The Legend of Heroes: Trails series sales top five million
Total sales for the Trails series of The Legend of Heroes games have surpassed five million units worldwide, developer Falcom announced.
www.gematsu.com
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The Legend of Heroes: Trails series sales top five million
- Thread starter Deleted member 10737
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www.gematsu.com
Seems a bit small for a trilogy... for that many games ;x.
Hopefully it is enough for future Legend of Heroes games.
I still need to play Trails in the Sky SC and Third chapter before buying Cold steel series.
Edit: My bad lol - I thought this was just Trails of Cold Steel by itself (then I realized there's a 4th one too) so
Hopefully it is enough for future Legend of Heroes games.
I still need to play Trails in the Sky SC and Third chapter before buying Cold steel series.
Edit: My bad lol - I thought this was just Trails of Cold Steel by itself (then I realized there's a 4th one too) so
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So how low can your sales be in Japan and still be considered a success? Honestly curious.
Always wondered that sort of thing. Always see niche RPGs doing numbers that seem kind of abysmal at a glance but they seem to atleast be enough to keep the series chugging along.
Always wondered that sort of thing. Always see niche RPGs doing numbers that seem kind of abysmal at a glance but they seem to atleast be enough to keep the series chugging along.
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I think they meant Sky, Crossbell, and Cold Steel when they said trilogy.
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Trails of Cold Steel 3 is one of the announced titles for the Amazon Luna streaming service, it'll be interesting to see how that does.
The franchise is a tad niche even in Japan. In the rest of the world, it's like, niche af. This series deserves four times as many sales. q_q
That could have said 'The Legend of Heroes: Trails series games top five million' and I wouldn't have been overly surprised
Considering the budget for all of these I don't think it's small, they never would have release this info if they weren't pleased with it.
Actually my mistake.
I thought this was for "Trails of Cold Steel series" but then re-read the title.....yikes....5 mil seems really low for that many games lol
I'm guessing this also includes the Gagharv trilogy too....that trilogy was awful lol. Trails in the Sky FC was awesome though. I bought Second and Third chapters last year cause of how awesome FC was - will play them later.
Is..this in reference to me? Cause that wasnt my intention.
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Low overall sales for 10 games tbh, but I suppose newer games are selling better and knowing that some players (myself included) start with Cold Steel and later buy and play the 5 previous games, this means that the sales potentials for older games is decent, and 2 of them have not even been released officially in English.
I also suppose that NISA is doing a good job with the marketing and that the CSIII sales have been good considering it's the third episode of the third arc.
I also suppose that NISA is doing a good job with the marketing and that the CSIII sales have been good considering it's the third episode of the third arc.
Not bad for such a niche series really. I tried pretty hard to get into it with both FC and Cold Steel, but I just couldn't do it. I just find their style of writing and design to rub me the wrong way. Good news for fans at least. Seems like the series is doing better and getting a bit more recognition.
The series unfortunately lost me with some of the pandering and questionable relationship dynamics
If it was just a trilogy the franchise would be a lot better than it is now.
This is from Sky to Hajimari.
And also that's like 500k copies sold per entry, that's really solid for a niche franchise. I think peoples sales expectations are a bit warped by bigger games.
Hoping for something eventually more fantasy-oriented and different installments being connected by cool little references/nods/cameos and that's it, like the Gagharv games, but I won't hold my breath.
It was at 4.8 million in 2017 but I can't find anything for later.
Ys games historically sell less than Trails in Japan though so I'm guessing it's not much higher than 5 mil.
Falcom has around 60 employees, and they don't want to grow much bigger. The common game-budget estimation is to take the number of people and multiply them by $100,000, to account for their salary, taxes, office space, licensing, and other expenses. So going by that, Falcom has an estimated $6 million per year in expenses, so that's the minimum they need to earn between all their franchises to survive.
