How is Metroid, generally critically acclaimed and well regarded, among the poorer performing first party franchises. All while the genre that it co-authored is among the most popular for indie games.
@OffTheBooks Didn't Samus Returns and Dread perform pretty well for themselves?
I also wonder if the popularity of Metroidvanias really translates all that much to factual popularity on the player side, aside from breakout hits of course.
@OffTheBooks Not 100% sure what you're asking. If you mean the "metroidvania" style, it's actually relatively common, just usually integrated with other styles as well.
If you mean Castlevania, the problem there is Konami is a hot mess today, lol.
@isaackuo That’s true, I’ve wondered if that gap hurt the franchise, but as it turns out, Metroid Prime’s eventual performance is among the strongest when you account for user base.
And that gap could be explained by the game having a much less straightforward transition into 3D than some other franchises. Fans were all pretty skeptical before the reviews for Prime started coming out.
@OffTheBooks Well obviously Metroid's most vibrant period, from a development point of view, was Metroid Prime 1/2/3. That was a more frequent publishing rate than anything before or since.
So the big gaps before may not have hurt Metroid - but it sure left Nintendo with very little data on how much or how little market demand there was for Metroid.
@isaackuo I just feel like franchise performance has been mismatched compared to demand for the genre, especially considering the critical success of most Metroid games.
But perhaps my perception is skewed. Maybe there’s stronger press coverage of Metroidvania games, or something else at play that I just haven’t been able to put my finger on yet.
Add comment