Dark_Tzitzimine
Member
Ahhh I see what you meant then. I mean, I'm not super surprised that the sales have plateaued for what the game is. I wonder if Takaki cares? It's got a pretty specific audience and he seems kind of content to continue serving them, did they really expect PBS to expand the user base given how much more lewd it is than previous entries?
Takaki probably does not care but Marvelous' higher ups weren't impressed at EV's performance back on 2015. They might've changed their tune after EV reported record profits for them with its localization though. However, the pressure from the higher ups is the main reason SK2 suffered so much.
SV sold abnormally high numbers due a lot of external factors (the anime was airing, Vita's drop in price off the top of my mind) working together in its favor. This created unrealistic expectations on the series, that SK2 failed to meet.
As for PBS, Takaki did mention multiple times during its promotion he was aiming to appeal to both fans of the series and causal players with the relatively simple gameplay, plus he was hyping the second shipment of the game. So yeah, he was definitely expecting a bigger turnout for the game.