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[The artful mincer]

Firstly Apologies for sounding like Microsoft PR!

Secondly there's some cool maths you can do to work this out.

The new levels in Vicious Void are timed and you get a ranking. If you purposely do a really slow time you get a good idea of the total number of players that completed the level.

You get a trophy for completing each of these levels. The game tells you the percentage of players that get each trophy. So assuming your time is near the bottom you can roughly work out total players

E.g. I took over 9 minutes to finish Hard To Bear. (Amazingly I'm not last) I'm ranked over 450,000.

11.3 % of players have finished the level so have the trophy Bearly Rescued. Which means there's at least 4 million players for Astro Bot.

Obviously I have to say players not sales because of used copies different accounts etc.

Spoiler

I didn't work this out myself I read about it online!!

 

[Kvally]

 

[vodka-bull]

Since when is players the new metric for a games success?

 

[LakeOf9]

Should be 10 times more

 

[Skifi28]

There have been many attempts to calculate sales based on trophies before, but I don't believe they've been very trustworthy.

 

[Dr_Ifto]

If one sale is played by multiple people on one ps5, it skews the numbers

 

[viveks86]

If one sale is played by multiple people on one ps5, it skews the numbers

On average, not by a lot. May be shave 15-20% to account for that.

Still, I wish it did way more.

 

[Unknown?]

If one sale is played by multiple people on one ps5, it skews the numbers

But think of the engagement!

 

[onnextflix5]

Shame if this was on Nintendo consoles would have sold 20 million, the game is pure joy,

 

[RoboFu]

That's not enough

 

[mckmas8808]

Should be 10 times more

So 40 Million players? Are you serious............?

 

[Hero_Select]

That's it?

 

[Topher]

11.3 % of players have finished the level so have the trophy Bearly Rescued. Which means there's at least 4 million players for Astro Bot.

I don't see how this makes sense. 11.3% of players means players who have played the game. How is this 4 million player number derived from that?

Edit: Oh....so you are saying this is a minimum amount based on the rankings. Eh....this doesn't sound very reliable at all, but ok

 

[LakeOf9]

So 40 Million players? Are you serious............?

It's a fantastic game and that is the success it deserves. I know it won't get it, because of how the market is, but it deserves it. Yes I am serious.

 

[NeverYouMind]

1 million is too high. 4 million is inconceivable.

 

[DeepEnigma]

 

[The artful mincer]

1 million is too high. 4 million is inconceivable.

Eh? 1.5 million sales got announced way back in 2024

 

[DenchDeckard]

I hope it's a lot more. Deserves it.

 

[drganon]

1 million is too high. 4 million is inconceivable.

 

[mckmas8808]

I hope it's a lot more. Deserves it.

Do you all understand that this game was made by 60 people over 3 years in Japan? Meaning it definitely costed less than $40 Million to make.

 

[Hyet]

Very low for a first party GOTY winner with an extremely high critic and player scores with ton of crossovers in It. And thats not even sales. I don't think Sony Will be making many more of these as usual.

 

[dreamstation]

Seems awfully low for such a quality game. Must be a lot of people sleeping on it then.

 

[The artful mincer]

Huh? 11.


I don't see how this makes sense. 11.3% of players means players who have played the game. How is this 4 million player number derived from that?

Edit: Oh....so you are saying this is a minimum amount based on the rankings. Eh....this doesn't sound very reliable at all, but ok

I think it gives a rough idea of where it's sales are. What it doesn't account on the negative side includes

Used copies
Borrowed copies
Multiple accounts on the same console.

On the positive side it doesn't account for

Consoles not connected to the net.
Even slower players than me.

I would think the negative side is significantly higher than the positive side so it's safe to assume sales aren't at 4 million yet but over 3 million is very likely.

 

[Exede]

Imagine if they themed it with Mario and sold it on Switch this would've sold easily 5x more.
Sad thing PS5 gamers dont care much for these kind of games

 

[Ultra Donny]

That doesn't sound good if you account that huge install base.

 

[DenchDeckard]

Do you all understand that this game was made by 60 people over 3 years in Japan? Meaning it definitely costed less than $40 Million to make.

The budget or amount of people that worked on the game has absolutely nothing to do with how many people I think should play a great game.

 

[Kerotan]

Firstly Apologies for sounding like Microsoft PR!

Secondly there's some cool maths you can do to work this out.

The new levels in Vicious Void are timed and you get a ranking. If you purposely do a really slow time you get a good idea of the total number of players that completed the level.

You get a trophy for completing each of these levels. The game tells you the percentage of players that get each trophy. So assuming your time is near the bottom you can roughly work out total players

E.g. I took over 9 minutes to finish Hard To Bear. (Amazingly I'm not last) I'm ranked over 450,000.

11.3 % of players have finished the level so have the trophy Bearly Rescued. Which means there's at least 4 million players for Astro Bot.

Obviously I have to say players not sales because of used copies different accounts etc.

Spoiler

I didn't work this out myself I read about it online!!

I managed to get top 50 and even a top 10 in all those vicious void trials. I'd imagine I've dropped to a few hundred now though.

 

[BlackTron]

Shame if this was on Nintendo consoles would have sold 20 million, the game is pure joy,

Imagine if they themed it with Mario and sold it on Switch this would've sold easily 5x more.
Sad thing PS5 gamers dont care much for these kind of games

True but they are much better for having it in the portfolio. These types of games used to do better on PS1 and PS2, but the market segmented because anyone who cared jumped ship long ago. There's definitely overlap, if PS throws this audience a bone, they will want another one, and another. And a bigger audience would build up counting on it IMO

 

[Ozriel]

Since when is players the new metric for a games success?

Have you tried reading the OP before commenting?

