Earlier this year I mentioned how the sales for Neo The World Ends With You had very low sales in Japan. And that this comes even with launching on an additional platform. Well, it seems since then that the sales have continued to be middling. As SquareEnix themselves state that the game has underperformed in its initial projections. In other words, while the game may have been well received; sales-wise Neo: TWEWY is a disappointment.
Released as an official (PDF) the company broke down some of the company’s year-over-year sales numbers for the 6 month time period going into Q3. And one small but notable statement came from Square Enix President Yosuke Matsuda. During some comments made about the decline in both Digital entertainment and HD game sales he gave a brief statement on NEO: TWEWY:
“While “NEO: The World Ends with You” was well received by users, it has underperformed our initial expectations.”
Yousuke Matsuda, President of Square Enix
Why did it fail?
Since the game’s original launch back in August, it seems that the sales never truly generated post-launch either for the title. And this could be attributed to a number of reasons. The first and most important was the lack of marketing. The game had no notable advertisements or promotions. Outside of the initial announcement and release date trailer; the only ad was the final trailer shortly before launch.
There was no major impact or ads for the game in any capacity. And besides focusing on the Switch, where the main bulk of fans are; it did very little to promote the fact it is going to be on multiple platforms, namely on Playstation. The second biggest effect is that that the game was unknown. It was a small title that had originally only been on the Nintendo DS, back in the mid-2000s. With a re-released final mix in 2018 still only appearing on the Switch.
With it still only focused on a single audience group, and no re-release of the final mix on other platforms; there was realistically no attention garnered on this sequel. Many may not have even really been able to know it was even a sequel. These poor marketing decisions are some of the main points of contention on why sales may have failed.
Hopefully, SquareEnix may look at possibly porting the game and updating it for release to more platforms for both games. As it was a well-received game by fans, since it was developed by the team behind Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories.
Do you feel different, think that it was due to different reasons? Let us know what you think about Square saying that NEO: Twewy is a disappointment.
-Jess (Bloodieknux)
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