@anon39655210 That isn’t saying much as that is only physical sales. Definitive edition is niche as most people alreayd have the game and combo breaker disk doesn’t say a lot. Plus what do you mean by “sold” Does buying just one character count? One season? What exactly is a KI sale. It’s hard to say.
It says underneath what versions they have taken into account. The digital versions are part of it too.
You have 4 Killer Instincts which could mean anything. No mention of Season 2. Which Season 3 version. Ultra or combo breaker? No Supreme Edition. Then you have Killer Instinct (XBox One) which I don’t even know what that is. It’s hard to say that the site is reliable. Plus VGChartz isn’t that reliable in the first place. It also doesn’t account for individual character purchases as well.
It’s actually impossible for them to count digital versions. That information isn’t available anywhere unless MS or DH/IG release it themselves.
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Hm, that’s rather shady then. Both of that web-site, but also of Microsoft for not wanting to share that piece of information.
The real question isn’t necessarily total units sold so much as profit vs cost vs expectation. My guess is KI started as a throw-away budget project that managed to turn into something more than it ever had reason to, and has managed to well out perform predictions, and that would be why they called it a success, not because MS is fudging the numbers to make it look shady.
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Yeah, going from being an XBLA only launch title developed in 6 months to having 7 million players, 4 years of constant support (from both fans and devs) as well as physical, Win10, and soon Steam releases…
KI may not be a blockbuster, but it’s done really well for what it’s worth.
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We have ultimates, we have all legacy characters, wtf do you want more seriously…
Sol Badguy in KI?
but lemme get impossible dreams out of my head…
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I have often cited VG chartz for lack of better information, but I wouldn’t call it reliable. I think I for older games where they are able to review real data released by official sources it may be okay, but for something like KI - with digital downloads and small scale retail release? I wouldn’t call those numbers very meaningful.
As far as MS, I agree with you. They have had this policy for a while of refusing to say how many consoles they’ve sold and instead throw up useless numbers like “gamers have collectively spent 10 billion seconds reading our EULA,” a process which they continued in their Gamescom presentation. These are meaningless blatherinngs that no one can understand or contextualize.
As far as KI goes, the “downloaded 7 million times” statistic is almost understandable, given the format of the game. But since I’ve downloaded the ■■■■ thing like 20 times myself it’s hard to interpret that number in a vacuum. They could easily tell us how much money people have spent on the game if they wanted to - but they don’t want to. Which is telling.
All of this contributes to my own belief that KI has performed up to MS expectations but hasn’t sold so well that they are likely to even consider a sequel. And if they do, it isn’t going to be one with a blockbuster budget.
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Their definition of success usually comes down to how much money has been spent on development and marketing. Capcom had a much larger budget for SFV than what was given for KI. SFV would need to crack 1-2 million sales (speculation) just to break even. Whereas KI would need to sell a fraction of that to make it a financial success.
Also, VG charts doesn’t track digital sales which probably makes up more than 80% of KI’s total lifetime sales.
People say this all the time, but is it true? I don’t see so much content or polish in SFV that I would say it certainly had a much bigger budget than KI. Keeping in mind that Capcom took fighters who already existed and adjusted their moves I think it’s very possible that SFV and KI have very similar budgets.
Obviously i’m speculating, however I do believe SFV’s marketing budget probably eclipsed KI’s production budget though. Also the fact that it’s a third party game which sony paid for exclusivity would have been a substantial amount.
I believe KI was in full production for eight months before release? (can any one confirm or deny) SFV was a lot longer in production than that if its the case.
Street fighter does look nice to be fair it’s not just a copy and paste job from SSF4. It’s story mode although short would still be pricey also. It has its capcom network stuff which is new and costs.
In my opinion SFV cearly had a much smaller budget than Injustice for example as far i can tell it’s a safe bet its budget was more substantial than KI.
If you actually look at what we got in Season 1,2 or 3 you can tell DH and IG stretched the very last penny out of the budget and we didn’t get a whole lot in return. Don’t get me wrong i’m more than greatful for what we got but we even ran out of budget for stages. Alternate costumes/accessories etc.
I’ll happily be proven wrong but that’s my take away from the matter. I’m not complaining as i would love a fourth season but i can’t see how it would have been any other way.
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Can someone confirm on what counts as a “sale” in KI. It’s hard to say KI sold well based on the way the game is structured.
Since the game itself is free and then you buy characters and in game purchases you would really have to look at revenue totals rather than unit sales. I can’t think of any other way to do it.
How does something like LoL report their sales?
Edit: @HudsonRL I’m not trying to quibble with you, but I think some things are out of proportion. KI still has more stages than SFV, for example, and Capcom is making you buy all but the first 8 individually (no one is buying 8 stages at 70,000 credits a pop by winning 50 credits if fight money per round. You would need like 15000 wins). I don’t have the game open in front of me so these are ballpark estimates.
I might buy that SFV had a bigger budget than KI, but if it did it was in the same ballpark not an order of magnitude bigger . Advertising and marketing is something else entirely.
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KI is literally the only flagship fighting game of Xbox. It has the capacity and devoted developers to bring this game into the same spotlight as AAA games.
I’d figure with SFV being exclusive it would incentivize Xbox to try to compete. Unless they felt safe considering the bad publicity received from SF early on.
It’s disappointing to see games with potential not have a strong enough lead and as a result be shutdown by Microsoft. I miss the days where Halo and Gears were something worth bragging about…
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Read the middle of my original post. They talked about characters in the season 3 survey. Will we get any of them? Will the game keep getting updates? All I’m saying is that we’re in the dark here, and that some communication would be great. If the game’s not going to be supported more, then tell us that 3.9’s the end. Any clarification they can provide beyond “we’re not a seasonal model” or that we just completed season 3.5 or whatever.
But stay tuned tho…
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I think KI checks the box of “exclusive fighting game” for Xbox and that’s really all they are looking for. MKX, the current king of console fighting game sales is sitting at about 5 million copies (according to dubious vgchartz so do with that what you will), about 1/3 of which are on Xbox. SFV has probably sold a million copies. Does anyone really think st this point that in terms of real money not having SF V has hurt MS at all? Any damage was done by the announcement and subsequent drama. The game and it’s sales have been a non factor.
My point is that MS might justifiably feel it has done exactly what it needed to do to “counter” SFV with KI and could be perfectly satisfied with the results. And looking at the raw sales numbers it just doesn’t seem like a great idea to sink money into fighting games.
That sucks, but it’s tough to argue that MS is somehow making a huge mistake by not doing more with KI. Which is a separate issue from why can’t they ever tell us anything…
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Here’s some more news that would likely be relevant:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but IIRC a lot of the MS side of the KI team are also working on Crackdown 3. If they decided to hold off telling people any news on it because they announced it too early, it doesn’t seem to me to be much of a stretch to assume that new MO would carry over into any further KI development as well.