Sly never did that well. It was a moderate hit with the first, but decreased sales from there. I have no idea what Sony’s thought process was for green lighting a 4th at a time when R&C, the most popular of the PS2 trio, was struggling. The era was not suitable for the type of game Sly was, and the lack of marketing only made things worse.
Yup, so I decided to look up the number 1 best selling PS1 game of 1998 in the US. Gran Turismo.
1,4 million and that game was certainly popular and made lots of money.
That's too bad, I only played Sly 4 but it was great, I'd have liked to see more.
Sly 1 is your basic stealth adventure game where you go to different locations, beat the bosses of each stage, and then fight the final baddie
You know, as wonderful as the Arkham games were, and as much as I love them, I think they did contribute to Sony's overly cinematic focused style. That and Uncharted, which was even more the type of game Sony's stuck on now, but those games were liked because of the solid characters and story. Infamous was another one, I liked the first 2 games, and I think they were pretty popular.
I played a little bit of 2 or 3 at a friend's place back in the day. Disappointed I never got to play the full series. It seems like so many of Sony's classic series are basically dead now. Same goes for Jak & Daxter, which I remember playing a little bit of the first game.
I do sometimes wonder nowadays for some modern popular titles how much is people who played it and how much is people watched their favorite livestreamer play it.
Lara Croft was never that popular. She was a fad from the mid-90s through late-00s
He also didn’t take in how Sony packs in many of their titles which has contributed significantly to the sales of Horizon, GOW and Spider-Man.
To be fair, EarthBound and F-Zero have Smash, which has heavily skewed how popular they actually are. There are tons of “fans” but the only game they play is Smash while complaining that Captain Falcon needs to be brought back.
Sony was more influenced by Uncharted and The Last of Us. The PS3 era struggled in selling IP and those two games were the only major successes of the console. Batman did impact Spider-Man though.
The developer moved on to Ghost of Tsushima.
I think you mean “made them heavily popular”. There are plenty of people, myself included, who found out about those games through Smash, played them, and became huge fans.
Kinda. I don’t doubt that people played the games after, but I think a good chunk only like it because Smash. Smash has a lot of weirdness like that where people bandwagon characters they never heard of, or will play the game of, because of the echo chambers the community brings.
"Keep in mind when I talk about toxic behavior..."
F-Zero is a special case since Smash 64 is the first game that actually showed Captain Falcon besides a still image in F-Zero X’s ending. Combined with his cool moves and personality, he basically became the face for Smash and quickly became more associated with it than his own game.
Basic sounds good, I have this one installed on my Vita already, maybe I'll finally get around to it and run through the others if I like it.
Maybe, but I think it's so easy to play Earthbound that most people have. Hell, there's even a demo in SSB... Brawl? Or was it Wii U?
He must have said toxic a million times.
The demo for Earthbound was in Brawl for the Wii and it was only in the Japanese version, Earthbound at that time was still going through weird issues where Nintendo wasn’t sure they could re-release it in the West due to copyright stuff. Least that’s what I remember people saying, could’ve just been Nintendo didn’t think it was worth bothering with it. It wasn’t until 2013 on the Wii U for there to be a re-release, and it was the first time Europe got Earthbound in general since it never had a release on the snes there. Probably because it was a late SNES release and not like Nintendo was super popular in Europe during that period.
Speculation always revolved around legal issues, but then it came to the Wii U and they didn’t change a single thing. Speaking of which, I kinda miss masterpieces (the Brawl/Smash 4 demos of Virtual Console games). They were completely unnecessary, but a fun way to take a break between matches. But I’ll stop here before the Sony thread devolves even further into another Nintendo thread.
At this point I don’t think I believe the “it was just legal issues” theory anymore. It’s most likely was just Nintendo of America not thinking it was worth the effort, which kinda seemed like a trend for NOA during that period.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, F-Zero needs to come back in some form. Nintendo said they don't want to bring it back because Mario Kart already fulfills the racing genre, but F-Zero has a really cool setting and characters behind it. I think a game based on Captain Falcon's bounty-hunting career set in the F-Zero universe would be a really fun direction for them to go in.
Its a decent game. No real replay value once you've finished it, but its a decent game and worth at least one playthrough.
The real reason Nintendo have done nothing with it is because Miyamoto couldn't really figure out any way to evolve the series. In other words, he couldn't figure out some new gimmick to attach to it. The thing is, F-Zero doesn't need to reinvent the wheel to be successful; the game was fun and great on its own.