Fire Emblem and the Strategy Game Market

[Tolvir]

I watched Mang's video of Fire Emblem's sales history recently, and there were two things that really interested me in terms of the history of the series. One being the hesitation of Fire Emblem';s release to the West, and the sales numbers when it finally released here.

When Fire Emblem was gaining a bit of pressure to release to the west, they thought the games were too difficult for the Western Audience. I find this statement really odd considering just how many great and difficult western strategy games there were at the time of some of the early Fire Emblem games. Here is a bit of a list just to show how odd this statement is.

The first Fire Emblem game, Dark Dragon and the Blade of Light, released around the time of the first Civilization games, which was practically the start of an entire subset genre of strategy games, 4x (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) style games.

New Mystery came out in 1994, same year that Blizzard released their first major game Warcraft (though they had a few minor releases as Silicon and Synapse), one of the absolute best RTS game series of all time. A year later, Xcom UFO Defense released, which is one of the best tactical strategy games of all time and was a tactical turn based strategy game much like Fire Emblem. Xcom Terror from the Deep also released around this time, which was the sequel to UFO Defense.

Fire Emblem Geneology of the Holy War released the same year as Warcraft II the Dark Portal, Masters of Orion II, and two years later from its release Starcraft would of hit the shelves.

Fire Emblem Thracia 776 released in 1999. It didnt have a whole lot of competition in terms of strategy releases at this time, other than Starcraft coming out a year prior, and Command and Conquer Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2. Not too much in the way of strategy games here.

Fire Emblem Binding Blade had a big one. Warcraft III Reign of Chaos released the same year. One of the best RTS strategy games of all time that is widely played to this day.

So it is clear that the West had a market for Strategy Games. And none of these games are at all easy to complete. They may be different types of strategy games when compared to Fire Emblem, the only tactical strategy game of them all being Xcom but even that played differently. So how did IS/Nintendo come to the conclusion of the West not being ready for the difficulty of Fire Emblem, when these games were released in the West? Some of them even beating out Fire Emblem in sales by a large margin. The Warcraft series alone sold better than all of Fire Emblem's early releases with games like Warcraft 1 and Warcraft II being at 1 million sold copies, and 1.1 million sold copies.

Then came its Western Release after Marth and Roy found their way in Smash Bros. Just look at these numbers for a second.

Fire Emblem 7

North America sales: 490,000

Japan Sales 290,000

Fire Emblem 8

North America Sales: 420,000

Japan Sales: 300,000

Fire Emblem 9

North America Sales: 290,000

Japan Sales: 300,000

Fire Emblem 10

North America Sales: 280,000

Japan Sales: 170,000

Fire Emblem 11

North America Sales: 310,000

Japan Sales: 270,000

Fire Emblem 13

North America sales: 870,000

Japan Sales: 520,000

On average, the US sold 135,000 more copies than Japan when Fire Emblem finally released to the west. And you have to take into account that all the games before Awakening had poor advertising and timing for it's release in the US. Technically, Fire Emblem has a larger market in the US than it does Japan, and it is starting to grow rapidly too.

I just find how IS really hesitated towards a release in the West, and then ended up selling more on average in the US, a really interesting scenario. The idea of there being hesitation due to poor reception would of made sense in my opinion, but I don't know how Fire Emblem being too difficult for the west made sense. Then going and selling more in the US than Japan must of been a shock to IS when it occurred.

 

In a way it makes me wonder what would of happened if instead of trying to release Fire Emblem for the GBA, they tried their hand at Fire Emblem for the PC. Essentially throwing their hat into the growing Strategy Game market on PC rather than continuing console releases.

 

Edited February 16, 2017 by Tolvir

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Well, as far as I know Intelligent systems has always developed exclusively for nintendo systems, and thus wouldn't develop and release Fire Emblem on PC. But if they had, I very much doubt it would find the success it did with Fire Emblem 7 on GBA. Today's PC market is several times larger and more profitable than it was even ten years ago, let alone 20. I'm thinking of influential PC games among 1995 to 2005, and can't name a single one developed by a Japanese company, so maybe those developers explicitly didn't believe in PC gaming? Piracy was the biggest general concern for developers, as a bootleg cartridge for proprietary hardware was significantly harder to create and distribute than a bootleg CD.

So let's say they tried to release a Fire Emblem game internationally on PC during one of the years inbetween FE 5 and 6. Since Nintendo isn't trying to break into the PC market, IS needs a new publisher. FE 3, 4, and 5 earned a 36, 31, and 35 on Famitsu which is okay enough that they could feasibly break a deal with somebody like EA or Interplay. Fire Emblem's genre competitiors would include Blizzard's starcraft and warcraft which boast expansive single player campaigns alongside online multiplayer modes. There's also Black Isle's Fallout franchise, and Bioware's Baldur's gate to name a few of the computer RPG experiences that control like a Fire Emblem game but with dialogue sequences and more in depth character customization. This new Fire Emblem 6 would have been encouraged to look and feel like these types of games, and IS would be under immense pressure to create a PvP multiplayer online battle mode. I don't suspect the gameplay of SNES fire Emblem to have been dumbed down as much or at all for this PC FE6, as several of the games available on PC are miles ahead in depth compared to FE4/5. And without the GBA's hardware limitations, they would definitely continue with the massive maps and army to army clashes. It could very well be an impressive game, but I have my doubts about the series making a successful transition to PC, and then continuing to build a franchise as far as today. There's also the business with Shozo kaga's departure, which is another variable to consider.

Regarding IS's belief that the games were too hard for international audiences, I think that's just a tactful way of saying this type of game would not market well over there. For every game I can name that was made easier internationally, there's another that was made harder. US FE7, easier. US Resident Evil 1, harder. Here's an exhaustive list of examples. Though many of these international changes are just patches and no brainer changes to make a game more playable, like in the example of Majora's Mask.

Edited February 17, 2017 by Gustavos

[Locke087]

 Just some notes and something to consider when talk about this.

The PC and console audiences are considered disparate audiences in a lot of ways they are,  especially in the pre Steam era. The PC audience was seen as being able to handle more complex strategic & RPG games like XCOM the console audience wasn't seen as being able to handle that.  Consol games by and large are far more simple then PC games of the same era play something like System Shock 2, The original Theif, original Deus Ex and tell me how freaking complex those games are.  Some of this is due to the fact that  keyboard and mouse just has more buttons,  but PC was viewed as having them a higher adult audience.

The thing is even if FE was launched on a PC something that would never happen cause Nintendo owns intelligent systems, if it wasn't FE 5 or mabye 4 it would've been viewed is way too simplistic and basic when compaired with its competition so it likely wouldn't have succeeded.

Now I don't think it was wise that they chose not to bring FE to the west earlier I think they should've started with the SNES games and the games would've gained a reputation and been a far more successful now and not needed resurrection imo.