Contrary to what some people might believe, United Front Games' Sleeping Dogs did not suffer from poor sales, but was rather a victim of "unreasonable sales expectations."
This was revealed by Square Enix president Yoichi Wada during a forecast revisions announcement held last week. Wada, who not only thinks Sleeping Dogs is a strong, new IP, also thinks their original goal was "exceedingly high."
At the announcement of forecast revisions last week, we talked about Sleeping Dogs (SD) as an example of a Western title that started out slow, which seemed to provoke misunderstandings that it was suffering poor sales,…Let me clarify that SD is an exceptionally remarkable title that came with very high expectations and aggressive sales targets for the First Six-Month Period. Our goal might have been exceedingly high, which is what we see here in the difference in actual versus forecast sales.
Wada also compares how sales track differently from the West compared to Japan. He states that games like Sleeping Dogs sell over long periods of time in the West, unlike Japan, where lifetime sales are mostly achieved within a title's first two months out at retail. For reference, he gives Just Cause 2 as an example. While its initial shipment was under one million units, it eventually reached a milestone of almost 2.5 million units sold.
Lastly, Wada adds that he's confident that Sleeping Dogs would grow to be one of their "ten strong IPs," and adds that he's very optimistic for great results in lifetime sales."
Sleeping Dogs was bought by Square Enix from Activision back when it was known as True Crime: Hong Kong and It was released back in August to generally positive reviews.
So, there you have it. Square Enix is just had unreasonable sales expectations for the game, and it's selling fine after all…that is, if it sells well over its lifetime, no?
Source: Siliconera
