If 2024 has proven anything to us, it’s that the games you expect to be “huge sellers” don’t always hit those high marks and that the ones you might not expect to be as big of hits become some of the best-sellers of the year. For example, Square Enix had one of the most hyped games of 2024, and while it did sell decently enough, it didn’t match the sales of its predecessor. In contrast, a certain game featuring Sun Wukong shocked the world by making 20 million sales in its first ten days. Then, there’s Astro Bot, a game that might win “Game of the Year,” but it’s not breaking any sales records.
The game came out in early September, and as noted by VGC, Sony dropped the title’s sales figures and revealed that within the first nine weeks of its exclusive release on PS5, it sold 1.5 million units. That’s honestly not that impressive and for multiple reasons.
First, as noted, it’s a “Game of the Year” contender, and it is tied for the best-reviewed game on Metacritic. No one was expecting the game to be this good, and yet it totally was. Yet, that wasn’t enough to move serious units. While one would argue, “But it’s not a big Sony franchise!” we see this in a different way. First, Astro had a playable demo on past Sony platforms, including the PS5 with his “playroom,” so people knew who he was, even if only in general. Second, platformer titles are honestly some of the biggest sellers when done right because they’re incredibly accessible to all types of gamers.
The biggest factor that apparently didn’t come into play here was word-of-mouth. When Astro’s new game dropped, EVERYONE was talking about how it was the greatest platformer out there outside of Mario’s games. You’d think that would inspire people to try and get it to see what the hype was about, but that wasn’t the case.
For context, when Mario dropped his latest platformer last year, it sold 4.3 million copies in just two weeks, and it’s sold many more since then, being at likely 14 million by now.
Special consultant Dr Serkan Toto noted to VGC about this:
“I personally am a bit disappointed about Astro Bot’s sales and believe Sony could have pushed that game a lot harder before release.”
That is a big blast on Sony, and it’s not the last one we’re giving out. As Sony themselves noted 37% of those who bought Astro’s new game hadn’t bought a Sony 1st-party title in the last two years! That speaks volumes.
