GX wasn't really the disaster part of the F-Zero sales line, but the handheld games that were made afterward were. That's the real catalyst for the continued absence, outside possible unwillingness from outside developers from taking on the series.
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Edge's big feature on Nagoshi's career: Monkey Ball, F-Zero GX > 1.5M WW, Yakuza origins and future
- Thread starter Eolz
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The only source we have for sales is vg.chartz where F-Zero GX sits at like 700k if I remember correctly. It was also a Player's Choice title in Europe which means it has sold at least 250k there. I believe the game sold between 700k and 1 million, it was not a huge success, it wasn't a disaster either. It probably made back it's cost and that's about it. F-Zero X on the N64 also only sold about 1.2 million so not much more but the N64 sold way more consoles than the GameCube did soo...
If anything the GBA games flopped hard with the latest F-Zero Climax being exclusive to Japan and not even selling 100k.
Knowing that the console games did pretty decent just makes me want them even more. I also don't see why they have to find devs to make a game. I'd say the Mario Kart team would be the perfect team to try their hands on this after having finished ARMS and MK8D is doing fine on its own.
Yeah, it seems the handheld games flopping was the final nail in the coffin for the series.
Blunt answer: a series with such a low sales ceiling that doesn't have a person with vested interest pushing for it (like miyamoto for pikmin) is never going to be developed by an internal EAD equivalent team again.
There are much more profitable things the mario kart team can (and will) be working on than an fzero. I fully expect that a new fzero will only ever exist if Nintendo can draft a third party studio to make it.
Looking at metroid for a series with slightly better sales potential, even though prime 4 could easily be a flagship title alongside Zelda, Nintendo had no intention of developing it internally. Neither was the last 2d metroid. The days of metroid or fzero being something Nintendo itself does the legwork on are long gone.
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Nintendo also wanted it as a launch title.
I wish they asked sega again
Because F-Zero doesn't sell as well as most games they make and they're usually doing Mario Kart, maybe now they have more time for other projects. F-Zero's problem isn't Miyamoto, but the lack of developers for it - they tried to get one for Wii U, but Criterion didn't want to develop it.
Sega aren't in the same way as they were 14 years ago. Through the 90s and first half of 00s, sega had a whole bunch of great arcade racing franchises from which to draw experience. Things like virtual racing, Daytona, sega gt, crazy taxi, and probably a bunch more I've forgotten.
That's not the kind of game sega has industry leading experience in anymore. Criterion is definitely a better choice nowadays. I would be extremely surprised if Nintendo hasn't asked them again recently.
Deal with sega expired and sega most likely didn't give nintendo their source code when they asked for it... so i guess that's it for sega and F-Zero even for rerelease.
It's more that F-Zero GX used analogue triggers and that no Nintendo hardware since the GC had those.
But does that really excite anyone? I've been playing that game to death since it came out and I want new stuff. I'd still buy it to support the F-Zero series but I'd rather have something new.
I beat F-Zero GX story mode on all difficulties with a Wii U Pro Controller which doesn't have analog triggers. They just need to be set so they emulate the GameCube triggers at like 50% and the game plays just fine. Games like Luigis Mansion where you actually can do different things depending on how hard you press the triggers and which use the additional button when you press them all the way are harder to realize. Or Mario Sunshine where you spray more water and drown your tank quicker, but sliding in F-Zero GX is unlimited.
Primethius I didn't know this dude made the Yakuza series. Crazy how diverse his portfolio is. Also lol at Nintendo initially turning down Yakuza
Not on their IR. We've gotten official shipment updates on both randomly but looking at their quartly or annual reports you wouldn't know either was platinum. Awakening is probably past 2m now too.
Nintendo doesn't give updated comprehensive sales outside their top sellers lists, and those didn't start until midway through the DS/Wii gen.
No, talking about these
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/software/3ds.html
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/software/wiiu.html
not that unofficial list that Celine maintains in their Nintendo sales thread
You're always faster in replying to these lol
I'm not saying it's unplayable without those triggers, just that it's a more logical reason of them not re-releasing it than not having the code of a game they completely own and where it's implied Sega gave it to them anyway.
if the numbers are indeed correct, this also means the only F-Zero games that didn't sell over a million were the 2 anime ones. all the main ones sold over a million since the 3 that came before GX were well documented to be over that.
this makes it even more bizarre that Nintendo chose to kill the series while other series like Metroid are still alive with more relative bombs. Metroid has even had main games not sell a million. guess that having Sakamoto behind the series also keeps it alive after all...
this makes it even more bizarre that Nintendo chose to kill the series while other series like Metroid are still alive with more relative bombs. Metroid has even had main games not sell a million. guess that having Sakamoto behind the series also keeps it alive after all...
The lead programmer was Tetsuya Kaku who is still with Sega.
The lead course designer (same role for SMB1&2), Yunichi Yamada is actually missing. He has since gone to the West to work on games.
