The Star Fox Sales Figure Thread

[Drasiana]

I am deeming this thread the official thread to argue about what games did/didn't sell well according to what. I, personally, do not care, however this argument derails EVERY GODDAMN TOPIC it's brought up in so here's where you can duke it out over sales statistics free of prejudice.

 

Answer me this, SFO, with all those statistics you have: Which games sold the worst? When did the series "decline" begin? What obvious impact did these sales figures have? What other questions can be answered by this debate? You tell me!

[Gestalt]

I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that people are pulling VGchartz numbers, this is fine so long as you recognize these numbers are estimates (well, of course, all of them are) taken and sometimes modified without transparency. While you can't go writing Wikipedia articles with the stuff (seriously), it is a useful resource so long as we understand them as "ballpark" numbers. (id est: don't argue over 0.9m v. 1.0m)

 

Here's is the VGchartz data (thanks DZ):

 

 

Also, consider the install base, or simply put, the number of people who bought the console. To some degree, especially with exclusive titles, game sales can be dependent on the consumer gravitation for the particular console.

 

Fortunately, console units sold is easy to find^[1]:

 

SNES- 49.10m

N64- 32.93m

GCN- 21.7m

DS's - a lot

 

But in my opinion, to calculate compensation as a hard number is a questionable arguing point littered with one too many assumptions.

 

 

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I am open ears, but other than truth seeking I can't draw diddly squat from the "impact" of this. (cept, oh wow 'ventures didn't sell that bad)

[Giladen]

http://web.archive.org/web/19980512204600/www.argonaut.com/html/front.htm

 

http://www.the-magicbox.com/Chart-USPlatinum.shtml

 

http://web.archive.org/web/20081230005328/http://www.japan-gamecharts.com/n64.php

 

http://www.next-gen.biz/features/top-100-games-21st-century

 

http://garaph.info/softwaregroup.php?grid=S111

 

Star Fox sold more than 3 million copies within a time period, and so did Star Fox 64. Star Fox Adventures and later SF games didn't. 

[DZComposer]

I did some analysis of these numbers.

If you compare the numbers to the number of systems sold, you get this:

6.09% of SNES owners bought SF1.

12.24% of N64 owners bought SF64.

8.6% of GCN owners bought SFAd.

4.97% of GCN owners bought SFAs.

0.34% of DS owners bought SFC

1.78% if 3DS owners bought physical copies of SF643D.

It is hard to say the trend is completely downward at this point. A higher percentage of CGN owners bought SFAd than SNES owners bought SF1.

SF643D is getting close to the 1m sales mark, if digital sales haven't already pushed it there. That would make SFC the only SF game to fail to sell 1m units.

Comparatively, Star Fox has a much better attach rate than Metroid:

Metroid: 4.41%

Metroid 2: 1.48%

Super Metroid: 2.89%

Prime 1: 12.97% <-- This game would skew any mean by itself

Fusion: 2.06%

Prime 2: 6.12%

Prime Hunters: 0.48%

Prime 3: 1.75%

Other M: 1.25%

The Prime trilogy was the peak. No game in the series before or since has had a similar attach rate. (albeit, the Wii's overall attach rate was low)

To show how the big-gun franchises fare, let's look at some select Zelda titles:

LoZ1: 11.24%

LttP: 9.39%

OoT: 23.08%

Link's Awakening: 3.23%

WW: 21.16%

TP(Wii): 6.87%

Minish Cap: 1.74%

Phantom HG: 3.23%

Link Between Worlds: 4.64%

Compared to other series' attach rates, Star Fox really isn't doing too bad. It isn't reaching top-tier numbers, but then Star Fox never was given the attention that Zelda and Mario games are given. The budgets are lower. But still, Star Fox is a million-seller franchise with a moderate attach rate. The series never was in trouble, sales wise. SFC was a victim of timing. It came out during the early years of the DS. The "Touching is Good" era. That was also the time when DS units themselves weren't selling.