we will see later.

SALES RESULTS

The game was published by Koei-Tecmo in the Japanese market and by Nintendo in the rest of the world; in none of the markets was it able to set the charts on fire, also due to the enormous difficulties of the console, more than to other factors truly endemic to the production itself. Despite this, however, observing the overall numbers of the software library of the last home console of the Kyoto house, it is clear that, due to the nature of a spinoff and experimental title that the work represented, the sales results have been objectively positive for this game. The title was able to sell 69,090 copies (equal to 57% of the initial distribution) in the launch week in Japan, enjoying greater success in the West (with a launch tracked by NPD on the American market of 190,000 units). The overseas success was even able to amaze Koei-Tecmo, selling beyond the developer's initial expectations. Finally, in January 2015, it was the same Japanese company that announced the milestone of one million copies sold. The list of million sellers (published by Nintendo) on Wii U is the shortest ever and consists of only 17 games. As mentioned, the collaboration with Koei-Tecmo is not included in this calculation because the title has been co-distributed on various markets, but imagining that it has even just slightly exceeded the ceiling of one million copies, it remains a satisfactory result both for the house of Kyoto as for the external partner, which has not achieved such an important overall result for some time with one of its Musou and which instead with Hyrule Warriors manages to obtain the same results as the HD porting of Twilight Princess, one of the main episodes of the saga made in Nintendo. The game was considered important by both houses, so much that it was proposed again in several subsequent versions: in March 2016 the Legends edition was released for Nintendo 3DS, while in 2018 a Definitive Edition was released for Switch (which would seem not to have exceeded one million copies, although the only official data relating to the Japanese market indicate results not dissimilar to the original for Wii U, with 58,581 copies sold at the retail level).
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THE LEGACY: NINTENDO WARRIORS
The Musou-oriented partnership between Nintendo and Koei-Tecmo launched with the project described above has proved to be truly fundamental for the market results of both development houses. Not so much in the limited and limiting dark period of the Wii U, but in the immediately following era. If there was a third party ready immediately to support the hybrid console launched in 2017, in fact, that was undoubtedly Koei-Tecmo (together with NIS, Bethesda and Square-Enix, probably), also thanks to the proximity created with that important collaboration strongly desired by Iwata himself. In addition to bringing Hyrule Warriors in its complete version and pushing the newly acquired Gust closer to the hardware of the Kyoto house (with qualitative and commercial results evident for all the parties involved, especially for the Atelier series), the third party responsible for works such as Ninja Gaiden found itself in a privileged position to be assigned the management of prestigious and interesting first party projects, increasing its revenues thanks to the exploitation of beloved Nintendo IPs, which in turn found an additional armed and operational arm , capable of contributing significantly to the constancy of software output that has characterized the current machine since its launch on the market. In particular, the alliance focused on another IP of the Kyoto house: that Fire Emblem relaunched by the 3DS projects and ramping-up in the two-year period of 2017/18 between Switch and mobile platforms. The mobile operation expanded the financial importance of the franchise, while the first product dedicated to the new hybrid console is a Fire Emblem Warriors, in many ways similar to the Hyrule Warriors from which it all began: original story, somehow capable to bring together different protagonists extracted from various titles in the saga, giving rise to fresh and unexpected opportunities for meeting and confrontation, inserting a large action component, albeit peppered with some classic strategic gimmicks borrowed from the original brand. Although FIre Emblem is not a commercially strong IP like Zelda, thanks to the renewed reputation obtained from Awakening onwards, the Koei-Tecmo title manages to establish itself crossing the milestone of one million copies sold, on April 26, 2018. An important goal, if you think how it happened before the sales peak generated on Switch by the first truly "main" episode released shortly after: that Fire Emblem Three Houses which definitively cements the collaboration between the two houses, given that the development, always supervised by Intelligent System, was entrusted to Koei-Tecmo itself who, evidently, was able to exploit the know-how of the Musou chapter to grab enough credit from Nintendo, and be entrusted with an undoubtedly more prestigious task. But, as many will know, the double thread that binds these three entities (the Kyoto company, the programmers of Omega Force and the strategic brand examined) did not end here: a few years later, in fact, the enormous success of the main chapter (3.82 million copies, according to data updated in December 2021), pushes all the actors involved to develop a further project in Warriors flavour, this time officially set in the world of Three Houses, practically acting as a prequel / sequel /alternative version: Fire Emblem: Three Hopes becomes yet another Musou crossover with Nintendo to cross the milestone of one million copies sold, in August 2022 (few weeks after its launch).
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THE RICHEST PRIZE
Such an effective collaboration obviously could not leave aside the fulcrum from which the whole initiative started, and so, to fill the six-year gap between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, allowing the Aonuma team to concentrate totally on the realization of the sequel of which the programmers clearly had a precise vision in mind, without worries or commercial pressures, Nintendo decides to once again entrust a spinoff of the saga to Koei-Tecmo, even promoting it as a real prequel, although narratively peppered with time travel and alternative realities twist. Thus was born nothing less than a hybrid project in playful terms, but adhering to the narrative and the world of one of the most successful games in the history of the Kyoto house: Hyrule Warriors - Age of Calamity, in fact, is inextricably linked to the diegetic universe of Breath of the Wild, carrying the blazon, as well as the weight of expectation. Expectations that are respected: the enormous success of the main chapter is not disregarded, so much that this operation manages to collect enormous feedback from the market, placing as many as 3.7 million units in the first 5 weeks of presence on the international market, then surpassing the milestone of 4 million few months later. Astronomical figures for a Musou, so much to become the best-selling exponent of this particular type of action oriented Omega Force sub-genre, and positioning itself among the best-selling games ever by Koei-Tecmo, to the enormous satisfaction of all parties involved. A satisfaction that, fully matured on Switch, thanks to the truly out-of-scale success of Breath of the Wild, has grown step by step in managing the relationship between the developers and the Fire Emblem brand, through three different operations in terms of budget and ambitions, but all three able to confirm a great commercial appeal, has its roots in the dark period of the Wii U. When many turned up their noses, seeing The Legend of Zelda mix with the adrenaline-filled imprint of the Warriors, but certainly not Nintendo and Koei-Tecmo : they believed in it, and only a few years later they reaped the fruits of those beliefs.
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Thanks for reading; I personally can't wait to see what's next for Musou and Nintendo :)
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