So what does this mean for the AA franchise? Compared to previous titles, AA6 had an awful performance on sales in Japan.

AAI2: 260k
PLvsPW: 300k
DD: 380k
DGS: 200k
AA6: 250k

It's barely scratching to outsell AAI2, and it just outsold DGS, a side game.
It's also a massive drop from AA5. And it's been about 3 months since the Japanese release, so the game has stopped selling at noticeable amounts.
Perhaps it's not a big deal, given maybe AA6 had a lower budget than AA5 given they just re-used engine and assets, but it shows AA6 failed to leave an impression. AA5 had much more build up and hype than AA6 ever did.

I've been away from the fandom for a long time and haven't been keeping up much in AA6 news, but what it sort of seems to me is that DD was heavily marketed as a new game-- that is, a game that everyone could play regardless of whether they had previous experience with the franchise. From my limited experience with AA6 marketing is that (at least in the English market, mind you) it was really pushed as a sequel-type game. Not only that, Maya has a huge presence so that could even turn off some new players that only had seen DD.

What I'm trying to say is that AA6 is really fucking niche.

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I think there are a lot of factors.

Firstly, a lot of the hype for DD was the "return" of the main series after such a hiatus. Its really reminiscent of the hype that came with Star Wars: The Force Awakens (I actually feel DD is similar to TFA in that its well-made but obviously made to hit as many "fan demands" as possible and tries to "correct" some of the more radical choices by the series' original creators) - it was the return of the dormant original franchise that everyone loved so much. The marketing by Capcom seemed (at least in the west) a lot more public and spread out than they've done with GS6. We were fed information from late 2012 all the way through the summer of 2013 and into the final release. Capcom USA pretty much kept silent from when GS6 was announced to May/June and then only in the last month or so did the big stuff start coming out. That's specific for the western release, but nevertheless it shows that they aren't as focused on advertising the hell out of the game to drum up as much long-term interest as possible.

So I think the "return" hype is a huge part of these things. Star Wars Episode VIII will likely not sell as many tickets as Episode VII (although I'm sure it will still be a smash hit since its Star Wars). I know a lot of people who don't really even like Star Wars but went to see the new one just because they were interested in how the franchise returned. I think there are probably a lot of people who played DD and really enjoyed it, but have had enough (at least for now) and aren't going to be constant customers for every franchise. By coming back so quickly and returning to its episodic release schedule, some of the "specialness" of DD's announcement is gone in my opinion.

I also think the release of DGS contributed to this appearance of saturation (or even over-saturation) in the marketplace. DGS looks to me (as someone who hasn't been able to play it) like the courtroom gameplay is very similar to the main series AA games like DD rather than being COMPLETELY different like AAI. I'm guessing people playing DGS probably got a similar experience to when they played AJ, DD, etc. and as a result don't feel the urge to have new cases like they did when they were waiting for the unattainable "GS5" to be announced.

I notice that the sales for GK2 and SoJ are kind of similar, and I think another contributing factor is that both of these games are being released on systems which are at the relative end of their lives, and people are kind of done with them. When GK2 came out, the DS had 5 previous AA games released, without much innovation or change with the exception of AAI. No doubt many more casual fans didn't feel like GK2 had enough to warrant a purchase. The 3DS has had 4 AA games on the system, so its kind of in a similar situation.

But the last thing I'd say is that I didn't think this was ever a franchise that sold a bunch anyway, despite being popular. I know AJ sold really really well, although like DD it seems like that was because it was the sequel people had been waiting 3 years for. The rest of the games don't seem to sell THAT much more from SoJ's sales figures.

So I guess my conclusion is that I believe DD is an outlier just because the hype and the expectation was SO much more than any of the other games. SoJ seems like a good game but its kind of like when a music artist releases their next album after their previous album becomes the smash hit they will always be known for (ex. Paul Simon released "Graceland" which was huge and then after that none of his other albums were ever as popular). The music is probably just as good as the "big" album, but interest just isn't as big as it was.

It seems to me that SoJ's sales are within normal parameters for the series. I don't think its ever going to reach DD's sales again unless the franchise goes through another long period of dormancy.

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ARE YOU TRYING TO GIVE CRAPCOM IDEAS?!
DON'T SAY THIS SHIT WITH A STRAIGHT FACE, I CAN'T TAKE ANOTHER 10 YEARS TO SEE MAI WAIFU IN ANOTHER MAIN GAME!

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Look on the bright side, it got more sales than DGS

It's okay, Domaya. At least we still have the Maya merch. Like, one or two things.

