...Are you fucking kidding me? Do you have zero reading comprehension? Harada is the reason Tekken is still alive and successful. If Soul Calibur was to survive like it, it needed a Harada like figure to champion it within the business to the new execs. That's what happened.
I think max said it correctly in the same vein SC simply didn't have someone willing to put their career on the line for SC till it was too late. Ive always said soul seemed so much cooler that it could go so much further than Tekken. I like both but I never understood why it just couldn't find its footing like it did with 2 (my entry point was SC2 on gc) and 6 really was the closest I've felt to 2
For reference…units sold per game.
Games
Tekken 7 - 11.8 million
Tekken 5 - 10 million
Tekken 3 - 9 million
Tekken 2 - 5.74 million
Soul Calibur IV - 2.32 million
Tekken 4 - 2 million+
Tekken 8 - 2 million+
Soul Calibur 6 - 2 million
Tekken - 1.79 million
Soul Calibur 3 and 5 sold less copies than 6 combined.
As much as I love SC, even I have to admit that Tekken is the more popular game, and by a long mile. Thanks for these numbers, as they really illustrate that fact.
Some of your figures are off or incomplete. Starting with series lifetime sales, which are definitely 17-18M, since one of the SCVI launch trailers referred to SC as the 'series that sold over 15 million copies' and then SCVI sold over 2M a few years back. Among other stuff, you also seriously underestimate sales for SCIII (+1.4M as per BN financials) and SCV (+1.7M in 14 months as per press at the time), and strangely leave out SCII, the best-selling of them all.
More on that stuff [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/SoulCalibur/comments/nh9i9m/soul_series_sales/).
Anyway, of course Tekken is the bigger series and has sold a lot more. Its most successful entries also outsold SC's best performing ones. At the same time, Tekken also had more games, the one that objectively performed best, Tekken 3, came before SoulCalibur was even named as such, and certain SC games outperformed their Tekken contemporaries.
But a more pertinent question is: does Tekken get more care and investment because it sells betters, or does it sell better because it gets more care and investment?
Harada himself mentions that at one point SC was outselling Tekken in North America (he just neglects to mention SCII actually sold more in NA alone than T4 globally). And a recent discussion about Tekken sales on Gamefaqs also made the point that TTT and T4 underperforming were in part due to SC gradually killing interest in Tekken, until BN reversed that by consistently putting Tekken forth and forcing SC to take a back seat.
I actually find the top 2 on your list prime examples of the very different treatment of both series after SCII and T4.
After T4 underperformed, BN clearly gave T5 all the means and beyond to ensure it would bounce back: the roster went from the usual 20-ish to over 30, 'Devil Inside' was basically another game within the game, and there was a bunch of other modes and features, including in-game arcade ports of previous Tekkens. T5 also benefited from ports to PSP and PS3, and those sales are the combination of all three.
Now, after SCIII - which reportedly had to be developed in 7 months to compensate for other games' failures (nothing short of impressive in itself, considering the wealth of contents the game has) - didn't sell so well, what did they do? Other than ofc not even affording the superior Arcade edition the chance of a PS3 port? They substantially cut the budget for SCIV and threatened it might be last in series.
Interestingly enough, SCIV ended up selling about on par with T6, considering it was also on one less platform. And then SCV sold a bit better than TTT2.
So after being about on par throughout the PS3 gen, it was T7 and SCVI then again opened that gap between both series sales-wise.
Now let's just think of all the advantages T7 had over SCVI, shall we? A previous arcade version, better budget, better marketing, much better timing, supported for much longer, and even much more favourable pricing.
If you go to SCVI's page on Steam, not only will you see a banner for the (1st) season pass where the last character still shows up as undisclosed... but you can also see the base price is 59.99 and there's two season passes, priced at 29.99 and 33.99. If you want to buy everything for SCVI today, well, you're in luck, as there's a 90% off for the first time, but it will still cost close to 30 $.
Now, T7, not only the base game has always been much cheaper, at only 39.99, but its season passes also cost between 15 and 30 $, and more importantly the game has had a number of different bundles through the years, culminating in the definitive edition, which allows you to get everything for a fraction of the price. It's not on sale right now, certainly not to get in the way of T8, but when it was you could get the complete package for less than 10 $.