Falcom knows they can't compete in the realm of graphics because that requires much more people, higher budgets, higher risk. So they make what they know, and they have specialized on story writing, which gives them a steady, constant fan base. So as long as they keep that fan base and steadily grow it, they can consider themselves to be successful. In this case, they sold 300,000 Trails games in a couple months, that seems like a number to be proud of for such a company.
This includes all the various release and rerelease of the games (for example Skies FC has 3 different releases, original, Kai and evolution). That's over 40-50 different skus.
For the whole series? Wow, would have expected more since I always hear about the series now compared to years ago when I first played it.
I really want to get into this series since I love the first Trials in the Sky, but is kinda hard to invest time when the own fanbase tells you that you must play 3-4 100 hours games each where the writing is subpar to get into the best parts.
At this point playing the entire series is a time investment of 500- 800 hours approx with people telling you that the writing starts to get terrible around the current arc
At this point playing the entire series is a time investment of 500- 800 hours approx with people telling you that the writing starts to get terrible around the current arc
Yeah I think recent huge successes like Persona have kind of skewed public perception of how much non-Square Enix JRPG franchises actually sell on average.
The best way to enjoy Trails is to ignore the fanbase and play however you want.
For a niche series with low budgets, I think this is an especially good return. Had a blast with FC and I'm now at the very end. Might not even wait a day to jump into SC.
For real. People think selling sub 1 million is a commercial failure, but forget that the series is considered niche and they're not expensive to produce. This is a success story for Legend of Heroes.
For real. People think selling sub 1 million is a commercial failure, but forget that the series is considered niche and they're not expensive to produce. This is a success story for Legend of Heroes.
Yeah I suppose so.
As long as they keep coming out with games, I got no complaints.
Sure, but those rereleases generally had very little spent on them. And the evolution versions sold like nothing at all.
You don't have to do this trust me regardless of what some fans say. I was like you I had really enjoyed Trails in the Sky when it released on the PSP and didn't never got around to SC until years later I skipped the 3rd and just watched it via video summary and just moved onto to Cold Steel 1 and really enjoyed it. Playing through CS1 & CS2 made me go back to the Crossbell Saga which is now my favorite saga.
Anyway I say all of that to say play it in your own order you don't have invest in all of these games play what you deem as worth it.
They still sold between 15 and 30k each. So it adds up
I should say that I own all the english (and some lf the Japanese) releases of the Legend of Heroes games (except the third PSP game in the gagharv trilogy QQ) so I'm not « hating » on them :p
I think the interesting thing here is Hajimari selling 300,000 units with over 200,000 being possibly digital. I thought RPGs in Japan were largely bought physically so that they could be resold once folks are done playing with them.
Doesn't the series sell reasonably well-ish in Asia outside of Japan? Hajimari is at about 100k physical in Japan but I wouldn't at all assume it's at 200k digital. That 100k physical doesn't include the rest of Asia.
Lol I do not know what people are expecting sales wise for a niche series.
This ain't no Final Fantasy or Persona. Plus the budget to these games are low afterall so these sale are quite decent for a niche series.
I just hope it continues to grow when they start the new arc with next game in the series.
This ain't no Final Fantasy or Persona. Plus the budget to these games are low afterall so these sale are quite decent for a niche series.
I just hope it continues to grow when they start the new arc with next game in the series.
It will be the least popular game of the least popular streaming service most likely, so probably terrible lol.
Falcom needs to start releasing as many games as possible on Switch if they want more success.
6 (soon 7) of them
Trails in the Sky Trilogy
Trails in Cold Steel Quadrilogy
There are 2 games missing in between both arcs which right now are fan translated
Well the next arc is probably gonna be in Calvard so I doubt it's gonna be fantasy oriented.
Seems a bit trolly to me, since most of the fanbase (JRPG fans) think the writing is quite good, that said, everyting is subjective here Yes, its Japanese turn based rpg with a lot of anime stylings, and the "tropes" that often go with it, and if that sort of thing makes you gag, these games won't change your mind but for the rest of us who adore JRPGS that use an anime style, and a dense plot and world-building set over literally hundreds of hours of gameplay, this series of games is best in class.