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TalkBack / Re: F-ZERO Returns Today as the Next 99-player Title
« on: September 15, 2023, 05:37:10 PM »As for F-Zero GX, word on the street was that it crossed 1.5 million and this knowledge came about 5 years ago from Nagoshi himself. Here's Nintendo Life's article in which he states it at that amount and being proud of the sales for it. F-Zero GX also made the list of Player's Choice games on the GameCube and had some copies made with the yellow branding which meant it was at least a million seller. Considering GameCube console sales were much lower compared to SNES and most other Nintendo consoles, the fact that GX did about half the SNES sales is actually a positive thing showing why the demand is there for a follow-up entry.
Either that interview mistranslated how much it sold or Nagoshi confused the games numbers with a different game, because Nintendo's own internal sales numbers have the game below one million.
https://www.installbaseforum.com/forums/threads/nintendo-software-and-hardware-sales-data-from-1983-to-present.170/
This is a list of all Nintendo million sellers as of June 2023, straight from Nintendo's Public Relationship Department and GX never crossed the million mark worldwide. The only F-Zero games to do that where as follows.
SNES - 2.85 million
X - 1.10 million
Maximum Velocity - 1.05 million
Now that same Nintendolife article says it's source is a thread on ResetEra. If you go to the thread on Reset Era where the source is from, somebody on that thread says the last numbers we had from places like NPD in America and Media Create had GX at only 338k in America and 80k in Japan. They also say it did 99k in Europe but no source on that. The NPD and Media Create numbers are accurate since during the mid to late 2000's, NPD wasn't has harsh on leaks like they would become years later so people on Neo Gaf would report the North American number for games all the time and I remember F-Zero GX were somewhere over 300k, so only 338k in America sounds right.
So best case scenario, GX only did over 500k wordwide, which for a game as expensive to make as GX is not very good. Yes it was on the Gamecube which underperformed, but look at other mid-tier Nintendo series back on it.
Metroid Prime - 2.84 million
Star Fox Adventure - 1.82 million
Pikmin - 1.6 million
Pikmin 2 - 1.12 million
Metroid Prime 2 - 1.10 million
For a game like GX, it was critically acclaimed and well loved by the people who played it. So why did it fail to sell anywhere close to other similar Nintendo franchises? Nintendo did all they could to make this series more popular and it didn't work. This is why F-Zero died while Metroid, Star Fox and Pikmin all got new installments after the Gamecube era.