Sega's Most Popular Franchises?

So I've been playing a lot of Sonic All-star Racing Transformed recently and got to wondering which Sega IPs made the most impact on the general public.

I tried to make a tier list of popularity of each franchise at its height but I'm having trouble. You've got some franchises that were only popular in one territory and not another, others that were popular at the time but not anymore, some that were before my time (Zaxxon) etc etc.

Here is the latest version, updated after 3 pages of responses

https://i.ibb.co/Zg5WM6S/latest.png

Again this has nothing to do with quality of the games (or with sales actually, as older games are going to sell less than newer ones) just how popular they were in context of the time, like were mainstream gamers familiar with these ips or just the enthusiasts?

I feel like outside of Sonic, Sega were never as huge as they were in the late 80s arcades.

Then the "popular" section is stuff that mainstream normies knew about.

Then enthusiasts.

Sakura Wars is a pain because it was only popular in Japan so its hard for me to gauge, Altered Beast is a pain as I wonder if anyone would've really known about it if it hadn't been a pack-in. I feel like Alex Kidd and Golden Axe may have been much more popular in Europe :confused:

I remember games like Nights being publicised quite a bit but people not being that interested in it?

Any thoughts?

Yakuza would be near the top in terms of success. More popular than most of their old IPs ever were. Shenmue isn't popular at all, it never was. It's a dismal failure. It has a very small yet vocal fanbase but it doesn't sell. 1 and 2 sales let SEGA down and Shenmue III sales were dismal. The series is a complete failure and only kept alive by the sheer willpower of it's small but very passionate fanbase. After III tho I think a chunk of that fanbase has left. III is so bad.

I also imagine SEGA's total war series on PC does pretty well.

Popular IMO is about sales or how well an IP is known.

In general, we do this through the measure ''million units'' Sega Saturn only had 3 franchises to reach the figure of 1 million, VF2 being the only one to reach close to 2M
On Dreamcast again we have few games to reach or exceed the 1 million units sold, Sonic Adventures 1 is the most popular with 2.4 Million and in the Genesis era we have again few games to surpass the 1 million barrier but Sonic 2 did this with mastery reached 6 million, in modern Sega the numbers are much better Sonic and Mario Olympics managed to surpass 6 million other Sonic games such as Sonic Generations managed to sell more than Sonic Adventures

The big point actually is in other franchises besides Sonic and for the first time Sega has other names surpassing the 2 million mark and that's very good.

There is a theory created by youtuber Sega Lord X which I also agree with, read here I think it will expand your view about franchises and Sega.


https://www.sega-16.com/forum/showth...50M-units-sold

I wouldn't be so harsh on Shenmue but I can see where you're coming from. I guess it just always felt to me that average gamers kind of knew Shenmue and talked about it, but I guess the same could be said of something like Nights, which I put in a lower bracket.

In regards to sales, as mentioned I don't think they are useful. Gaming got much cheaper and more widespread over the years so any ranking based solely on sales is simply going to be in chronological order with the newest games at the top and oldest at the bottom.

I might comment a bit more tomorrow, its quite late here and I need sleep. :)

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Originally Posted by Leynos

Yakuza would be near the top in terms of success. More popular than most of their old IPs ever were. Shenmue isn't popular at all, it never was. It's a dismal failure. .

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The 1st Shenmue sold over a million copies, way better than most of SEGA so-called popular Mega Drive games and better than most of the early Yakuza games.
Shenmue's main issue was its sequel was a flop and it didn't sell the DC like SEGA hoped it would

I had another look into Yakuza and honestly it doesn't seem that big, in fact it looks like the first Shenmue may have outsold Yakuza releases for most of the franchise's lifespan even though it came out earlier and was released on a system that only had ~10 million sales.

Yakuza does however seem to be more popular during the last few years than Shenmue ever was at its height but Sega still seem to refer to it as a niche series

https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/the-yakuz...ked-14m-sales/

Games like Outrun and Afterburner were not just titles that sold well, those games were some of the most popular games of their time. It seems like Outrun was the highest grossing arcade game of 1987 in both Japan and North America, and I wouldn't be surprised if Britain was the same. Outrun was still in the top 10 highest grossing arcade games in Japan as late as 1990! Also, it seems as though even the terrible, frankly unplayable home computer ports of Out Run sold well over half a million in Britain alone!

Afterburner was the highest earning arcade game in Japan in 1988, and seems to have done well everywhere else as well. Its also another one of those games where the home computer versions are all over the place in the UK.