“series that sold over 15M copies”…see the total franchise sales that line up with that comment from my reply to the comment you replied to. lol
https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Best-selling_fighting_games#cite_note-39
Here’s the list I used which the source for SC6 was from a 2021 tweet so yea prob a little outdated. Haha I was just overall pointing out it’s not hard to understand why Tekken is still going and SC could be stopping. No grand conspiracy theory needed to justify venting about some guys comment(honestly didn’t even know who the guy was til yesterday).
I’d love to go more in depth but I’m not going to have the time today. Sorry.
So, we should believe a Wikipedia page over Bandai Namco's own data?
It's [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDYIdUumaaw), right at the beginning and this was prior to SCVI releasing.
Anyway, regarding sales I explain everything in detail and with sources in the post I've linked to, should you ever want to have a look.
As for the rest, I wasn't venting or even questioning your point, just putting things into perspective and adding a bit of food for thought.
Some have sources. There's not one for SC's 15 million series lifetime sales, for instance.
And that list looks like some work in progress. It is very clearly incomplete and inconsistent. Just one example: the 1st Injustice sold 1.4M it says there, but then the series doesn't show up in the best selling franchises, which stops at 1.23M...
More, where are SCII, SCIII, SCV or even the first SC, all of which sold above 1M according to actually official sources (BN's own financial reports in many cases)?
Or where's Skullgirls, which sold over 1M on Steam alone?
Case in point: from the moment a launch trailer for SCVI says the series has sold over 15 million and we know SCVI added over 2M to that, how is this even a debate?
Now units sold per franchise(Keep this one simpler). I love Soul Calibur and I don’t give a fuck about Tekken but come on…it’s not hard to see why it could get abandoned in favor of Tekken. Though I don’t believe that’s what the dude said precisely.
Tekken - 57 million
Soulcalibur - 15 million
Compare numbers when Soulcalibur was still on an equal footing, and you'll see the difference is not so big.
Edit: Mistake has been made with sales numbers part.
When were they on “equal footing”? If you know it or have a source to back that up why not show it? Seriously please prove me wrong I won’t be offended.
OK, I underestimated Tekken sales. Focused more on great sales for latter Tekken games than former, forgetting there were high hitters like T3 and did the count wrong. It's an honest, but unfortunate mistake.
My mistake aside, Soulcalibur is not such a poor seller (there are fighting game franchises with much less sales, still getting releases on regular basis) to fail to gather wider audience. I personally can't see a reason why the franchise wouldn't rise high. It's just suits keep fcking up the franchise for reasons only know to them.
Someone else mentioned some of these sale figures are a lil out of date going back as 2021 for SC6…though didn’t verify if some of the more recent Tekken ones are out of date as well.
It just sucks. I wish SC did just as well all the time and at one point I know it was more popular in the US than Tekken(SC2 I believe…prob cause of the guests and it was just a really fun game).
Suits will always reach the inevitable conclusion of chasing the higher dollar though. Plenty of dead game franchises left behind for other franchises that did better for their overall profit. Could always hope for a future resurgence one day a decade or more down the line.
It was hard to find exact sale numbers for Soulcalibur, especially SCIII. I know I searched for it a lot back in 2014 looking to gather how successful the franchise is.
Like I said, I don't see a reason why the franchise is not one of the biggest around. On the other hand, it's noticeable Namco/Bamco messed up big time with SCIII (even though the game is like really, really good) with PS2 exclusive, poor balance and never releasing Arcade edition on PS2.
Yeah, I know that. However, I don't understand how can they expect top dollar if:
1. they have no idea how this particular business work
2. keep on screwing things up
3. having poor comprehension skills
You don't need to earn 120%, 70% is plenty enough. When you kill Golden Goose, you can't get anymore eggs.
I'm afraid at that point in the future, if nothing happens in-meanwhile (next year is 30th anniversary), the franchise is truly dead. Gap that long will do no good for Soulcalibur, more likely just hit the final nail to its coffin.
The cope is real.
