Break-out Sales Surprise of 2018 - Article
by Craig S , posted on 05 January 2019 / 6,137 Views
The Break-out Sales Surprise Award is one of my personal favourite game of the year categories, celebrating as it does the site's raison d'être. This year's shortlist includes a retro-stylised classic RPG, a westerner-friendly entry in a previously heavily Japanese-oriented series, a rare case of an adventure game with a highly successful physical release, and a spin on a licensed IP that managed to completely blow all previous entries' sales records out of the water.
The Shortlist:
Octopath Traveler
Detroit: Become Human
Monster Hunter: World
Spider-Man
The Winner:
Monster Hunter: World
Monster Hunter is, of course, no stranger to commercial success in its homeland of Japan, where on handhelds each entry racked up millions in sales. Indeed the franchise as a whole is now Capcom's second most successful IP, trailing only Resident Evil, and even then Monster Hunter averages much higher sales per entry. Monster Hunter: World has elevated the series' sales figures to a whole other level, though, thanks in large part to the game being the first in the series to release worldwide simultaneously, and the first to adopt a much more western-friendly gameplay style.
Monster Hunter: World topped shipments of over 10.7 million copies across PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, making it Capcom's best-selling game of all time. And all in under a year. How could any other title seriously compete with Monster Hunter: World for the crown of Break-out Sales Surprise of 2018?
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Monster Hunter: World is the right choice. I am still astonished how well it sold in the west.
Its still pretty nutty Spiderman is sitting at 7m sales which is almost twice the amount of the second highest selling Spiderman game.
Many people thought that Monster Hunter World could not even reach portable version sales because the franchise was very Japanese-centric until MH4, so I think the result is logical.
Definitely MHW. The amount of crow it served to its naysayers is comparable only to the amount the Switch served.
Monster Hunter World is by far the winner. It's sales never stop to amaze me. But I still give props to Octopath, it sold way, way more than I was expecting too.
All were great choices but it's fitting that the first breakout title of 2018 is the victor.
I would say SpiderMan being a new IP, single platform and probably highest selling Insomniac game would trump MHW. But all choices were great.
2015: Rocket League
2016: ratchet and clank
2017: Fortnite
2018: Monster Hunter
Horizon had 2017 in the bag but then fortnite became a thing. Spiderman was very unlucky this year after blowing our expectations away, but capgods deserve it after everyone doubted them. Someone there said he expected 10m+ and it almost became a meme.
"Crapcom they said". Not sure people downvoted you.
How is Spiderman sales a "surprise"?
I was calling that this would be the biggest debut for a PS4 exclusive, which it was.
Probably because of the sale numbers of previous Spider-Man games.
Because a lot of people didn't thought the same.. everyone expects GTA to do big numbers... it selling 100M wasn't a surprise them?
Some of those are big-budget, AAA games. How do they qualify as surprise?
In particular, Spider-man as a "breakout sales surprise" is laughable.
Sony said it was the fastest selling exclusive on PS4 or something of this effect close to the launch... so at least for a time period it got ahead of GoW. LTD I'm not certain how officially they sit.
Spider-man ? Really ? After 3 years of teasing and gameplay footages and all the fuzz around it ?
"It will sell less than all previous MH as they abandoned Nintendo".