Virtua Fighter I think was pretty successful in the arcade in the west, but in Japan it was a phenomenon, the highest grossing arcade game on 1994 and apparently remains one of the highest grossing arcade games there of all time. Virtua Fighter 2 was the highest grossing arcade game of 1995, and 1996 and the Saturn version sold a few million as well.

Golden Axe is a difficult one, honestly its there just because I have the feeling that it was somewhat of a system seller, in Britain at least. I remember seeing the console versions of that game get into the multi-platform charts here, which was a rare occurrence at the time as most people owned computers.

That's just my point newguy. Shenmue didn't sell that bad at all, it was the sequel that did the damage. I'm sure Outrun still holds the record for SEGA's most popular selling non-Jamma coin up and I'm also sure Virtua Fighter 4 holds the record for SEGA Japan most revenue generating coin up and was on its own responsible for SEGA at last being able to post a profit in 2002

@Team Andromeda Yeah I'm quite confident about Out Run and Virtua Fighter (if anything those series have more chance of rising to Sonic's tier than being displaced) and I agree Shenmue shouldn't go down after all. I kind of feel like Saturn and Dreamcast game sales might be fair to compare as well as the two systems sold similar amounts and their games were sold at similar prices IIRC (and inflation was minimal).

Sakura Wars I need to drop though, the Japanese sales are available and whilst noticeably higher than Nights its nowhere near enough to offset it not being released in the west. Whilst successful it doesn't seem like it was a blockbuster there really.

I was unsure of putting Panzer Dragoon where it is but after seeing the Japanese sales are much lower than I thought they would be I'm a little more confident there as well.

The Yakuza series is very popular in Japan. As in, most regular people are familiar with it, which is more than can be said for nearly all of the titles on that chart. It's essentially Sega's version of Koei Tecmo's Dynasty Warriors series - a ton of releases and spinoffs and high sales.

The Yakuza lifetime sales numbers might be low relative to other huge Western series, but what other Sega-developed series aside from Sonic beats 14 million copies sold?? And most of that in Japan, where the industry has been heavily in decline.

By the way, that article on Yakuza is just saying it's niche in the West. It's as mainstream as can be in Japan. Anything with Kimutaku in it is mainstream (referring to Judgment, which is just Yakuza under a different name).

To be on the market you need relevance, even during the Genesis era Sega only managed to land Sonic as a viable first party franchise, Sonic was packaged with console, doesn't count, Sonic 2 sold nearly 7 million and the combination Sonic 3 and Knucles sold 4 million, so Sega created a phenomenon who basically carried the Mega Drive on his back.

Aside from Sonic, the classic Sega managed in 20 years to go over 1 million in just the following games: Altered Beast (bundled) 1.4M Virtua Fighter 2 1.7M ironically sold better than later VFs, Crazy Taxi 1 only 1 is Dreamcast's best selling non-Sonic but also sold equally well on Ps2, adding up to 3.2M (but it's a shallow game and sequels were more of the same, didn't repeat the feat) 2k games all passed 1M (but Sega sold it to Take Two) and shenmue 1 which sold a little more than 1M but its failure is known, it only became famous due to its embedded graphics technology and for being a game tied to the late Dreamcast.


After Dreamcast (now third party, theoretically with giant base) only Yakuza managed to stand out as a non-Sonic hit with 1.7M.

In the xbox 360/PS3 generation they managed to get away with buying the PC franchises Total War, Company of Heroes and Football Manager, but again they had to cling to Sonic. but from own franchises only Bayonetta and Alien Isolation, the latter being a well-selling game with 2M (the problem is that several systems were released selling little in each). On the previous PS4/xone generation, the Persona game exploded in sales.

In summary, Sega's successful non-Sonic franchises are Yakuza with theoretical potential up to 3M, Bayonetta with the same theoretical potential, Alien Isolation with potential up to 3M Persona with theoretical potential of 5M.

this is SEGA

to get those numbers Sega had to do a lot of testing and a lot of franchises were created and buried along the way, honestly I don't know if that's enough but they're similar numbers to the original xbox before launching the xbox 360 so this is pretty significant .

Just saw this news :

https://twinfinite.net/2021/11/yakuz...ls-more-games/

Out Run was the #1 selling arcade machine globally of its time.

The most popular Yakuza games in Japan, Yakuza 1 and Yakuza 2 however were never among the highest selling PS2 games globally, they were not even the highest selling PS2 games in Japan (they're not even top 30), and outside of Japan they sold quite low numbers. These games are really not comparable in popularity, one was a mega global blockbuster and the other a hit game in one country. Seemingly as Yakuza gained in popularity in the west it waned in Japan.

You do have a point about lifetime sales though, I guess Yakuza could be said to be one of Sega's most successful franchises, as its sold respectable numbers for 15 years now across a ton of releases.