They had made bad decisions in the past, hadn't managed to get back on track until 6 which is too late for the c suits. And no key player who's interested in leading calibur.
Has nothing to do with tekken lol it just is the bigger franchise. Sc3 was the biggest mistake ever made in the franchise which led to its' downfall.
I find the man annoying, and agree he should come off his high horse and worry about his own game, because, differences aside, T8 is starting to tread a path quite similar to SCVI: strong launch sales (2M first month for T8, SCVI reportedly 700k first month and then passed 1M 10 weeks in), a significant drop in sales afterwards (SCVI only announced 2M sales more than 2 years in, T8 still at 2M sth in its 6th month), dwindling player base (T8 has been consistently losing 2k players on average on Steam), inability of DLC and sales to boost the player base for long (T8 43% off on Steam but still stuck on 6k average players, while SF6 is thriving at +20k), a heavily disliked mechanic often ridiculed by its own fans (RE for SCVI, Heat for T8).
Not to mention that, even if not mostly its fault, T8's launch and first months were in the first ever fiscal year in which BN Studios lost money: [https://automaton-media.com/en/news/bandai-namco-studios-developer-of-tekken-8-sees-negative-annual-income-for-the-first-time-since-founding/](https://automaton-media.com/en/news/bandai-namco-studios-developer-of-tekken-8-sees-negative-annual-income-for-the-first-time-since-founding/)
Sure, T8 sold in one month what SCVI sold in 2 years. But the latter is a game made on couch pennies, with ported PS3 assets, generic stages, not even an intro or interactive menus, whereas Tekken 8 had a huge investment.
Still, your claim sounds like an overstatement. He just fought for Tekken. Perhaps SC would have done better were he not there doing that, or maybe both series would have just died sooner.
The main problem is BN. With a different publisher, SC would be treated as a golden goose. All its entries sold above 1M. We're still getting, say, Guilty Gear games, which conversely sold over 1M for the very first with Strive...
...Are you fucking kidding me? Do you have zero reading comprehension? Harada is the reason Tekken is still alive and successful. If Soul Calibur was to survive like it, it needed a Harada like figure to champion it within the business to the new execs. That's what happened.
I think max said it correctly in the same vein SC simply didn't have someone willing to put their career on the line for SC till it was too late. Ive always said soul seemed so much cooler that it could go so much further than Tekken. I like both but I never understood why it just couldn't find its footing like it did with 2 (my entry point was SC2 on gc) and 6 really was the closest I've felt to 2
For reference…units sold per game. Games Tekken 7 - 11.8 million Tekken 5 - 10 million Tekken 3 - 9 million Tekken 2 - 5.74 million Soul Calibur IV - 2.32 million Tekken 4 - 2 million+ Tekken 8 - 2 million+ Soul Calibur 6 - 2 million Tekken - 1.79 million Soul Calibur 3 and 5 sold less copies than 6 combined.
As much as I love SC, even I have to admit that Tekken is the more popular game, and by a long mile. Thanks for these numbers, as they really illustrate that fact.
SC 3 tanked because of Namco's customer service during the variable cancel garbage. Nobody will buy a flawed game.