I figure the timing of release definitely contributed to the sales. Usually Capcom releases these games every 1 1/2 to 2 years or so. It's been barely 1 year since DGS was released, and given recent trends in the Japanese console market, much of the attention has moved to the mobile market. Do the sales here account for mobile sales as well? If AA6 gets enough demand, they might even port it to iOS again. (I wouldn't know how good the quality is in comparison to 3DS, but that's another story.)

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Hmmm.... nah. AA6 was already announced as successful and not a failure like DGS.

"Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice sold largely as planned with sales supported by core users, in addition to fair digital download sales."
http://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/news ... 0728b.html

"DAIGYAKUTENSAIBAN" (for the Nintendo 3DS system) remained slow"
http://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/news ... 1029b.html

Not sure what you're trying to say by comparing it with other entries that have been out for years or are you honestly just trying to paint the entry in bad light?

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Like I've said, I just don't think the appeal is quite as high as the novelty and revival that AA5 was, but hey, it got better sales than DGS (which I'm happy about for no reason I can make sense of, since I think DGS has the bigger potential in the future)


Honestly, considering if you look around I think the release of DD already showed people what a mainline AA game was in this day and age (and not by Takumi) and you see it in dozes everywhere you go, at least in the west "AA5 sucked!" and I'm not convinced another dormancy of this franchise would bring about a healthy revival down the road in the same way that bringing back Phoenix with DD did. When Takumi ended Phoenix's story with the trilogy because he didn't want him to pan out to be less memorable if he kept making the games, I think a lot of fans were skeptical of that idea, but DD kinda proved it to a lot of people that more "Phoenix Wright" isn't necessarily what they really wanted in the end.

I just don't think this franchise can get the push it got with DD twice because after AA6 and a couple of years later I don't think people will be craving, and craving a return to the series simply because the general quality of writing/story/characters was just a step below what it was in the trilogy.

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Speaking of iOS porting, how well did DD's port do financially? It's clearly the superior version of the game, but does that justify the effort going into a port for AA6?

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Of course, a game's sales won't depend just on the quality of the game itself--the previous entry is also going to have an impact on it.

of course, i'm just saying this so i can blame DGS's poor sales on DD and say SoJ sold better than DGS because DGS was good

About DGS's sales, I think they're poor due to the open ending. There were probably plenty of people who saw reviews/complaints about that, and decided not to get it. If DGS2 came out and formed a complete and amazing ending to the story that began in DGS, I bet DGS would see a spike in sales that made it comparable to the other games.

And as for SoJ, I do think the previous entry is going to have an effect on the next entry. While there was a lot of hype for DD at first, after the dust has settled, I think the reactions are generally more negative than positive. And if people didn't like DD, they will probably be less likely to get SoJ.

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It's possible but that's still a pretty big claim to make considering there's no actual data and sampling size out of all who bought it provided to see if such claim is true, after all we could also say that the plotholes in DGS are that horrible that people expected SOJ to pull the same stunt to provide as sequel bait.

You could watch willbit's streams from last year that had the twitch commenters who played the game uninamously agree that DD's one of their favorite entries but some people might puke when reading the positivity but still means that not everyone suddenly soured to DD like a lot of users like to think.

There's also stuff that weren't in DD that appears in SOJ that may convince people to buy it even if they didn't like DD that much anyway.

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The quality of product factor plays in, but I rather think there is a correlation between DD and SoJ than DGS factoring in, because I literally think the number one reason DGS was overlooked is the same reason as with Ghost Trick that the appeal isn't quite there because it's a new IP that even certain fans will be likely to skip because it has no Phoenix or other fan favorite characters on the cover.

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Considering literally the only data we have is Japanese sales data (and we don't even have any details on it, or know how accurate it is), this can be said about nearly everything in the thread. The best we can do right now is look at the numbers we have, and spin a story based on our anecdotal evidence.

Who knows? Maybe DD sold about as well as all the other games at first, and the extra ~100k is only from the iOS version.

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I'm pretty sure the 250k sales were of the first week and the iOS port came around months later.

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I can't imagine the iOS port of DD sold very well, considering that they never bothered to update it and fix it after it became broken on iOS9. Other games like Ghost Trick and even the AA HD trilogy have all been updated but DD still has the "may not be compatible with iOS9" text. (It's confirmed that DD is broken on iOS now in another C-R topic - someone got stuck on the DLC case due to technical issues with the buttons - not sure if the main game also suffers from this, but I would bet on it).

So I don't think its a huge seller or they would have updated it by now.

