Speaking of sales, I think bringing Japan factor against character like Master Chief is disingenuous. People bring up how Japan react to Banjo, but those reaction videos are cherry picked from hardcore Smash fans. General Japanese gamers were pretty much scratching their heads. And people bring Japanese ballot to justify Banjo, but ballot in general is still not end of all mean just like sales. We had characters that weren't even on any ballot whatsoever.
Looking at you, gatekeepers
I mean, if we're going to bring up "general gamers" into the equation, then you'll see that reaction for most of the cast, including certain third parties.
It's fully anecdotal, I know, but most of the people I observed being unfamiliar with Terry were casuals - the so-called "silent majority".
That's a worthwhile point, especially since "general gamers" also is a ****ing broad term. And when I say broad, I mean it - the number I've seen thrown about for the total number of gamers is
2.7 billion. 2700 million people. More than a third of the world's ****ing population.
The fact that
Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft manage to be some of the world's largest video game companies while most of their games do not even reach a significant number of gamers yet speak to
how absurdly fractured the video game industry truly is. Newzoo's report does seem a bit strange when it estimates these numbers as well:
- Mobile: 2,6 billion players
- PC: 1.3 billion players
- Console: 729 million players
The mobile number in particular seems kinda odd. It makes me believe that Newzoo is applying a very loose definition of how often people play on specific platforms. On one hand, mobiles are everywhere nowadays and it's extremely easy to get a F2P game off the Android / iStore, so this is not unfeasible. On the other... that's a shocking large percentage of a huge number, which is kinda strange. The console number is also strange when not even Switch+PS4+Xbone comes close to touching that mark (ca. 200 million combined last I checked), but it's worth remembering that older consoles are likely also included like Wiis, PS2s / PS3s and 360s, as well as probably pirated consoles. Still though, the 2.7 billion number is feasible considering they're probably counting everything from hyper-casual idle games to hyper-competitive games.
Still, I'm getting sidetracked. We're talking about Japanese general gamers? Newzoo estimated
that there's 67.6 million gamers in Japan, and that Japan's gaming population spends ca. $19 billion on games, behind only China and the US. They also estimate that 30 % of Japanese men and 15 % of Japanese women play console games, which includes both Nintendo and Sony. That's not taking into account the mobile / PC population, which themselves are pretty damn splintered too. Just ask the people who play Monster Strike on their phone, or the people who play Fortnite / Apex on the PC. There's little uniting the two playerbases really (assuming there's little to no "cross-play" between the two).
This does reinforce your point, Saurus: I'd go so far as to argue that the only ones who are generally safe would be Mario, Pikachu / Pokemon Trainer ("Ash / Satoshi" as some may call him), Sonic, Steve, Pac Man and Link ("Zelda"). Ryu / Ken might come close since Street Fighter has a surprisingly global reach. One can also argue Villager due to Animal Crossing being a long running franchise and New Horizons doing extremely well last year. From the general Japanese perspective, you can certainly consider adding Cloud / Sephiroth alongside Hero to the list of characters your Average Sora / Average Sakura will more often than not recognize. Outside of that it becomes more difficult to truly confirm if a character already in the game is 100 % recognizable or not.
Edit: When it comes to Chief's status in Japan... it's difficult to tell, although again, 100K for
a console that doesn't perform super-well there (to say the least) is an encouraging sign considering the dire circumstances the Xbox has found itself in.
Point being: Really, Smash Bros. has thrived on only needing to plaster Mario, Pikachu and Link (and an assortment of other characters) on the cover for 5 straight games.
The defining aspect about the general audience is not only how fractured it is, but also that easy to pick up games are - assuming they're well made - going to be successful amongst the general audience even if said general audience doesn't know the characters (just look at Candy Crush). Yes, recognizable characters have helped immensely, but it's not like Nintendo have hedged all their bets on Smash having just 100 % recognizable characters. Smash being easy to pick up and play has also played a major part in giving the series its consistently strong playerbase.
I don't mean this to be a knock on Chief's chances here - he has a lot of stuff going for him, such as being
one of the few purely Western characters speculated about in the Japanese speculation scene (pinging
Ayumi Tachibana). And that's a major boon in itself. But the reality is far from a simple thing, and that's what I want to point out.