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Originally Posted by SegaAMD

To be on the market you need relevance, even during the Genesis era Sega only managed to land Sonic as a viable first party franchise, Sonic was packaged with console, doesn't count, Sonic 2 sold nearly 7 million and the combination Sonic 3 and Knucles sold 4 million, so Sega created a phenomenon who basically carried the Mega Drive on his back.

Aside from Sonic, the classic Sega managed in 20 years to go over 1 million in just the following games: Altered Beast (bundled) 1.4M Virtua Fighter 2 1.7M ironically sold better than later VFs, Crazy Taxi 1 only 1 is Dreamcast's best selling non-Sonic but also sold equally well on Ps2, adding up to 3.2M (but it's a shallow game and sequels were more of the same, didn't repeat the feat) 2k games all passed 1M (but Sega sold it to Take Two) and shenmue 1 which sold a little more than 1M but its failure is known, it only became famous due to its embedded graphics technology and for being a game tied to the late Dreamcast.

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There are no official numbers for Mega Drive software sales, what you have here is simply snippets of sales info that people managed to scrape together from old newspaper and magazine sources they found.

We're also not talking about Mega Drive anyway, we're talking about Sega's franchises, and as I already mentioned the ZX Spectrum version of Out Run sold hundred's of thousands of copies just in Britain alone. Unless the game was just waay more popular in Britain than mainland Europe, then the terrible computer versions of Out Run likely sold over a million in western Europe (most of which would be the Commodore 64 version).

The computer versions of Shinobi and Golden Axe are also likely to be a source of hundreds of thousands of sales in Europe. The guy from Virgin/Mastertronic (which sold the computer versions of both games) stated

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Originally Posted by Anthony Guter

"Full price games such as Golden Axe and Supremacy were achieving significant results and making the budget business seem irrelevant"

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Actually, I think Sega were likely always more successful and had more impact in the arcades than the home anyway, I was just looking at Daytona and its also claimed as being one of the most successful arcade games of all time. Which doesn't surprise me actually as I still occasionally see it in arcade parlours around here over 20 years after it came out!

Its possible the top should be Sonic, then the next tier Sega's arcade games of the 80s and 90s, then Mega Drive games, then non-arcade port Saturn games and lessor known but loved Mega Drive stuff :confused:

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Originally Posted by Gryson

The Yakuza lifetime sales numbers might be low relative to other huge Western series.

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The 1st two games didn't sell in huge numbers even in Japan I think both didn't even break 300,000 for their 1st week sales when the Japanese market was big and the PS2 was selling like hotcakes. But they sold well enough to make a profit and to SEGA's credit, they stood with the series and grew the IP. I'm sad that SEGA didn't stick with Binary Domain thought, that was brilliant new IP and we really needed a sequel

so I'm inclined to believe that you want to create or recreate in a way incompatible with reality the idea that Sega games were more famous than they actually were, the biggest proof that they were not successful is that Sega abandoned them.

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Originally Posted by SegaAMD

so I'm inclined to believe that you want to create or recreate in a way incompatible with reality the idea that Sega games were more famous than they actually were, the biggest proof that they were not successful is that Sega abandoned them.

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This is not an argument.

Sega all but abandoned Sonic during the Saturn era in favour of Nights, is that proof that Sonic was not successful?

Sega abandoned Streets of Rage, then the latest one just sold 2.5 million :?

All the info I've been mentioning about Sega's arcade games is freely available.

The Yakuza series is much bigger than you guys are giving it credit for. Sega Sammy reported that its sales have surpassed 17 million in their stock holders report earlier this year. I can't read Japanese, but here's a link to the report in case anyone can.

https://www.segasammy.co.jp/japanese...21_web_all.pdf

What is the highest selling Yakuza game? have any of them even outsold Streets of Rage 4?

Yakuza is a local game, I believe the best-selling game is the first on PS2 at 1.7M The rest is under 1 million, but as I said they are local games, I believe that no non-Sonic game alone has reached above 2, 5 M Alien siolation is the closest to that 2M and Persona 5 3.2M is the best selling non-Sonic.

Japanese sales aren't a problem, Famitsu have provided a breakdown of that region's sales -

Attachment 16199 Attachment 16200Attachment 16200

Its the western sales I'm wondering about

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Originally Posted by Thenewguy

I feel like outside of Sonic, Sega were never as huge as they were in the late 80s arcades.

Then the "popular" section is stuff that mainstream normies knew about.

Then enthusiasts.

