Fire Emblem: Three Houses has received a lot of praise in recent day, even being hailed as one of the best JRPG's of the year. It appears its sales are reflecting that assertion, as it has hit number one on the sales charts in the UK, beating Youngblood by a large margin.
Intelligent Systems Co., LTD has been developing games for Nintendo for the better part of thirty-two years and helped to create some earth-shattering titles including Metroid, Paper Mario, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and Duck Hunt. The company's first title in the series entitled Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light was hammered by critics, but the developer had the last laugh when it ended up selling 320,087 units in total, making it the third best selling game in the franchise to date.
After years of lackluster sales, the franchise was about to meet its end until Fire Emblem Awakening was released, a game which captivated the west almost immediately, selling 1.8 million copies in total. Now, after sticking to its promise of making Fire Emblem: Three Houses the best title ever created, fans of the franchise have shown their appreciation to Intelligent Systems for its hard work by helping the game top the charts in the UK.
With the influx of JRPG titles and competition from the likes of Square Enix, it has been harder then ever for Intelligent Systems to gain its footing. Intelligent System's success will show other developers in the industry that they can't simply expect games to sell by name alone, but that they must do what consumers ask in order to continue to thrive in a competitive market.
News of Fire Emblem: Three Houses chart topping success comes from Christopher Dring, a publisher at GameIndustry.biz, who states that the game sold, "almost double the launch sales of 2013's Fire Emblem Awakening, and more than double the combined sales of the first two Fire Emblem Fates games." He clarifies just how strong the game's chart-topping performance is by saying, "it was comfortably No. 1, too. It managed more than double the boxed sales of Wolfenstein: Youngblood, which made No. 2."
With Wolfenstein: Youngblood getting a lot of coverage, this news seems to indicate that fans were confident that Intelligent Systems was going to make good on its promise. The fact that sales continue to climb around the world also seems to suggest that publishers in Japan where correct when they said that JRPG's are becoming embraced by the western world.
While it's not clear just how successful the game will be in the end, hopefully news like this will encourage other Japanese developers to stop the practice of refusing to release certain games in the West. Additionally, this performance will continue to encourage companies to listen more to their consumers to create games they truly want.