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[GI.biz] Nier Replicant debuts at #1 in the UK (89% of sales on PlayStation)

AlexxKidd

Member


From GamesIndustryBiz,

The remaster of a cult favourite 2010 PS3 game has topped the UK retail charts this week.

Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139 tops the charts, knocking FIFA 21 down to No.2. The last Nier game that was released came in March 2017 in the form of the acclaimed Nier Automata. This remake sold 50% fewer copies than Automata.

Congrats Square, hopefully this trend of Square remakes doing good continues all the way to Xenogears.
9-CFE1-DCE-0-E57-4-FBC-AC40-9-CE29-C8-C0905.jpg
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
Yeah, maybe we can get a PS5 upgrade, hell I'd settle for a PS4 Pro update
 

ethomaz

Banned
It is a interesting release to be fair.
IMO it is a better game than Automata.
And selling less is not a bad thing because it is not a new game but just a port... I won’t buy or play it again for example and I was a fan of the game on PS3.
 

Dabaus

Banned
Glad to see it do well, ive never played it but thought about it. UK is xboxs second strongest market so the sales splits in Germany, Spain, Italy, and ofc course Japan are even worse. Gamepass certainly doesn't help the situation either because Microsoft has essentially encouraged their base not to buy games. I expect RE8 to have a similar split.
 
It’s hard to find where I live at, so maybe that’s a sign it’s selling better than anticipated.
 
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images

You too, can help a struggling games director in need. For just a one time payment of $60 USD, you can make the difference in a 50 year old Japanese man's life, named Yoko Taro.

A sale of FIFA or Assassin's Creed is just a drop in the bucket. 5 million, 10 million sold - not much changes. But for just 2 million copies sold, the life of Yoko Taro can change, and he too can be given an actual budget to make great games. Pick up the phone and make that call ... today.

images

A special message below, from Yoko Taro :lollipop_anguish:


"Hello there everyone, YOKO TARO, Creative Director of NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139... here.

This game is a “version upgrade” of a title released 10 years ago under the name of “NIER”. That’s right, it’s not a remake or a remaster, it’s a “version upgrade”.

In the beginning I only intended for it to be a remaster you know. With some improved resolutions and that… But once I started saying that I would like to tweak the models a bit, or that I wanted to fix up the backgrounds etc., we were soon looking at a lot of fixes and improvements.

I mean, Square Enix recently did that remake of FINAL FANTASY VII right? I saw that and I thought it would be terribly inconvenient to be compared to such a massive blockbuster, so that was when I decided to call Replicant ver.1.22… a “version upgrade”.

Incidentally, the big string of numbers on the end of the title was just something I stuck on randomly, so I wouldn’t think too hard about it if I was you.

And another thing. In recent years, when I have been around Square Enix, they always give off this palpable aura of enthusiasm as if to say “Look! NieR:Automata (the previous thing I made) did well, so NieR Replicant will also sell now”. I would like to take this opportunity to tell Square Enix to take a good hard look at reality. Only the names are similar and the content of the two games is completely different, so it’s not really going to sell all that well now, is it lads?

I mean, come on, I made it! Automata selling was a fluke, and all my other stuff has hardly sold anything worthy of note. If you really do go ahead and manufacture all these discs and then store them in a big pile in a warehouse somewhere, the only thing we can do with that will be to have a good game of frisbee. Although, I mean… that does sound like fun and all…

Right now, at this very moment, some guy from the Square Enix marketing team is looming behind me and his glare is saying “YOKO you bastard, just promote the game properly for a change!”, but meh, not much that can be done about that now is there? Let’s all just give up and call it a day. I mean, you really don’t understand anything in this game until you play it through multiple times right? And the reviewers will find it pretty hard to do that in the limited time they have…

So, more importantly than that, let’s all just go home early and be nice to our parents, Mm, yes, that would have a much more positive impact on the world I think."

 

ethomaz

Banned
Especially if it is physical copies - they are always very heavily skewed towards Playstation. I do wonder at which point Xbox pivoted more to digital. It literally follows the path of PC, that abandoned physical years ago when Steam started to roll out.
PS is heavy skewed to digital... 2020 was close to 63% of total game sales being digital.

This year it will probably be bigger... 65%? 70%?
 
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Thief1987

Member
I don’t expect Xbox to lead in physical sales even if they were the majority platform. Digita is kind of the way they’ve pushed since the XB1 reveal.
Digital sales on PS already more than 60%, it was 63% last year, now it maybe already 65+, so this argument have very little sense. Digital could be higher on xbox but it's maybe 5-10% at max.
 
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The Shepard

Member
images

You too, can help a struggling games director in need. For just a one time payment of $60 USD, you can make the difference in a 50 year old Japanese man's life, named Yoko Taro.

A sale of FIFA or Assassin's Creed is just a drop in the bucket. 5 million, 10 million sold - not much changes. But for just 2 million copies sold, the life of Yoko Taro can change, and he too can be given an actual budget to make great games. Pick up the phone and make that call ... today.

images

A special message below, from Yoko Taro :lollipop_anguish:




Hope he gets the budget he deserves on he's next project. Will definitely be watching/reading any interviews he's in because he's very entertaining. I brought the game and I'm enjoying it very much.
 

Dabaus

Banned
If this is a trend (and it will be) where new games just dont sell on xbox i wonder if third parties ignore the xbox version for launch and make MS pay them for a late gamepass port? Are all of these publishers ok with destroying the potential day one sales in hopes that Microsoft welfare program will last forever? Surely theyre not so naive? One of the ironies of games coming to game pass is that until it start to negatively affect day one sales on playstation or switch to a lesser extent, MS probably doesnt have to pay that much because the games were never expected to sell well to begin with.
 
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jm89

Member
If this is a trend (and it will be) where new games just dont sell on xbox i wonder if third parties ignore the xbox version for launch and make MS pay them for a late gamepass port? Are all of these publishers ok with destroying the potential day one sales in hopes that Microsoft welfare program will last forever? Surely theyre not so naive?
Quitre frankly japanese publishers are wasting effort releasing on xbox with a standalone release, just wait for phil spencer to come port begging.
 
It will be in a some months.

3rd-party publishers will try to get the full day one sales and after the Gamepass deals.
Probably. I suspect that multiplayer games - aside maybe COD - will launch in GP day one and some other more niche titles will also launch Day 1 on Game Pass. Other games - will launch month or two later. When the first party studios will start rolling out the content it won't really matter.

Also I wonder if Sony will court developers not to release the games on Game Pass too.
 
Yes, make it succesful.

Hopefully, this will make SE give Yoko Taro an actual budget for his next game and not just some McDonald’s Happy Meal allowance.
I would hope Automata would have done that.

PS4 was pretty interesting in that it ended up propelling quite a few long running but commercially ignored Japanese games into at least the mid-level gaming conscious internationally. Nier Automata (I'm counting Drakengard in the long running), Yakuza 0, EDF 4.1, Atelier Ryza, (arguably) Persona 5 - all of these were significantly bigger releases than any other game in their series. I'm sure I am missing others.
 
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