Star Fox Zero finally released two weeks ago after a few different delays to merely okay reviews, largely due to the polarizing and confusing to many control scheme. With the Wii U already not being a big seller, this led many to worry about how sales for Star Fox Zero might end up out of the gate and at least for the Japanese market, it was not very good.
As revealed by Famitsu, the Star Fox Zero double pack that came with both Star Fox Zero and Star Fox Guard debuted on the Japanese sales charts at 5th place with 17,114 copies sold. 8,135 copies were sold of just Zero alone, which would have propelled the game up to 4th place according to Destructoid.
This is certainly not a hot start for a game that has been hyped for the Wii U for awhile, but with the mixed reception ever since its initial unveiling, it’s not that big of a surprise.
It will be even more interesting to see if Nintendo of America releases sales numbers for how the game did in the US, as it is very unlikely to place on the monthly NPDs for April that will be releasing soon.
ZhugeEX on Twitter took these numbers and put them into a bar graph comparing launch week sales to past entries in the series in Japan, which you can see pale in comparison to everything, with it coming closest to Star Fox Command on the DS.
Hopefully the middling reception and less than stellar sales do not lead to Nintendo abandoning this franchise moving forward, as it definitely has plenty of potential. Perhaps the NX will bring us the next great Star Fox game we’ve really been waiting for all these years.