Sakura Wars is a pain because it was only popular in Japan so its hard for me to gauge, Altered Beast is a pain as I wonder if anyone would've really known about it if it hadn't been a pack-in. I feel like Alex Kidd and Golden Axe may have been much more popular in Europe :confused:

I remember games like Nights being publicised quite a bit but people not being that interested in it?

Any thoughts?

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Great idea for a topic discussion.
IMHO, it's next to impossible to make a universal list of SEGA popular franchises. In Japan alone, SEGA had a complete different footprint.

Just for fun, if I make a Japanese list of SEGA franchises, Sonic would come as "Popular" or "Killer App" at best, it was not so big in Japan. On the other hand, Virtua Fighter and Sakura Taisen (Wars) would have a guaranted place as "Phenomenal". Sakura Wars was HUGE in the 90s and early 2000s, becoming a media franchise, with anime series, movies, stage shows, and its voice actors had celebrity status in Japan. Likewise, Virtua Fighter also had an anime series and other spin-offs released back then, and its arcade competition scene was the closest thing to what we call E-sports today.

Moreover, considering the sales numbers in the list shared by Thenewguy, things like Puyo Puyo/ Hatsune Miku/ J-League Pro Soccer would deserve at least the "Popular" spot, along with Phantasy Star and maybe Shining Force.

Yakuza is an interesting one, like some of you said, it's niche in the West but remarkably popular in Japan. However, I'm not sure it's at the same level of Sakura Wars as a media franchise. I'd rather rank it as a "Killer App".

For "Killer Apps", I agree with the Yu Suzuki arcades from the 80s. But Golden Axe killer app? no way! Popular franchises in the West from the Genesis/MD era such as SOR/ Golden Axe/ Shinobi would rank further down the list, in "Some Remember Fondly" or "Cult Classic" brackets.
As much as I love those franchises and even considering the market was smaller back then, according to some estimates, except for SOR2 those games were hardly the top MD best sellers. If we take the Japanese MD mini library as a base, one can assume the games that sold well in Japan were mostly puzzle games, RPGs, and shooters, with probably Sonic and Street Fighter also showing strong sales.

*Deleted

Sorry for the double-post, looks like my previuos message went for moderation approval

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

That's just my point newguy. Shenmue didn't sell that bad at all, it was the sequel that did the damage. I'm sure Outrun still holds the record for SEGA's most popular selling non-Jamma coin up and I'm also sure Virtua Fighter 4 holds the record for SEGA Japan most revenue generating coin up and was on its own responsible for SEGA at last being able to post a profit in 2002

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Daytona USA is Sega's highest grossing arcade game ever.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

Daytona USA is Sega's highest grossing arcade game ever.

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I believe Outrun is the Coin Up that sold the most units ever in SEGA's history, read that doesn't mean it made the most money. I said that for SEGA Japan, VF4 was the coin up that SEGA Japan reported brought in the most revenue out of any coin up it had released at that stage, but that was only for Japan has I'm sure VF4 was never brought to western Arcades officially. On a worldwide bias, Daytona may hold the record for the most revenue and I wouldn't disagree with that. Years after the game was released, people were still playing the game in the Arcades where as for the likes Ourtun Arcades and people moved on the likes of PowerDrift and AB II Ect

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Originally Posted by profholt82

The Yakuza series is much bigger than you guys are giving it credit for. Sega Sammy reported that its sales have surpassed 17 million in their stock holders report earlier this year. I can't read Japanese, but here's a link to the report in case anyone can.

https://www.segasammy.co.jp/japanese...21_web_all.pdf

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No one is doubting that. Back in the day, you had Magic Box giving us Japanese sales charts but the early Yakuza games didn't sell in huge numbers, more so for their 1st week sales and Shenmue sales sold better than either Yakuza 1, 2 and I'm sure 3 Yakuza clearly sold enough to make a profit and SEGA has been able to grow the IP over the years , unlike Shenmue which flopped with the sequel, but I put a lot of the blame of that on SEGA, with them making the bad deal with MS and not bringing the game to the DC in the USA.

In simple terms, SEGA hasn't got that many IP that sells millions of units for each title, other than the likes of Sonic, it was the case when SEGA was at its height too even on the MD. I think SEGA had very few internally developed IP's that were able to break a million sales even on its best selling console the MD.

