Star Fox Zero Makes Modest Debut in Japanese Charts as 3DS Holds Steady

star fox never sold well. Should have made a metroid game instead.

Modest? Those sale numbers are abysmal!! I think Bayonetta 2 and the Idol Crossover Game sold more. The Platinum Curse lives on.

That's not modest, that's horrible!

@ThomasBW84 with all the commotion that's been going on today did you get my email I sent probably early this morning for you? I don't remember NL ever showing the video but I could be wrong.

UK sales were "good" and Japanese sales are "modest".

That's not what I call modest... Pretty terrible actually.

'Modest' should've been at least four times that. These are worse sales than Yo-Kai Watch's opening week in America... which was also pretty bad.

Ah well, still better sales than anything on the XBONE in Japan... I had to say that.

@sals5
Yeah, numbers were abysmal all the way around.

I never realized until looking at this how poorly the XBone sells in Japan... Gosh... I mean I'll admit I'm a Nintendo fanboy, and I don't personally like the XBone, but those sales numbers are NOT good at all

I wish I could sell 25 thousand of something I created in one week in one country. I wonder what all the "abysmal" folks on here have made and sold.

Honestly I bought the game and haven't played it yet because of the control issue. I'm sure if I devote many hours to it I will get it and it will be good, but fixing something that isn't broken not the best strategy. On the other hand, I have enjoyed Star Fox Guard quite a bit and I hope people who are avoiding the controls will at least give that game a try.

bomba!!!

The controls combined with Star Fox not being a very big franchise to begin with, is why this happened. Why nintendo think they can release a short game like this, with absolutely no online muliplayer, (which people want for Star Fox) and expect to sell it for full price is ridiculous. Just my opinion, feel free to disagree if you wish. If I want to play Star Fox 64 again, I'll just play Star Fox 64 for 10 bucks.

Slow burner lol.

Terrible just terrible. How can Nintendo hang through 2016 like this?...

5th place for this game is actually amazing

Pretty sure Star Fox is hardly a japanese game tbh, it will do much better in the west

@Daldra Star Fox 64 sold over HALF A MILLION copies in Japan alone. And the N64 wasn't a popular console there, so the install base over Wii U wasn't much bigger.

In other news, Nintendolife employs some "modest" spinning in their sales figure articles.

I like Star Fox a lot (although I'm terrible at the games and I've only beat Adventures) but everything I've read about the dual screen control method has put me off buying the game. Is there a demo on the store?

I agree the use of modest might not be so appropriate here. I remember Pikmin 3 selling 90k units on it's debut week, and it was classed as a huge flop. That's a niche genre, way back in 2013 when the user base was much smaller than it is now. This figures are abysmal. I love the SF series and want it to continue, but I wouldn't be disappointed if this title in particular bombs because of the way they've forced gamepad usage in there when it's just not needed. Yeah, you get used to the controls, but not many people actually think they're an improvement over the way we controlled Star Fox 64.

"Modest" when compared to the other new launch games in Japan.

Makes me pretty sad because of how much I enjoyed Star Fox: Zero. I hope this doesn't kill the series.

yeah that's not modest at all, wah wah.

Modest? Lmao it's beyond terrible.

I hate how this site just can't say anything bad about a Nintendo game. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen one of the editors using the word "bad" at all.

@Peach64 If Zero had 64's 'controls' the game would be legitimately broken, as you wouldn't be able to hit half the stuff you're supposed to.

With respect, do you actually own the game?

Despite what people keep saying, the fundamental difference between 64 and Zero is not so much the controls, but the mechanics. Unlinking the flight path from the target reticule is mechanically more sophisticated than trying them together, no matter what control setup you use, and this is the main difference between the two games.

The game is very much designed to take advantage of this setup, in what I feel are genuinely meaningful ways (rather than forced moments simply to justify its existence). Flying under bosses and shooting up at their underbelly; taking out enemies almost directly below you; pretty much all the Walker boss fights where you have to adjust your aiming despite being locked on to a central target; flying circles around a boss and still being able to shoot at it despite never directly facing it; sniping Star Wolf from the side of your cockpit's window; all these moments (and plenty more) would be impossible with 64's set up, and without the new mechanics (and resulting possibilities for gameplay), the title would contribute very little that hasn't been covered in the series so far.

I know there's a wider narrative against Nintendo using non-traditional setups with their games, but I think it's dishonest to act as though the differences in mechanics and controls of Zero compared to 64 are superficial and don't have any meaningful impact upon the game; as though 64's setup could be easily swapped in and you'd be left with essentially the same game.

