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Fire Emblem Awakening could've been the last Fire Emblem game if it sold under 250K

Question: Fire Emblem has had a long lifetime. Do you get the feeling it gets harder to release a new episode every time?

Yamagami: No doubt. Truth be told, sales are dropping. The sales manager of Nintendo, Mr. Hatano, told us that this could be the last Fire Emblem. Due to this progressive descend on sales, they told us that if the sales of this episode stayed below 250,000 copies, we'd stop working on the saga. I remember when I came back from the meeting and told the team "My God, what are we gonna do?! The end has come!". Our reaction was clear: if this was going to be the last Fire Emblem, we had to put everything we always wanted to include. That's how this new project was born!

Source

Thank god it sold so well. The same can't be said about Advance Wars ;_;
 
That's pretty sad, but wow, would have been an amazingly high note for the series to go out on. This is only the second FE I've played, but it's so good!

Chrom for SSB4.

The sales manager of Nintendo, Mr. Hatano, told us that this could be the last Fire Emblem. Due to this progressive descend on sales, they told us that if the sales of this episode stayed below 250,000 copies, we'd stop working on the saga

Damn. It was kind of obvious Nintendo as a company would have this mentality, but hearing it is sort of brutal.
 

CengizMan

Member
Interesting. It's just been one generation since it's come overseas. Could the Shin Megami Tensei crossover be made in order to revitalize the series?
 

Nasley

Neo Member
Oh god, thank the universe Awakening has been selling well. I don't think I could handle a world without FE :(
 
Not very surprising when all they released on the DS were remakes. Sure, FE12 was pretty awesome but it did come after the terrible FE11.
 
Seeing how well FE:A did makes me so happy. At this point I honestly consider it my favorite game of all time.

I remember reading about how the series had been declining sales-wise after Shadow Dragon and how a lot of the series' future (particularly in the US) rested on the success of that game. Obviously it scared Nintendo in the short term as FE12 wasn't localized but I sure am glad they decided to give it one more proper shot.

Now I can only hope IS is working on a sequel!
 

hamchan

Member
And now with the good sales they can milk the shit out of these games. Bring it Nintendo, don't let this die like F-Zero.
 

Nyoro SF

Member
Since I'm going to be buying the game soon, this is good to hear. Devs putting their heart and soul into a game does show in a lot of timeless work.
 
250k worldwide? If so then the chance of that happening would have been super slim. Still though, I wonder if Nintendo pushed the dlc for this game so hard because they thought the sales would be disappointing
 

Mr. Fix

Member
OMXUkya.gif
 
Fire Emblem for 3DS is amazing... and this is whats wrong with the industry imo.

When fire Emblem has a hard time cracking enough sales to get another iteration, while first person shooters continue to sell well no matter how repetitive they are most of the time.

I'm happy i enjoy games that require thinking/strategy more than the mindless ones most people enjoy. Lots of first person shooters are great don't get me wrong but a series like Fire Emblem deserves sales to get a new game every 2 years or so.
 
Well everyone and their mother are playing Awakening on my 3DS friends list so I figured it was doing great.

Great is relative for this franchise. I believe its doing way better than the last release, but no game in this series has ever even broken a million worldwide, so its not huge for Nintendo.
 

Ferrio

Banned
Since this was my first FE, would it be sacrilegious to suggest they should add armor and damage ranges instead of a flat static damage value?
 

NeonZ

Member
I really hope they won't randomly drop what clearly are fan favorite features next time. I imagined they were experimenting with things because the situation was under control and the series was in no danger, so it's kind of surprising that they could have ended the series due to the games that did that.

Not very surprising when all they released on the DS were remakes. Sure, FE12 was pretty awesome but it did come after the terrible FE11.

I think the Tellius games also didn't do very well. In Japan, they're the worst selling FEs, and in the USA they sold less than FE7 and FE8.
 

TreIII

Member
Expected, but I'm certainly glad things worked out for the better. They had to shake things up in some way after the last few games.
 

Draxal

Member
I assume he means worldwide sales?

I think he meant domestic, as Fe12 was only published in Japan. Awakening did 500k in Japan so it's all good.

Since this was my first FE, would it be sacrilegious to suggest they should add armor and damage ranges instead of a flat static damage value?

Ayup, then again Fe13 did some sacriligeous things anyway (HI postgame DLC Content).
 

Rhapsody

Banned
It's hard to imagine if there was no more Fire Emblem. Glad Awakening did rather well.

Since they did say sales were declining after each game prior to Awakening, anyone know what the sales were for previous games?
 
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