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

I believe Outrun is the Coin Up that sold the most units ever in SEGA's history, read that doesn't mean it made the most money. I said that for SEGA Japan, VF4 was the coin up that SEGA Japan reported brought in the most revenue out of any coin up it had released at that stage, but that was only for Japan has I'm sure VF4 was never brought to western Arcades officially. On a worldwide bias, Daytona may hold the record for the most revenue and I wouldn't disagree with that. Years after the game was released, people were still playing the game in the Arcades where as for the likes Ourtun Arcades and people moved on the likes of PowerDrift and AB II Ect

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It (Outrun) only sold about 20,000 units. You can't really find a definitive number, because everyone points to the golden age of arcades for gross revenue created by the massive amount of quarters poured into those machines. I've seen some record the sales of the Daytona USA cabinets at @ 159,000 units.

https://ausretrogamer.com/highest-gr...s-of-all-time/

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Originally Posted by ausretrogamer

The 1990s started with us hammering coins into Atari’s Pit-Fighter, Capcom’s Final Fight and Street Fighter II. However, it was Sega’s Daytona USA that emptied our piggy bank of coins – we just could not get enough of it.

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https://zims-en.kiwix.campusafrica.g...A_(video_game)

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Daytona USA was highly popular in arcades, and the twin cabinet was one of three 1995 recipients of the American Amusement Machine Association's Diamond Awards, which are based strictly on sales achievements. In a 2002 report, Sega reported it to be one of the most successful arcade games of all time

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Gamevet SEGA Japan said themself that Outrun sold all of it's run of 30,000 units. I'm sure no other SEGA coin up as come close to that.

And yet SEGA calls Daytona USA one of the highest grossing arcade games ever. Daytona absolutely sold over 30,000 units. The machine was still prevalent in arcades and amusement centers a decade after it came out. Not even Outrun can claim that.

@Gamevet Agreed, I actually moved Daytona into the second bracket last night but what you've been saying cements what I was thinking. I also moved Hang On into the second bracket it seems to have been a very popular game at the time, one of Sega's first big arcade hits.

@likeG I was trying to stick with franchises and characters developed by Sega so I left out some of those series even though you are quite right in that they are some of the biggest sellers. The J League Pro Soccer you mention, is this Sega Worldwide Soccer on the Saturn? I could add that series.

The problem with Sakura Wars is that it was never really released outside of Japan, and the Japanese sales aren't high enough to offset that IMO.
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In regards to Yakuza :D I have now gone through as much info as I can find, including sales estimates for every game and it backs up what I was thinking entirely, it is definitely in the correct bracket.

The most popular game in the series was Yakuza 0 which sold 2 million odd globally, and this was on two consoles that ended up with a combined potential customer base of well over 100 million people to sell to, its not one of the biggest series' of its time. The rest of the games hover around the one million mark.

Yakuza games likely spent the whole of the PS2 generation being outsold by Super Monkey Ball (the later Yakuza 0 was more successful than any Monkey Ball though).

House of the Dead 2+3 Collection, and House of the Dead Overkill likely outsold all Yakuza games bar Yakuza 0. Then there's the arcade sales on top of that, House of the Dead 2 must have been a very respectable hit in the arcades, I saw it all over the place.

Even if we're just talking about home console sales Crazy Taxi 1 seems to have massively outsold any Yakuza game, and it was a respectable arcade hit on top of that IIRC. So at one stage Crazy Taxi was very popular with the general public, of course this waned drastically over time though.

Streets of Rage 4 sold on par with, or better than any Yakuza game, and this was after the franchise had been left dead for decades.

Also, for clarification I'm not saying Yakuza isn't more popular than any of the aforementioned series, I'm saying it is comparable, it can be at the top of its group, it needs to be as popular as the games in the bracket above to move up and they utterly dwarf it.

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I'm probably going to move Columns down a tier, I thought it was a pack-in with most Game Gear's but I think I was wrong

Alex Kidd can go down too I think. Sure he must be in a few million consoles but he was only ever really popular in Europe and Australia, and I don't think his other games really sold that well when not being given away with a console.

Sorry TeamAndromeda but I changed my mind about Shenmue :D its going down a tier, it seems like it sold similar amounts to Nights which was on a console with a similar sized userbase. All of this looking into Yakuza has shown that most of the more modern games in that bracket have had multiple entries that sold over a million, or have had one entry that sold way more than 1 million, or also have respectable arcade sales.

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I still have no clue what to do with Golden Axe :D

I mean, the arcade game must have been a sizeable hit right? Obviously not as high as Out Run and Afterburner, but likely more than Shinobi? I haven't been able to find any information on home sales at all :( I know it was in the British charts for a while, on Master System, Mega Drive and I think the computer game versions entered the charts as well :confused: It must have been among the most popular MD & SMS games? and the Amiga version was popular as well. Its a tough one without concrete figures, maybe I'll move it down.

I'll update the front page if I can

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Originally Posted by gamevet

And yet SEGA calls Daytona USA one of the highest grossing arcade games ever. Daytona absolutely sold over 30,000 units. The machine was still prevalent in arcades and amusement centers a decade after it came out. Not even Outrun can claim that.

