Looking at Rockman sales over the years

[thenekomancer]

My pal Auto led me to a website where someone has chronicled the weekly Famitsu sales numbers since 1996. It lists the top 100 games from 96-98, the top 300 games from 99-03, the top 500 games from 04-08, and the top 1000 games from 08-10. Also, starting in 06 the Media Create numbers are available too.

I decided to go through and list all the

Comments

[kyouryuu]

Well, I think EXE proper is explained by the leap from the GBA to the DS.

Inevitably in any franchise with many sequels, you tap out your fan base at some point. People get tired of it and they move on and sales therefore decline. From the above numbers, it's pretty clear that EXE 4 was the pinnacle of the series at nearly a million units sold in Japan alone, and the two sequels after that were progressively worse. Compare to the games before EXE 4, where there was a consistent growth in sales between sequels.

So Capcom was faced with two dilemmas:
1. A series in decline. Still performing decently in sales, but definitely not what it once was.
2. A need to migrate to the DS, which would likely involve writing an updated game engine and place higher expectations on artwork and style.

One consistent aspect of Capcom's M.O. is to write engines that can be reused over the life of the target system. EXE's tech was used for 6 entire games, much like the Mega Man engine on the NES (to say nothing of non-Mega Man games that used it). They generally don't appear to write new tech for each new game. So, if they were to create new tech for a DS EXE game, they would want to bank on getting 2-3 more sequels out of it. And obviously, if the series is already in decline, that might not make financial sense.

So here comes Ryuusei to re-energize and reinvigorate the franchise.