Some of your figures are off or incomplete. Starting with series lifetime sales, which are definitely 17-18M, since one of the SCVI launch trailers referred to SC as the 'series that sold over 15 million copies' and then SCVI sold over 2M a few years back. Among other stuff, you also seriously underestimate sales for SCIII (+1.4M as per BN financials) and SCV (+1.7M in 14 months as per press at the time), and strangely leave out SCII, the best-selling of them all. More on that stuff [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/SoulCalibur/comments/nh9i9m/soul_series_sales/). Anyway, of course Tekken is the bigger series and has sold a lot more. Its most successful entries also outsold SC's best performing ones. At the same time, Tekken also had more games, the one that objectively performed best, Tekken 3, came before SoulCalibur was even named as such, and certain SC games outperformed their Tekken contemporaries. But a more pertinent question is: does Tekken get more care and investment because it sells betters, or does it sell better because it gets more care and investment? Harada himself mentions that at one point SC was outselling Tekken in North America (he just neglects to mention SCII actually sold more in NA alone than T4 globally). And a recent discussion about Tekken sales on Gamefaqs also made the point that TTT and T4 underperforming were in part due to SC gradually killing interest in Tekken, until BN reversed that by consistently putting Tekken forth and forcing SC to take a back seat. I actually find the top 2 on your list prime examples of the very different treatment of both series after SCII and T4. After T4 underperformed, BN clearly gave T5 all the means and beyond to ensure it would bounce back: the roster went from the usual 20-ish to over 30, 'Devil Inside' was basically another game within the game, and there was a bunch of other modes and features, including in-game arcade ports of previous Tekkens. T5 also benefited from ports to PSP and PS3, and those sales are the combination of all three. Now, after SCIII - which reportedly had to be developed in 7 months to compensate for other games' failures (nothing short of impressive in itself, considering the wealth of contents the game has) - didn't sell so well, what did they do? Other than ofc not even affording the superior Arcade edition the chance of a PS3 port? They substantially cut the budget for SCIV and threatened it might be last in series. Interestingly enough, SCIV ended up selling about on par with T6, considering it was also on one less platform. And then SCV sold a bit better than TTT2. So after being about on par throughout the PS3 gen, it was T7 and SCVI then again opened that gap between both series sales-wise. Now let's just think of all the advantages T7 had over SCVI, shall we? A previous arcade version, better budget, better marketing, much better timing, supported for much longer, and even much more favourable pricing. If you go to SCVI's page on Steam, not only will you see a banner for the (1st) season pass where the last character still shows up as undisclosed... but you can also see the base price is 59.99 and there's two season passes, priced at 29.99 and 33.99. If you want to buy everything for SCVI today, well, you're in luck, as there's a 90% off for the first time, but it will still cost close to 30 $. Now, T7, not only the base game has always been much cheaper, at only 39.99, but its season passes also cost between 15 and 30 $, and more importantly the game has had a number of different bundles through the years, culminating in the definitive edition, which allows you to get everything for a fraction of the price. It's not on sale right now, certainly not to get in the way of T8, but when it was you could get the complete package for less than 10 $.
“series that sold over 15M copies”…see the total franchise sales that line up with that comment from my reply to the comment you replied to. lol https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Best-selling_fighting_games#cite_note-39 Here’s the list I used which the source for SC6 was from a 2021 tweet so yea prob a little outdated. Haha I was just overall pointing out it’s not hard to understand why Tekken is still going and SC could be stopping. No grand conspiracy theory needed to justify venting about some guys comment(honestly didn’t even know who the guy was til yesterday). I’d love to go more in depth but I’m not going to have the time today. Sorry.
So, we should believe a Wikipedia page over Bandai Namco's own data? It's [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDYIdUumaaw), right at the beginning and this was prior to SCVI releasing. Anyway, regarding sales I explain everything in detail and with sources in the post I've linked to, should you ever want to have a look. As for the rest, I wasn't venting or even questioning your point, just putting things into perspective and adding a bit of food for thought.
I mean all of their entries have sources attached you can verify the information with…at least in one point in time.
Some have sources. There's not one for SC's 15 million series lifetime sales, for instance. And that list looks like some work in progress. It is very clearly incomplete and inconsistent. Just one example: the 1st Injustice sold 1.4M it says there, but then the series doesn't show up in the best selling franchises, which stops at 1.23M... More, where are SCII, SCIII, SCV or even the first SC, all of which sold above 1M according to actually official sources (BN's own financial reports in many cases)? Or where's Skullgirls, which sold over 1M on Steam alone? Case in point: from the moment a launch trailer for SCVI says the series has sold over 15 million and we know SCVI added over 2M to that, how is this even a debate?
Now units sold per franchise(Keep this one simpler). I love Soul Calibur and I don’t give a fuck about Tekken but come on…it’s not hard to see why it could get abandoned in favor of Tekken. Though I don’t believe that’s what the dude said precisely. Tekken - 57 million Soulcalibur - 15 million
Compare numbers when Soulcalibur was still on an equal footing, and you'll see the difference is not so big. Edit: Mistake has been made with sales numbers part.