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I would imagine with Daytona USA it was thanks to that it was being continually player, year's after it came out that generates more revenue in the Arcades SEGA owned to go along with the sales to independent Arcades too.

With Outrun people weren't playing it in the huge numbers years after it came out. So SEGA just made its main money on actual sales when it launched.

I was amazed to learn when SEGA Japan said it was. I actually thought After Burner 2 was bigger. That was in every Arcade going at the time or so it seemed

honestly you are classifying, no real expression franchises as being big killer apps which is not true and unfortunately this will feed a nostalgic and childish vision of what would come to be SEGA.

We must understand that SEGA produced many games for two reasons, first due to Nintendo's monopoly and second due to Sega's own attempt to create a hit, in the Genesis era she managed it masterfully with Sonic but later she became dependent on Sonic and when Sega Saturn was released amidst several problems the franchise wanted a rest Sonic 3 sold 1/6 of Sonic 2 and Knucles Chaotix finished showing that the franchise was saturated, without other expressive games Sega entered the unarmed fifth generation of games and this was the main reason the company was unable to resist.

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

No one is doubting that. Back in the day, you had Magic Box giving us Japanese sales charts but the early Yakuza games didn't sell in huge numbers, more so for their 1st week sales and Shenmue sales sold better than either Yakuza 1, 2 and I'm sure 3 Yakuza clearly sold enough to make a profit and SEGA has been able to grow the IP over the years , unlike Shenmue which flopped with the sequel.

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my English is not the best but if somehow you are suggesting that Shenmue outsold Yakuza 1 forget it you are wrong, Yakuza's first game clearly sold almost twice as much as shenmue paving the way for the new franchise.

Shenmue has always been criticized by non-Sega fans , Yakuza never had the same rejection, in fact the rejection for Yakuza comes from a collective rejection against SEGA itself, informally created after 2001, all the media, the non-fans, then the Sega haters youtubers demonized Sega games after Dreamcast . Things only changed after Bayonetta and still people refer to the game as being Platinum Games, I was happy that this negativity temporarily is gone.

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Originally Posted by Leynos

Shenmue isn't popular at all, it never was. It's a dismal failure. It has a very small yet vocal fanbase but it doesn't sell. 1 and 2 sales let SEGA down and Shenmue III sales were dismal. The series is a complete failure and only kept alive by the sheer willpower of it's small but very passionate fanbase. After III tho I think a chunk of that fanbase has left. III is so bad.

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Nah, Shenmue used to be plenty popular (there's a reason they wanted to put it on the Xbox OG). But you have to consider the exorbitant development costs, and that it was released on two low-selling consoles (and not in all regions). It wasn't popular enough to make back the development cost, and because it wasn't an explosive hit, Sega quietly shitcanned the series and gave it no further mention, marketing, re-release, nothing. Because of that the third game ended up being their equivalent of Duke Nukem Forever.

If they didn't axe the series and lock out Suzuki from making games, Shenmue would be basically what Yakuza is today.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

And yet SEGA calls Daytona USA one of the highest grossing arcade games ever. Daytona absolutely sold over 30,000 units. The machine was still prevalent in arcades and amusement centers a decade after it came out. Not even Outrun can claim that.

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Sega today quotes its history mainly from Wikipedia.
As for Outrun and Daytona, every medium sized arcade I visited in the 90s had an Outrun cab (the sit down car version), and I've seen Daytona as late as the mid-2000s. Outrun was absolutely everywhere. Although back in the 90s I've seen Cruis'n USA and World more often than Daytona, it was probably cheaper for operators and it still floored everyone who played it.

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Originally Posted by zyrobs

If they didn't axe the series and lock out Suzuki from making games, Shenmue would be basically what Yakuza is today.

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No way.

by the way did you know that most of the original Tekken creators came from the Virtua Fighter project, Tekken is the most successful 3d fighting game in gaming history and was only recently surpassed by Mortal Kombat 11

tekken 3 is the fifth best-selling game on the PS1 Tekken 5 is the eighth best-selling game on the PS2 (a console with over 4000 games)

Shenmue 3 was made by the same creator, launching for a virtually infinite base on PC, Playstation and xbox but it sold less than the original shenmue 1, failure is the word here.

we need to put the finger in the wound, even to desacralize Kenji Kanno, Toshihiro Nagoshi and someone from Sonic Team other than Yuji Naka are the only producers with commercial capacity within CSK-SEGA that is the truth.