I'm really interested to know if you actually own it, as I think it's very easy to come to certain opinions about if you haven't played through it.

@Daldra They did make one. It's called Federation Force

If those sales are modest, I'd hate to see bad sales. This franchise could very well be put on the back burner again.

Short game, troubled development, no online multilayer, awkward controls, mediocre reviews, etc. You reap what you sow.

It outsold SMM.....so its got to be modest.

@Daldra
Star Fox sells better than Metroid

@SLIGEACH_EIRE
It may be short but it has high replayability and a bunch of extras to make up for it. That's how Star Fox works.

"Mediocre reviews"
Mixed*
There's a difference

Not every game needs online multiplayer and I don't see how it would work in Star Fox.

The point about controls varies from person to person. I got used to them instantly, while others took an hour or few and some simply couldn't get used to it at all.

@Kris_Gunn yeah man abysmal, unfortunately American products don't sell well in Japan.

@Utena-mobile I can't stand the on screen controls, yet if you put up with it, it's a pretty good game, yet only a short one.
I try play it like the originals, bar when you have to use the screen of course.
Although saying that, the motion controls to control the cross hair on the TV screen can be useful.

I

@Peach64 The bad sales have nothing to do with the quality of the game. It's just releasing a rail shooter in 2016 in retail was suicidal. But now Nintendo has an audit I think this kind of incident will happen less often. They will listen more the marketers and the bookkeeper instead of letting the developers doing anything they want. It's not normal that most Nintendo games these days are hated even before their release. And it's mostly because that problem. The Iwata era is over and developers need to have creative limits like how other videogames companies are run. Making more games for critics and the market and less for themselves.

When the number one game is a new title on PS4 debuting with just under 36,000 units sold, I think Nintendo Life are perfectly justified using the word modest.

@Trickbaby14 These numbers are terrible and I don't need to have sold a damn thing in my life to know that. Do I have to be a chef to know if my food tastes bad?

Phantasy star online 2??? I want...

I'm gonna be honest, I really love Star Fox 64 and enjoy the sequels (the dino one, the strategy one, the SF64 almost remake and the SF64 remaster), that said, It's good that flop, Nintendo must evolve their franchises, we simply can not accept a N64 makeover almost 20 years after the release of the original.
Just look at Metroid Prime! Evolution all over the place! Fire Emblem Awakening and Fates evolution! Mario Galaxy! Evolution!
Star Fox Zero, sad as it is, is a joke.

And people mock #Fe for terrible sales. Look at the other titles that sold less then 8,000. With only number 1 is at 36,000. And #fe sold more than star fox. Lol. But compared to other sales it pretty ok to say modest.

@Frank90 Just because a game essentially retells the same story doesn't automatically mean it can't 'evolve' the franchise in any way.

If that were true, every Zelda game set in Hyrule in which Ganondorf is up to no good would be 'a joke'. Every Mario game in the Mushroom Kingdom in which Peach gets kidnapped by Bowser would be 'a joke'. Not only retellings of games over 20 years old, but retellings of retellings of retelling of retellings...

Yes, Star Fox Zero IS set in the Lylat System and Andross IS the culprit, but to criticise it for 'not evolving' on account of this is ridiculous, especially in light of the previous examples; Zelda even makes the repetition of history a key part of its identity. That's why it's called 'The Legend of Zelda'. The events have played out so many times, they have literally become legend.

As with the earlier reader, I'm going to call into question whether you actually own the game the game or not, because it really doesn't sound like it. Zero is full of elements that have have never featured in a Star Fox game to date, right down to the most fundamental change of untying the flight path from the target reticule, which has been a staple of the series since inception.

Indeed, if Zero is being criticised for anything, it's 'evolving' the series too much. People seem to have grown very fond of flying and shooting in the same direction, and haven't always been charitable about giving that up.

It was expected to be this low. Star fox, metroid, fzero those are IPs that have never sold like crazy and were mostly "for the fans". I doubt Nintendo expected a huge hit with this. I doubt they are that naive.

I'm so disappointed with StarFox Zero controls, been a huge StarFox fan for years. I just don't understand why Nintendo has to reinvent the wheel when it come to StarFox games, StarFox Command and StarFox Zero both had needless and unnecessary control layouts. Shifting my sight from Gamepad to TV while using motion controls in SFZ is down right tedious.