In all honesty, I'm curious as to why they don't put out the games on any platform they can. Especially systems like the PC. Personally, I wouldn't want to play an AA on the PC or even on a home console because it's the kind of game I like being in a small, portable system like a book, but I guarantee people would buy it as I know visual novels are popular on Steam. I don't know about the older games, but I know DD and SoJ use the same game engine that other Capcom games like the Resident Evil series use, and they seem to be ported fine. I can't imagine it would be that hard to take the iOS/"one-screen" version of DD and put it up on Steam. I think that would be some easy money for them. It would also likely be the most long-lasting and easiest to preserve version of the game. The 3DS version - especially in the West as an eShop exclusive - will be really hard to run once the 3DS stops being produced or when the eShop gets disconnected (assuming NX doesn't have backwards compatibility). And the iOS version obviously can become broken as the system develops (or could disappear entirely - years and years ago I bought the first two Secret of Monkey Island games for iOS and when I went back to play them I notice they've been removed from the App Store, likely due to a game-breaking bug with later iOS versions). So I feel like they could have a bigger audience than they do now if they ported them to PC.

As for the reception of DD, from what I've seen in real life talking to other fans and browsing the forums here, reception to DD seems mixed. Most of the people I talk to in person (who are more casual fans) seem to really like it, while many on C-R aren't huge fans of it. So I honestly think it could go either way. I also don't necessarily think the quality of the game might impact an episodic series like this that much. JFA is considered not great by a good amount of the fandom (I think DD is slightly better than JFA, for example) but that didn't seem to stop sales of T&T, nor did AJ (another game commonly considered to be mediocre (also my favorite game!)) seem to stop sales of DD. (You could argue that it might have negatively affected AAI, but I think that had more to do with the fact that it was a spin-off without Phoenix in it). I think with a franchise like this (at least in Japan, where they're guaranteed to get a new game every couple of years) I would bet that if most fans aren't a fan of one installment they'll figure that the next one might be better.

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Yeah, the whole supposed "overwhelming negativity" towards Dual Destinies does certainly come off as a more loud, mixed Internet minority thing. Heck even on the internet, the negativity is really mainly strong on select sites anyway.

Well, I'm not so sure about JFA/T&T (I think things were slightly different back then--the series was more niche, there were physical versions, and the internet fandom wasn't as established), but with the huge gap between AJ and DD (especially in the West), I'm not sure how much the former affected the latter, especially with how DD was trumpeted as the return of Phoenix.

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Lets throw out a more useful sales metric. First week sales.

(2007) Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney – 250,186
(2013) Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies – 250,216
(2015) The Great Ace Attorney – 135,690
(2016) Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice - 196,831

Or, for an even more interesting comparison, the new Mirrors Edge game for the PS4 came out the same week. It sold 5,699 copies.

SoJ's doing fine. Chill

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Plus I don't think these sales number for DD,SoJ and DGS count digital sales either.

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I'm on iOS9 (9.2 to be exact I think). Not noticed an issue with any cases I've replayed. Actually I played Turnabout Reclaimed for the first time back in April and I didn't have any issues with that as far as I recall. Maybe it's because I'm on an iPad Air and not something later or something...




This actually seems to have more to do with Disney buying LucasArts rather than any technical issues. I believe the last stated reason was because they had no plans on updating it. (The Telltale Monkey Island Tales however were down briefly due to a sound issue with iOS9 which they have since fixed).

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One thing to note is that 3ds pirating is more widespread now than it was when aa5 was released. The hacking scene is much larger and it's much simpler to do.

This could honestly be a factor. I love and support this series, so I'm purchasing it day 1, but I personally pirate games that I don't agree w/ their business decisions (like bravely second w/ censoring of storyline content; not just outfits; and FE w/ removal of content, etc.)

That said, a lot of people will just pirate everything once they have the ability to do so

You're allowed to admit to pirating on this forum? I thought talking about roms was against the rules, shouldn't pirating also apply?

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Not sure tbh. Last time I've read the rules here was back when I first joined; and last time I posted was probably during Apollo Justice. It'll be moderated if necessary, I suppose, but I at least know I'm not supposed to post links or tell people how to do it, etc.

It is relevant to the topic though of underwhelming sales, so that's the only reason I even mentioned it

If you want to publicly admit to pirating and using roms, nobody's stopping you...

Just don't link them, or say how to get them.

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This is good to know! I'm always worried about DD's longevity so it's good to know it seems to have been fixed (if we can talk about ROMS, I'll say that I'm hoping someone will someday be able to get the localized version of DD and SoJ working on emulators so that game can have the same long-term replay-ability that the earlier DS games. But as an eShop game I don't know how possible that is. I wish Capcom would just put out a PC version (probably based on the single-screen iOS version) so there would be a version that could be easy to get working in the future).

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I did my part. Purchased as soon as it dropped in the eShop

I wonder if we'll ever hear about how this game does in the West? We did eventually hear about DD but even that was pretty vague.

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