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The story
Sales of Beast of Reincarnation, a completely new title that Game Freak spent roughly six years developing, have become a hot topic on 5ch after the company still hasn’t announced official sales figures even long after launch. The contrast with Capcom’s Onimusha, released around the same time and hitting one million units on day one, drew a string of comments in the thread pointing out that the game seems to be struggling. Posters also discussed the studio’s move away from Nintendo platforms to release on PlayStation, raised doubts about Game Freak’s abilities apart from Pokémon, and debated how the studio’s development resources should be spent.
What people said
Probably because nobody's buying it.
I heard it was meant to train up junior producers and directors, so they never expected it to actually sell.
It's fine, they can put Pokémon's profits toward making other games.
It sells because of the Pokémon brand — your company itself has no appeal.
With six years they could've made one or two Pokémon spin-offs instead.
Well, if they had people to spare for something like this, that's exactly the kind of thing that gets them slammed.
Posted that before I finished typing.
If they want to make an AAA game, they should make a Pokémon game that's somewhere between full photorealism and something like the Ocarina of Time remake —
realistic backgrounds, characters in an in-between style, and 60 FPS.
If they have the tech, it should be doable.
Unfortunately the mainline Pokémon games are trash too, so Game Freak as a whole is garbage.
'Betray' — scary word choice. Sounds like you've sworn loyalty to Nintendo or something.
The result: 😂
Wait, Xbox actually shows active player counts? I didn't think any home console ('家ゴミ,' a derisive nickname for consoles) had that feature.
The leaked data already showed they barely get any development budget from Pokémon. Since Pokémon isn't turning a profit for them, they made Reincarnation to generate their own revenue.
From Game Freak's perspective, maybe it's fine since it lets them measure who actually has talent?
Better than letting someone fester inside the company spreading poison —
if you let them try and they fail, it gets awkward for them too,
and above all, it confronts them with reality in the clearest way possible.
Guess Pokémon really was their one and only hit.
Wasn't Drill Dozer ('どりるれろ') a Game Freak game too? I feel like that one got a decent amount of buzz.
Background and Key Points of the Discussion
Game Freak is best known as the studio behind the Pokémon series, but this title is one of the company’s rare completely original IPs, reportedly taking around six years to develop. Around materials said to have leaked in the past, speculation has circulated among fans that Pokémon’s profits aren’t being sufficiently returned to Game Freak — and some see this release as an attempt to secure an independent revenue stream through the studio’s own IP. Titles that don’t get an official sales-figure announcement after launch are, generally speaking, often ones that underperformed, and the contrast with Capcom’s Onimusha — released around the same time and touting a concrete figure of one million units sold on day one — sharpened reactions in the thread. Within the thread, opinions split between a more sympathetic view (“the point was to train up junior producers and directors, so a huge hit was never the goal”) and a more critical one (“this is a company that can’t function without the Pokémon brand”). It should be noted that, as of this writing, no official figures for sales or development costs have been announced, so any numbers floated in the thread remain speculation.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry, “Geha”) thread “[Sad News] Game Freak’s New Title ‘Beast of Reincarnation’ Quietly Flops.”
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