Sonic Forces Sales

[Nicky Nicardo]

Since Sonic Mania has a thread dedicated to it's sales, and I'm personally interested in how Forces sold since I played and enjoyed it, I figured hey, why not make a thread for that?

I know it's hard to actually get any solid numbers on Forces and that the sources out there that a lot of people try and use aren't reliable, so I wouldn't even know where to start myself. I figure if something gets announced or released from Sega/Sonic Team/some other source, maybe people can come here and update the thread about it if they want to.

I just spent a while trying to figure it out using VG Chartz, which I know isn't very reliable from the start, and I didn't know how to calculate based on the information provided xDD So if anyone has anything to contribute, have at it~

Not only units sold, but also monetarily as well - I'm fairly sure that no matter what, it didn't sell AMAZINGLY and that Mania easily eclipsed it, but still, I'd like to eventually know. -nod-

[The Deleter]

Well for starters, there was a Steam leak a month ago that revealed player data for a huge amount of games, including Forces, and by extension the sales of anyone who at least played the game once

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/07/steam-data-leak-reveals-precise-player-count-for-thousands-of-games/

As of July when this all leaked, there were 34,165 copies sold on Steam overall

[shdowhunt60]

SEGA seems keen on hiding the trust sales figures, especially when it comes to their PC releases.

It wouldn't be surprising to me if SEGA managed to successfully alienate their PC userbase by putting Denuvo in all their games.

[Plasme]

I'm pretty sure I read on Sonic Retro that Forces sold a million units, around the same as the original Sonic Mania.

[Whatever the WhoCares]

Aaron said that Sega was pleased with Forces sales. I certainly hope so. Maybe they can actually put some effort into the next game. 

[Badnik Mechanic]

1 hour ago, Plasme said:

I'm pretty sure I read on Sonic Retro that Forces sold a million units, around the same as the original Sonic Mania.

Would love to see the source on that one.

[Gabz Girl]

I find it strange that we still don’t have sales numbers for Sonic Forces. SLW and even Sonic Boom posted theirs, so why not this one? If these sales were so great according to Aaron, you’d think they would put them out asap! 

[Badnik Mechanic]

6 minutes ago, Gabz Girl said:

SLW and even Sonic Boom posted theirs, so why not this one? 

They did?

I know for Boom they posted their sales estimates, didn't think they posted the actual figures.

[Gabz Girl]

2 minutes ago, Mayor D said:

They did?

I know for Boom they posted their sales estimates, didn't think they posted the actual figures.

Ohhh, if it was estimated numbers for Sonic Boom I didn’t know that. SLW though, I think they posted their numbers in spring 2014. Just over 700k combined sales for Wii U and 3DS. 

[Plasme]

3 hours ago, Mayor D said:

Would love to see the source on that one.

I don't know if it's true, but it's been discussed a lot in the Sonic Forces thread on Retro. 

[JaidynReiman]

4 hours ago, Gabz Girl said:

I find it strange that we still don’t have sales numbers for Sonic Forces. SLW and even Sonic Boom posted theirs, so why not this one? If these sales were so great according to Aaron, you’d think they would put them out asap! 

For Nintendo as an example, they only post sales numbers for games that top 1m units in one fiscal year. Otherwise those numbers don't get posted. No idea how SEGA handles things, but typically many companies don't post sales numbers unless they were especially impressive.

[Nicky Nicardo]

10 hours ago, Plasme said:

I'm pretty sure I read on Sonic Retro that Forces sold a million units, around the same as the original Sonic Mania.

Really? If that's true, that makes me very happy~

[Sega DogTagz]

Sega doesn't pimp numbers. People just managed to find some every now and again buried in some SEGASAMMY yearly financial report - and even then that info is a bit outdated and incomplete.

[The Deleter]

Gave the Retro thread a look over, and outside @Space☆Yeow mentioning how unknown sources have claimed that it's reached a million, there's barely ever anyone talking about sales over a million when the topic is brought up, tbh

5 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

Sega doesn't pimp numbers. People just managed to find some every now and again buried in some SEGASAMMY yearly financial report - and even then that info is a bit outdated and incomplete.

They sure were quick to mention that Mania passed the 1 million mark when Mania Plus was announced, though

[Sega DogTagz]

Just now, The Deleter said:

They sure were quick to mention that Mania passed the 1 million mark when Mania Plus was announced, though

Still didn't drop exact numbers. Just a general statement

 

and we didn't need any kind of crystal ball to know Mania went north of a million,

[Milo]

1 hour ago, Sega DogTagz said:

Sega doesn't pimp numbers. People just managed to find some every now and again buried in some SEGASAMMY yearly financial report - and even then that info is a bit outdated and incomplete.

