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The story
With the release of “Ace Combat 8” approaching, users on 5ch’s game hardware board have been buzzing about the fact that its Amazon bestseller ranking has barely moved from around 2,000th place for nearly a month. While the official livestream drew over 4,500 concurrent viewers, and the game sits at No. 4 on the PlayStation Store and No. 1 on Steam, opinions split on whether the weak package sales reflect genuinely soft demand or simply a shift toward digital purchases. Posters also pointed to the previous entry, “7,” which opened with 202,000 units in its first week before eventually reaching 7.5 million copies through repeated steep discounts — fueling a lively debate over how far “8” will climb.
What people said
TOKON
Wolverine
Even adding in the limited-edition sales, that's basically a rounding error — this looks pretty bad…
About on par with Wolverine.
Looks like a guaranteed bomb.
https://www.youtube.com/live/sKv4lbKC7zU
Oh, it's live right now?
4,500 concurrent viewers, huh…
That's a solid number.
If I ever got that many concurrent viewers on my own stream, I'd be doing a happy dance.
Beating the official Xbox stream's numbers, huh.
Re: #45
Leave Xbox out of it —
its sales probably won't even register ("棒"/"stick" is slang for numbers so low they don't even show up as a bar on the chart).
but I doubt it grows much after week two.
Wasn't 7's first week around 200k units…?
Either demand shifted to Steam and digital,
or people have simply lost interest —
hard to say for sure.
"PS4 Ace Combat 7 domestic first-week sales: 202,000 units — far surpassing the previous title"
https://www.gamespark.jp/article/2019/01/25/86883.html
So 200k is the bar to clear?
That's rough, lol
By the way, this is the Steam version
https://jpeg.men/1KoU850BWyS.jpg
Currently No. 4 on the PlayStation Store.
Early access starts tomorrow for 3 days.
No. 4 on a PS Store that's practically empty, huh…
There's also a Collector's Box package that comes with early access, you know.
Yeah, I felt that too.
The digital version of Ace Combat 8 is still losing to FC27 though (FC27 = the annual EA Sports FC soccer game).
FC's numbers include microtransactions plus the base game, though.
Ace Combat is No. 4 on the overall PS ranking and No. 1 on Steam,
so it's obvious most of its sales are digital.
The fact that you can't make the case on PS5 numbers alone and have to bring up Steam kind of says it all.
Another case of it flopping on PS5 but selling mainly on Steam?
If it doesn't move over 200k in weekly sales though, that's a failure.
Heard something similar about Tekken back in the day.
Is this just how Namco titles always go?
People who bought it during the fire sale are just going to wait for the next one to get dumped too.
Coming from someone who's been bumping threads about third-party games not selling on Switch 2, this take is absolutely ridiculous.
Come on, leave it.
He probably thinks he's being totally consistent with that.
Bandai Namco owes too much of a debt of gratitude to Sony for that ("マンバンナム" is net slang for Bandai Namco), so they probably won't release it there —
7 basically existed to promote this one anyway.
It had only been 5 years since '3D,' but that was a portable remake, and during those 12 years it was mostly spin-offs like the X series, Horizon, and Infinity — I think that gap mattered a lot.
But on the flip side, 7's actual content was pretty mediocre, so as a reaction a lot of people seem to be taking a wait-and-see approach with 8.
I think 7 would've been a lot better if the mission time limits weren't so tight.
Though it'd only be "better," since what you can actually do got cut down a lot compared to 6.
Bandai Namco has revealed that total sales of "Ace Combat 7" have reached 7.5 million
https://gamecolumn.jp/blog-entry-115750.html
Well, it did get as cheap as 668 yen at its lowest.
this time they're really putting serious effort into promotion.
You can feel the publisher's seriousness, but who knows how it'll turn out.
No matter how much they pour into advertising, sales on PS5 still look shaky.
The industry's already shifted to digital, that's just how it is now.
The publisher understands that too, which is exactly why they can afford to pour money into commercials.
If it really wasn't going to sell, they'd be cutting the ad budget too.
Have you not noticed the PS5 console itself — despite airing tons of desperate commercials over and over, its sales never budge!?
Background and Key Points of the Discussion
The previous title, “Ace Combat 7,” put up a respectable first-week showing for its time on PS4 with 202,000 units, but it was later discounted repeatedly — down to as low as 668 yen — eventually building up to 7.5 million units in cumulative sales. In the thread, this history of “padding the numbers through discounting” was treated as shared background knowledge, setting a high bar for what’s expected of 8. Where opinions diverged was in how to read the sluggish Amazon ranking. Given that the game sits at No. 4 on the PlayStation Store and No. 1 on Steam, some read this as simply “sales having shifted from packaged copies to downloads and Steam,” while others remained skeptical that “even so, the numbers are just too weak.” Some also pointed out that 7’s time-limited missions were poorly received, and that as a reaction many fans are taking a wait-and-see approach with 8. It’s also worth noting that 8 has a paid three-day early access period before release, and the thread never made clear exactly what will be counted as part of its “first week” sales.
※This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Geha)) thread “If Ace Combat 8 flops this week….”
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