In a series of posts over on Twitter, former Capcom composer Masakazu Sugimori has suggested that Ace Attorney would not have become a franchise if it were released in the current gaming industry. As he explains, the initial sales numbers were so low that any modern publisher would have completely passed on a sequel since it would become a financial risk.
While it’s hard to really imagine it nowadays, the Ace Attorney series was not always a big seller. When the first game launched on the GBA in Japan back in 2001, it sold around 70,000-80,000 units in its first week and didn’t rise much higher until years later, as sequels were released. Through persistence and evolving quality, Capcom managed to turn the series into a success that appealed far beyond its Japanese target audience. Hell, there’s even an official Japanese film of the franchise made by an acclaimed director, Takashi Miike.
Initially, the conversation started when Bandai Namco producer Taira Nakamura wrote a post stating that he believes it’s much harder to start a new IP in the current games industry. As he believes, if a game isn’t an immediate success, it becomes written off as a failure and is never given the chance to evolve over the course of sequels. Nakamura brings up Pokémon and Monster Hunter as two games that were able to cultivate an audience through iteration that eventually grew into explosive success with newer entries.
Sugimori then responded, writing about how the first Ace Attorney was seen as a failure. Director Shu Takumi never gave up on the game despite its low sales, and as the series continued, public reception grew. Eventually, it became a rather big success, and Capcom even recently celebrated 13 million total sales across all of its installments. Sugimori concluded, “Ace Attorney is truly an IP that Capcom ‘nurtured.’ I think Ace Attorney is a successful title thanks to the hard work of Takumi-san and Capcom!”
In the current gaming climate, we’ve seen studios shuttered over sales numbers that would have been monumental 20 years ago. As the cost of development continues to rise, it makes sense why publishers are so unwilling to invest in original IP. If they hope to cultivate a franchise like Ace Attorney, though, publishers will need to start looking outside the box and scaling down productions instead of betting the farm on one unproven game.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
