Yacht Club Games shared a comprehensive breakdown of Shovel Knight’s sales in a new blog post.
In its first week, the indie title managed to sell 75,000 copies (taking out Kickstarter pre-sales). Yacht Club said, “It blew our 2x-4x pre-sale expectation out of the water”.
There are a few reasons we think our preorder prediction ended up being such a conservative estimate. One is…we were a Kickstarter! That’s not quite the same thing as a preorder. People could only attain the preorder for a limited time, so the stats aren’t 100% aligned with what a preorder would do. We think due to the PC nature of Kickstarter, we saw a higher amount of sales on Nintendo’s platform when the game actually got released. Nintendo users are more inclined to buy the game day one rather than through a preorder on Kickstarter. Finally, the preorder prediction isn’t a set in stone statistic, but more like a guideline for what to expect. We had done a lot of promotion and marketing at conventions and on media sites to prove ourselves over the course of the year, and we think people responded to it in kind! Nintendo also did an amazing job supporting us through their store placement and own marketing channels.
There is plenty of news to come for both Bayonetta and Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, based on new teases from Nintendo of Canada’s Matt Ryan.
First, on the topic of Bayonetta 1, Ryan mentioned that there are “some other surprises” that haven’t been revealed.
Ryan told Nintendo Enthusiast:
Activision gave Neversoft the go-ahead to create a sequel to Gun, but the studio was forced to drop the project due to a lack of manpower. Former president Joel Jewitt told Game Informer this month that it would have been impossible for the studio to take on Gun 2 in addition to another skateboarding title.
He said:
“(Neversoft) had a bunch of guys that fought really hard over on the Activision side and we got the sequel approved, and then we more or less had to make the call over here that we couldn’t do it for business reasons. We just didn’t have the manpower to make [Gun 2] and another skateboarding game. We had to take our engine to the next level, because we were [moving to] the Xbox 360. We had to put everybody back on the [Tony] Hawk franchises.”
The first and only Gun game launched in 2005. It ended up on several platforms, including the GameCube.
Ancient is developing a sequel to Protect Me Knight, a Japanese indie title for the Xbox 360.
The new game features four-player local co-op, “about ten times” as much content as the original, and music from Yuzo Koshiro music. Two new characters have been shown thus far: an older knight on a toy horse and an archer.
A price point for the Protect Me Knight hasn’t been announced, though it will be “about twice” the Xbox 360 version given the large increase in content.
Protect Me Knight is heading to the Japanese 3DS eShop in September. At the moment, an international release hasn’t been decided.
Check out some footage from the original Protect Me Knight below:
Since The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’s launch, most had been in agreement that Sheik is a woman. After all, Sheik is Zelda when all is said and done.
But just to clear up any potential uncertainty, Polygon caught up with Nintendo senior product marketing manager Bill Trinen for an official answer. He told the site: “The definitive answer is that Sheik is a woman — simply Zelda in a different outfit.”
Over the past few weeks, Capcom has been highlighting creatures from Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. The latest, Najarala, was featured in a recent Capcom-Unity blog post.
You can find screenshots and art of Najarala above. Check out some excerpts from the post below and find the full thing here.
Etrian Odyssey II Untold: The Knight of the Fafnir, a remake of the 2008 DS game, features pre-made characters – something brand new to this title. An article posted on Famitsu’s website showcases the different characters: Protagonist, Arianna, Flavio, Bertrand, and Chloe. You’ll find art of each in the gallery above.
