Nearly two million copies of Fire Emblem: Awakening were sold to gamers around the world.
Fire Emblem: Awakening was a remarkable entry in the Fire Emblem franchise. And while fans of the game might point toward the additions and alterations it brought to the series’ formula as the main reason why, we’d be willing to bet that Nintendo was more dazzled by the dollars and cents the game brought in. Whereas previous Fire Emblems failed to find much audience appreciation outside of Japan, Awakening was successful around the globe, selling more copies in its first month of international release than other games from the series did during the breadth of their entire existence. That being case, Nintendo has recently released revealed just how successful the game really was.
According to promotional materials released by Nintendo, Fire Emblem: Awakening, since its 2012 release, has sold 1.79 million copies. Granted, that might not sound like much when compared to the industry’s heaviest hitters, but it’s fairly impressive when you consider that Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, the last game in the series released prior to Awakening, only managed to sell 250,000 copies total. Awakening, in its first month alone, managed to sell 183,000 copies, breaking sales records for the 25-year-old franchise.
When you consider the depth of this success, it’s almost no wonder that Nintendo and Intelligent Systems seem to doubling down on some of the gameplay options that arguably made Awakening more tenable to wider audiences. The next entry in the series, Fire Emblem If will remove franchise mainstays such as breakable weapons and will also add in an expanded selection of casual gameplay modes aimed at making it easier for gamers less interested in the franchise’s traditionally brutal difficulty. We’re also sure that the plan to split If into two games has absolutely nothing to do with further boosting sales.
Source: Nintendo Life