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Originally Posted by zyrobs

Sega today quotes its history mainly from Wikipedia.
As for Outrun and Daytona, every medium sized arcade I visited in the 90s had an Outrun cab (the sit down car version), and I've seen Daytona as late as the mid-2000s. Outrun was absolutely everywhere. Although back in the 90s I've seen Cruis'n USA and World more often than Daytona, it was probably cheaper for operators and it still floored everyone who played it.

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Every large Amusement center carried at least a 4 player Daytona USA cabinet setup. Each of those deluxe cabinets were around @ $20,000 each. I know that every Dave and Busters in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area had that 4 player setup and it stayed there for pretty much a decade. We had Sega's Game Works in Grapevine Texas and you know what they didn't have there? They didn't have a single Outrun cabinet, but they sure as hell had a 4 player Daytona setup, along with an 8 player Indy 500 setup. All of the Outrun cabs you saw, were built and sold within a few years of the late 80s, while Daytona cabinets were being built and bought well into the end of the century.

I haven't seen a Outrun cabinet since the early 90's. I might have seen one at The National Videogame Museum, but I don't recall.

Wikipedia doesn't say jack shit about sales for Daytona USA, btw!

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Originally Posted by SegaAMD

my English is not the best but if somehow you are suggesting that Shenmue outsold Yakuza 1 forget it you are wrong, Yakuza's first game clearly sold almost twice as much as shenmue paving the way for the new franchise.

Shenmue has always been criticized by non-Sega fans , Yakuza never had the same rejection, in fact the rejection for Yakuza comes from a collective rejection against SEGA itself, informally created after 2001, all the media, the non-fans, then the Sega haters youtubers demonized Sega games after Dreamcast . Things only changed after Bayonetta and still people refer to the game as being Platinum Games, I was happy that this negativity temporarily is gone.

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Yakuza on its 1st release didn't break 300,000 sales in the Japanese charts. Yakuza 2 did better but even then didn't break 500,000 on its initial release. Yakuza 2 would sell a lot more on its budget release too

http://www.the-magicbox.com/Chart-BestSell2005.shtml

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Originally Posted by gamevet

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I haven't seen a Outrun cabinet since the early 90's.

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That's the difference. Daytona USA was still being played long after it was released whereas OutRun while being a total smash, didn't have the same life in the Arcades. Like I said I would have said myself that Daytona USA and even AfterBurner 2 would have sold better. But the 30,000 figure was 1st told spoke of in Saturn Mag Arcade special in 96 and then in 2011 when SEGA Japan was giving various interviews and whatnot with Famitsu and doing Tweets; The then head of SEGA's Arcade division said that Outrun with 30,000 was SEGA best ever selling Coin Up around the world.

I remember being amazed when I read the Tweet

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Originally Posted by Thenewguy

Sorry TeamAndromeda but I changed my mind about Shenmue :D its going down a tier, it seems like it sold similar amounts to Nights which was on a console with a similar sized userbase. All of this looking into Yakuza has shown that most of the more modern games in that bracket have had multiple entries that sold over a million, or have had one entry that sold way more than 1 million, or also have respectable arcade sales.

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Please, I'm not a Shenmue fan. I found the 1st game boring and unfinished (Loved the sequel mind) I'm simply saying it sold way better than Yakuza 1, 2 and even 3. It was the sales of the sequel that really killed the IP and the fact that like with NiGHTS. Shenmue never sold the hardware like SEGA hoped it would.

I don't do sales or go on what's popular per say. My fav SEGA games are the Panzer Dragoon series, REZ and the Jet Set Radio series

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

Yakuza on its 1st release didn't break 300,000 sales in the Japanese charts. Yakuza 2 did better but even then didn't break 500,000 on its initial release. Yakuza 2 would sell a lot more on its budget release too

http://www.the-magicbox.com/Chart-BestSell2005.shtml



That's the difference. Daytona USA was still being played long after it was released whereas OutRun while being a total smash, didn't have the same life in the Arcades. Like I said I would have said myself that Daytona USA and even AfterBurner 2 would have sold better. But the 30,000 figure was 1st told spoke of in Saturn Mag Arcade special in 96 and then in 2011 when SEGA Japan was giving various interviews and whatnot with Famitsu and doing Tweets; The then head of SEGA's Arcade division said that Outrun with 30,000 was SEGA best ever selling Coin Up around the world.

I remember being amazed when I read the Tweet



Please, I'm not a Shenmue fan. I found the 1st game boring and unfinished (Loved the sequel mind) I'm simply saying it sold way better than Yakuza 1, 2 and even 3. It was the sales of the sequel that really killed the IP and the fact that like with NiGHTS. Shenmue never sold the hardware like SEGA hoped it would.