The numbers weren't from a Sega Sammy report. (Sega Sammy has, with some exceptions, actually stopped giving software sales numbers in their IR reports as of the 2015 restructuring.) Famitsu revealed the sales numbers when promoting a interview with Iizuka about Mania Plus back in April.

1 hour ago, The Deleter said:

Gave the Retro thread a look over, and outside @Space☆Yeow mentioning how unknown sources have claimed that it's reached a million, there's barely ever anyone talking about sales over a million when the topic is brought up, tbh

To be specific, that's what the TSSZNews Twitter account said when they originally reported on Mania's sales milestone.

 

[Plasme]

People were talking about it on Retro since a while back, I'd know because I have an account there. I'm just not going to look through hundreds of pages to find where the convo started

[Badnik Mechanic]

3 hours ago, Plasme said:

People were talking about it on Retro since a while back, I'd know because I have an account there. I'm just not going to look through hundreds of pages to find where the convo started

I've gone through the forces game topic from the date the game came out. Amazingly, after the initial reaction of he was right it does suck' and everyone elses realisations that the game isn't good, the topic pretty much dies meaning there's not that many pages to go through.

Other than the odd person pondering the sales and performance of the game. 1 person has mentioned the 1 million sales figure and the only backup they had for it was 'unknown sources'.

Nobody anywhere has said that Forces sold over 1 million other than VGChartz who make up their figures.

The only reports I can find at all in relation to Force's sales is that Sega said it 'performed strongly' back in February.

 

Unless someone can find the data, this 1 million figure is complete bull. 

[Red Hot Jack]

Sega was not impressed with Lost World's performance and we knew it did around 700,000 units according to this report: http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2014/05/sonic_lost_world_hits_710000_sales_as_sega_lines_up_significant_3ds_support

Now, going by logic, if they said Forces performed strongly I suspect it did 1 million at the very least, by the end of March or whenever the Sega Sammy report was released. They were also happy with Mania's sales and we know for sure it did 1 million digitally, since Forces was the only Sonic title out for Christmas at least physically, I assume it did the same amount of units sold, but I don't know, it could be more. No one is claiming this game doesn't suck, but I'm glad there is still appeal for Modern Sonic, and hopefully with the money they made they will have resources to create bigger budget games in the future.

[Nicky Nicardo]

I'm claiming it doesn't suck, but hey, that's just me. xD

[Plasme]

7 hours ago, Mayor D said:

Nobody anywhere has said that Forces sold over 1 million other than VGChartz who make up their figures.

 

Since you know a lot about this, what is VGCHartz exactly and how do they get their figures? 

[Badnik Mechanic]

3 minutes ago, Plasme said:

Since you know a lot about this, what is VGCHartz exactly and how do they get their figures? 

It's a website that claims to log the sales of every game release worldwide.

However they make up their figures.

They get their data from independent retailers and one or two chain stores (not the entire chain, just one or two stores where they know the managers).

What they then do with that tiny sample is upscale it for national and then international markets.

 

Which is utterly stupid and amazingly inaccurate. 

[shdowhunt60]

I'm just going to take it as damage control, until SEGA actually posts some hard figures. I'm sure the last thing that SEGA-Sammy wants to do is admit to investors is that they put out another failed Sonic game. 

Another thing that kind of leads me to believe that Forces fails is... Well... Forces isn't the game that SEGA talks about these days. It's Mania.

[Nicky Nicardo]

3 hours ago, shdowhunt60 said:

I'm just going to take it as damage control, until SEGA actually posts some hard figures. I'm sure the last thing that SEGA-Sammy wants to do is admit to investors is that they put out another failed Sonic game. 

Another thing that kind of leads me to believe that Forces fails is... Well... Forces isn't the game that SEGA talks about these days. It's Mania.

I'd say that them talking about Mania more than Forces doesn't automatically mean that Forces is a failure from a financial standpoint, but rather that Mania's success is just SO MUCH greater because of better sales coupled with better reviews all around.

No one will really know until some authentic source releases some actual numbers though.

[shdowhunt60]

32 minutes ago, FriesWithoutKetchup said:

I'd say that them talking about Mania more than Forces doesn't automatically mean that Forces is a failure from a financial standpoint, but rather that Mania's success is just SO MUCH greater because of better sales coupled with better reviews all around.

No one will really know until some authentic source releases some actual numbers though.

That's a really optimistic and charitable way of looking at it. Personally, I'm done being charitable towards them.