Finally some solid evidence of my theory that the GBA games killed F-Zero, and GX didn't bomb horribly.
if the game eventually reached 1.5M after a long period of time, that explains why there hasn't been a sequel. it's similar to how people harp on about how Bayonetta sold over a million, but neglect to mention that's after it hit the bargain bins. F-Zero hitting 1.5M on budget pricing doesn't mean much to nintendo. add in the GBA games that faltered even while the cartoon was airing really didn't help
As for Nagoshi himself, I am really unsure if he is deserving of his Miyamoto status at Sega. Like, maybe it is kind of sad that others got left behind because of their failures...but Nagoshi still doesn't compare to Yu Suzuki or Yuji Naka, and other more unknows like Ohba, Kodama, Oguchi, Nakagawa and Uchida etc.
When he got his team in 2000 with Amusement Vision, it was actually the smallest among the 9 dev heads, implying that he still had the most to show for at Sega.
In my mind, he is more equal to Masayoshi Kikuchi who directed Jet Set Radio around the same time Nagoshi directed Monkey Ball. Now, Kikuchi just manages the mobile division.
When he got his team in 2000 with Amusement Vision, it was actually the smallest among the 9 dev heads, implying that he still had the most to show for at Sega.
In my mind, he is more equal to Masayoshi Kikuchi who directed Jet Set Radio around the same time Nagoshi directed Monkey Ball. Now, Kikuchi just manages the mobile division.
Nintendo, if we can't get an F-Zero racing game cause of Mario Kart, can we get a Captain Falcon city brawler?
To be fair, Metroid has a different reputation, and is in a genre that is more unique.
The Bayonetta analogy is good yeah. Although it's more than just that as it's a first party franchise.
More specifically, it was Nagoshi that really made all the amazing Sega games that I loved (which climaxed with F-Zero GX). He hasn't made those type of games in so many years (if I had been his boss, I would have pigeon holed him and shot him down too). I really should give Yakuza a chance (since he's really never made a game I didn't love), but it just seems like nothing I would find appealing.
It's absent because F-Zero GX is absent from the list of million sellers provided by Nintendo to CESADid F-Zero GX really sell that much? Fucking hell.
It was completely absent from Celine's million seller list:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/ni...ardware-sales-data-from-1983-to-present.2725/
Never understood this.
Nintendo has multiple platformer franchises, Mario, DKC, Kirby, and even Yoshi which split off from Mario had several good platform games, yet Nintendo thinks having more than one racing franchise is too much?
Hell F-Zero doesn't even play the same as Mario Kart.
Considering how the last reported NPD and Famitsu GX numbers couldn't even reach half a million combined, then it does feel like it pulled a Bayonetta.
Worth noting that F-Zero was dropped down to 20$ at some point in 2004.
Worth noting that F-Zero was dropped down to 20$ at some point in 2004.
There are two problems there. First. Each of those franchises other than mario has a studio outside of nintendos main teams to work on those franchises (retro, hal labs and good feel). Second, If fzero sold as reliably as dkc, Kirby or Yoshi, the series would never have been shelved. Mario could reasonably be expected to sell ten times what an fzero title could, which is why it is worth an internal teams time and fzero isn't.
It did not sell like dkc, Kirby or Yoshi. And the team we know of that Nintendo asked lastgen declined.
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Yes, but it is also a question to have an external development team free that Nintendo trust to make sequel to their cherished IPs.
Kirby has HAL, Yoshi has Good-Feel, Mario & Luigi has Alpha Dream, DKC has Retro Studios (or at least had), Luigi's Mansion has Next Level Games now and so on.
Goodness, he's such a hero. I still remember walking into Gamestop to pick up the Yakuza demo disc thinking this series is about to change everything! It's amazing to see how much success he and his team achieved after pushing so hard for their ideas to be realized. I'm a lifelong fan, and he's the suavest game designer ever - excited to see how the Yakuza franchise continues to evolve!
and we're still waiting on a new F-Zero game.
you're not wrong, but I think the point is still valid. Bayonetta 2 wasn't expected to do well (definitely much less than Bayonetta 1) so it's greenlighting was probably on different pretenses. the lack of an F-Zero is probably due to other circumstances. I know people give Miyamoto grief over his comments about "doing something different" (and I don't disagree with folks), but I do think there's something to his message when you look at the contraction of the racing market since then. arcade racers aren't as frequent as they used to be, with sims and open world simcades filling the holes. where does F-Zero fit in this modern market? GX was comparatively high budget for it's time, but would a high budget arcade racer "do well" now? would it be better for Nintendo to go lower budget? something else? I sure as hell don't fuckin know.
Is this necessary lol, Yakuza itself is a legendary series let alone his arcade output and SMB.
Necessary? Probably not but it is true. Nagoshi is not on the level of a Yu Suzuki.
I'm not sure why Monster Games couldn't have been that trusted partner for F-Zero. Their Excite games aren't an exact match for the franchise, but then neither were Daytona USA or Burnout and Excitebots probably comes closest out of any of them. Monster would've been a fine match for Wave Race or 1080 too.
His history at Sega is more of a story that he was the light at the ruins of it all.
Such a story doesn't exist in Nintendo. Miyamoto became the superstar and stayed that way.