I don't do sales or go on what's popular per say. My fav SEGA games are the Panzer Dragoon series, REZ and the Jet Set Radio series

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yakuza 1 was a global game like shenmue and sold on PS2 1.7M, Yakuza 0 again a global game sold 2M while the other yakuza are local games ,basically restricted to Japan so 500k is considered an expressive number, iif I'm not mistaken games that reach that figure earn a platinum seal or something.

Shenmue may have sold more in Japan than Yakuza in the first few weeks but the final numbers show which game stood out more, it's worth remembering that Shenmue had a much larger marketing budget and was released in 1999 in Japan and had a long life, truth is that the game is simply not good enough for the general public, closed its cycle on the Dreamcast above 1M and below 1.1M.

it's a good game for us fans but it doesn't attract people outside this niche, imagine a game with little fantasy where the main character needs to work, respect schedules ect you have to be a misunderstood genius to at least think that a game like this would have potential commercial, what I find interesting is that Sega's directors bought the idea, giving rise to a game that basically killed SEGA there is no other game in history that has flopped so much and generated so much damage. . honestly I feel strange to see that some fans want Sega to talk about the franchise again, not on the contrary SEGA is absolutely right, this game needs to be forgotten. IMO

About arcades it is worth remembering that Sega supposedly sold 130k Model 2 and 70k Model 3 board, Sega sold 40k of Virtua Fighter 2 and 30k of virtua fighter 3 the biggest profit ever measured with arcades came from the Model 2 board. So I believe it's impossible for Daytona usa/Outrun to have sold more units although nothing prevents it from being the most played game within Sega's own old arcade centers.

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Originally Posted by SegaAMD

yakuza 1 was a global game like Shenmue and sold on PS2 1.7M

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What is your source? This is massively higher than any figure I've run into

Look at this -

https://www.ign.com/articles/2007/12...kuza-3-premier

At the launch of Yakuza 3 on PS3 it was stated that the entire combined sales of the franchise up to that point was 1.7 million.

and from the sales data from Japan, we can extrapolate that the PS2 Yakuza games were not popular outside of Japan at all, because the Japanese sales total that on their own. To make sure there wasn't a mistake I looked for estimations for western sales of Yakuza 1 and Yakuza 2, the estimations say that they only sold in the tens of thousands in the US and Europe, they were not even small hits here.

Which is not surprising as everything I saw in the last week said that Yakuza 0 on the PS3/PS4 was the first Yakuza game that was popular in the west and is directly responsible for the series taking off globally.

https://www.usgamer.net/articles/str...ional-releases

"The Yakuza series has always been a bit of a niche product in North America, especially during the PS2 and PS3 era. While interest in the series existed, they never translated to blockbuster sales. In recent years starting with Yakuza 0 however, sales have picked up and games like Yakuza Kiwami, Yakuza Kiwami 2, and Yakuza 6 are getting released outside of Japan."

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Originally Posted by SegaAMD

yakuza 1 was a global game like shenmue and sold on PS2 1.7M, Yakuza 0 again a global game sold 2M while the other yakuza are local games ,basically restricted to Japan so 500k is considered an expressive number, iif I'm not mistaken games that reach that figure earn a platinum seal or something.

Shenmue may have sold more in Japan than Yakuza in the first few weeks but the final numbers show which game stood out more, it's worth remembering that Shenmue had a much larger marketing budget and was released in 1999 in Japan and had a long life, truth is that the game is simply not good enough for the general public, closed its cycle on the Dreamcast above 1M and below 1.1M.

it's a good game for us fans but it doesn't attract people outside this niche, imagine a game with little fantasy where the main character needs to work, respect schedules ect you have to be a misunderstood genius to at least think that a game like this would have potential commercial, what I find interesting is that Sega's directors bought the idea, giving rise to a game that basically killed SEGA there is no other game in history that has flopped so much and generated so much damage. . honestly I feel strange to see that some fans want Sega to talk about the franchise again, not on the contrary SEGA is absolutely right, this game needs to be forgotten. IMO

About arcades it is worth remembering that Sega supposedly sold 130k Model 2 and 70k Model 3 board, Sega sold 40k of Virtua

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You're just making up figs. Shennue actually sold the best in the USA, where as Yakua sales in the USA were disappointing. That's to overlook I doubt Japan had more than 2000 Arcades at it's height and you list VF as selling 40,000 units. And I'm talking Arcades able to afford non Jamma custom coin ups

Model 3 board lead to SEGA AM/divsions posting their 1st ever loss, since the board was simply so expensive for Arcade operators and why SEGA looked to consumer Hardware to power it's next generation of Arcade boards

You'll be lucky if SEGA sold more 25,000 VF3 boards in Japan