Game sales are tricky to understand at times. Some video game franchises need millions sold to be considered a success, but not all game series are meant to do that. Moreover, some build up their fanbases over time, and thus you see them grow for a long time when the quality is up there. But there are times when a franchise continues to make games even when their series sales don’t improve. A great example is the Mega Man franchise. The classic games were never ones to move millions of units, as Mega Man 11 has now proven.
In an updated sales report, Mega Man 11, which came out in 2018, has now crossed 1.6 million units sold. Considering it took four years to get there, you can fairly say it wasn’t the best of sellers. But it did cross a million, and that’s impressive. But what’s shocking is that now it’s the best-selling Mega Man title ever. The previous record holder was Mega Man 2, all the way back on the original NES. The game came out in 1988 if you didn’t know. So for it to take nearly 35 years to be beaten in its sales of 1.5 million says something.
Given the franchise’s popularity and Mega Man’s character, you’d swear it had better sales than this. That goes double when you think about the branching timelines and variations the series has had over the years, like with the I franchise and with Battle Network. But there’s the rub, the games sold okay, but they never crossed 1.5 million, thus letting the NES title hold onto the crown until the new blood came around.
But why is it that these games sold so poorly compared to other franchises? Well, the best theory is the kind of gameplay they offered. Even in the NES and SNES days, the franchise was known for its punishing difficulty. It was Dark Souls before FromSoftware was even born. While gamers did love a challenge back then, that didn’t mean everyone was up for buying them. The portable games had a little less difficulty, but by that time, you were either a Mega Man fan or weren’t.
To be clear, we’re not saying the games were failures, far from it. Any line of titles that consistently got a million in sales is a success. Mega Man is still an icon of the gaming industry, and multiple collections of his past games are available now for purchase. So if you wanted to catch up on what OG gamers were playing, now’s your chance.
Those same OG fans hope we’ll get another new title soon based on these sales. Fans want the Blue Bomber to come back and stack back.
Source: Rockman Corner