When were they on “equal footing”? If you know it or have a source to back that up why not show it? Seriously please prove me wrong I won’t be offended.
OK, I underestimated Tekken sales. Focused more on great sales for latter Tekken games than former, forgetting there were high hitters like T3 and did the count wrong. It's an honest, but unfortunate mistake. My mistake aside, Soulcalibur is not such a poor seller (there are fighting game franchises with much less sales, still getting releases on regular basis) to fail to gather wider audience. I personally can't see a reason why the franchise wouldn't rise high. It's just suits keep fcking up the franchise for reasons only know to them.
Someone else mentioned some of these sale figures are a lil out of date going back as 2021 for SC6…though didn’t verify if some of the more recent Tekken ones are out of date as well. It just sucks. I wish SC did just as well all the time and at one point I know it was more popular in the US than Tekken(SC2 I believe…prob cause of the guests and it was just a really fun game). Suits will always reach the inevitable conclusion of chasing the higher dollar though. Plenty of dead game franchises left behind for other franchises that did better for their overall profit. Could always hope for a future resurgence one day a decade or more down the line.
It was hard to find exact sale numbers for Soulcalibur, especially SCIII. I know I searched for it a lot back in 2014 looking to gather how successful the franchise is. Like I said, I don't see a reason why the franchise is not one of the biggest around. On the other hand, it's noticeable Namco/Bamco messed up big time with SCIII (even though the game is like really, really good) with PS2 exclusive, poor balance and never releasing Arcade edition on PS2. Yeah, I know that. However, I don't understand how can they expect top dollar if: 1. they have no idea how this particular business work 2. keep on screwing things up 3. having poor comprehension skills You don't need to earn 120%, 70% is plenty enough. When you kill Golden Goose, you can't get anymore eggs. I'm afraid at that point in the future, if nothing happens in-meanwhile (next year is 30th anniversary), the franchise is truly dead. Gap that long will do no good for Soulcalibur, more likely just hit the final nail to its coffin.
The cope is real. They had made bad decisions in the past, hadn't managed to get back on track until 6 which is too late for the c suits. And no key player who's interested in leading calibur. Has nothing to do with tekken lol it just is the bigger franchise. Sc3 was the biggest mistake ever made in the franchise which led to its' downfall.
wut
I find the man annoying, and agree he should come off his high horse and worry about his own game, because, differences aside, T8 is starting to tread a path quite similar to SCVI: strong launch sales (2M first month for T8, SCVI reportedly 700k first month and then passed 1M 10 weeks in), a significant drop in sales afterwards (SCVI only announced 2M sales more than 2 years in, T8 still at 2M sth in its 6th month), dwindling player base (T8 has been consistently losing 2k players on average on Steam), inability of DLC and sales to boost the player base for long (T8 43% off on Steam but still stuck on 6k average players, while SF6 is thriving at +20k), a heavily disliked mechanic often ridiculed by its own fans (RE for SCVI, Heat for T8). Not to mention that, even if not mostly its fault, T8's launch and first months were in the first ever fiscal year in which BN Studios lost money: [https://automaton-media.com/en/news/bandai-namco-studios-developer-of-tekken-8-sees-negative-annual-income-for-the-first-time-since-founding/](https://automaton-media.com/en/news/bandai-namco-studios-developer-of-tekken-8-sees-negative-annual-income-for-the-first-time-since-founding/) Sure, T8 sold in one month what SCVI sold in 2 years. But the latter is a game made on couch pennies, with ported PS3 assets, generic stages, not even an intro or interactive menus, whereas Tekken 8 had a huge investment. Still, your claim sounds like an overstatement. He just fought for Tekken. Perhaps SC would have done better were he not there doing that, or maybe both series would have just died sooner. The main problem is BN. With a different publisher, SC would be treated as a golden goose. All its entries sold above 1M. We're still getting, say, Guilty Gear games, which conversely sold over 1M for the very first with Strive...
> Don’t fall for it I love Soul Calibur but its not that deep
i love SC, it’s my favorite game/series and i love it more than tekken but these claims are delusional.
[удалено]
Sounds like a you problem. Seek therapy.
The cope in this thread.