 

[Tiago Rodrigues]

Since when is players the new metric for a games success?

Since buying a game isn't the only way to play them legally?

 

[BennyBlanco]

Very low for a first party GOTY winner with an extremely high critic and player scores with ton of crossovers in It. And thats not even sales. I don't think Sony Will be making many more of these as usual.

Ehh I'm sure it still made money. So long as they're not losing money it's worth it to pump out critical darlings and fan favorites.

 

[Hyet]

Ehh I'm sure it still made money. So long as they're not losing money it's worth it to pump out critical darlings and fan favorites.

It surely made money, but if you compare it to It Takes Two another GOTY winner platformer, it sold more in its first year (5M vs Astro's 4) and it didn't had Sonys marketing muscle, all the crossovers and it was a much more niche game requiring 2 players to play it at any time)

It being a multiplat did not account for mcuh since it was on gamepass iirc.

 

[Cakeboxer]

Very low for a first party GOTY winner with an extremely high critic and player scores with ton of crossovers in It. And thats not even sales. I don't think Sony Will be making many more of these as usual.

It's Sony's fault. They know they have to spend lots of money on marketing to sell their games, but they didn't. The only thing they did for the game was the Astro Bot console bundle which cost the same as a naked PS5 so they were actually giving it away for free. At least in Germany.

.Sony will be making more for sure, because Astro Bot is no 300 million 8 year to make game.

 

[Mr Hyde]

Astro Bot is a fun game but in hindsight it's a vastly overrated platformer that doesn't have the same relevance and staying power as the cream of the crop of the genre.

 

[Tiago Rodrigues]

Very low for a first party GOTY winner with an extremely high critic and player scores with ton of crossovers in It. And thats not even sales. I don't think Sony Will be making many more of these as usual.

It's not a huge IP, it's literally the first full game for the IP in fact. 4 million for a low budget game made by 60 people in Japan, the game probably made its money back on week one.

Sony was more than happy with these results. The Astrobot bundle was even released months after the game first released. That says it all.

 

[hemo memo]

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

Engagement post?

 

[Horseganador]

And almost 200 GOTYS.

 

[LordOcidax]

It's not a huge IP, it's literally the first full game for the IP in fact. 4 million for a low budget game made by 60 people in Japan, the game probably made its money back on week one.

Sony was more than happy with these results. The Astrobot bundle was even released months after the game first released. That says it all.

4 million of players =/= 4 million sold. The game had more marketing and exposition than the majority of Sony IPs, i am pretty sure that almost everybody with a Ps5 knows about this game. The game is probably at ~3 million sold, that's really low for what it is and the PS5 install base. The target audience for this kind of game is not there. Sony may be happy. But this game deserves more. Sony should bundle this game on every PS5 to change their user base mentality.

 

[Tiago Rodrigues]

4 million of players =/= 4 million sold. The game had more marketing and exposition than the majority of Sony IPs, i am pretty sure that almost everybody with a Ps5 knows about this game. The game is probably at ~3 million sold, that's really low for what it is and the PS5 install base. The target audience for this kind of game is not there. Sony may be happy. But this game deserves more. Sony should bundle this game on every PS5 to change their user base mentality.

Deserves more according to whom? If sales expectations are in line with the publisher, then that's all that matters. Did they make money? Yes? Good.

Also, these numbers don't really say much. This is all a bit of speculation. I don't even know how you removed 1 million copies like that.

 

[Hyet]

It's not a huge IP, it's literally the first full game for the IP in fact. 4 million for a low budget game made by 60 people in Japan, the game probably made its money back on week one.

Sony was more than happy with these results. The Astrobot bundle was even released months after the game first released. That says it all.

But it doesn't compare favorably to It Takes Two, also a new IP, GOTY winner that didb't have Sony's marketing and retail push:

It surely made money, but if you compare it to It Takes Two another GOTY winner platformer, it sold more in its first year (5M vs Astro's 4) and it didn't had Sonys marketing muscle, all the crossovers and it was a much more niche game requiring 2 players to play it at any time)

It being a multiplat did not account for mcuh since it was on gamepass iirc.

It simply seems the Sony fanbase is unable to recognize quality if it doesn't come in a movie package.

 

[LordOcidax]

Deserves more according to whom? If sales expectations are in line with the publisher, then that's all that matters. Did they make money? Yes? Good.

Also, these numbers don't really say much. This is all a bit of speculation. I don't even know how you removed 1 million copies like that.

The quality of the game, the exposition, the marketing, the Ps5 user base, The GOTYs… Etc etc etc. I ended up buying the game, and also for me the game deserve more sales.

 

[Tiago Rodrigues]

But it doesn't compare favorably to It Takes Two, also a new IP, GOTY winner that didb't have Sony's marketing and retail push:

A PS5 (75M) exclusive single player game that came out 8 months ago and didn't have huge discounts so far doesn't compare with It Takes Two, a cross platform multiplayer game from 2021 that released on PS4 (117M), PS5 (75M), Xbox One (60M), Xbox Series (30M), PC (10M active users on steam alone) and Switch (140M) and has been in discount for half of its life time?

I for one am surprised.

 

[tTHANOSs]

The game should have a nice sale this summer.

 

[Varteras]

Do you all understand that this game was made by 60 people over 3 years in Japan? Meaning it definitely costed less than $40 Million to make.

Every game is Spider-Man 2. This is common knowledge...

 

[__SteakDeck__]

Very low for a first party GOTY winner with an extremely high critic and player scores with ton of crossovers in It. And thats not even sales. I don't think Sony Will be making many more of these as usual.

Wrong! Hulst says the IP is very important and that family games will continue. Also. The game wasn't expensive to make. If Astro cost 60M to make and sold 2M the game most likely broke even. https://www.videogameschronicle.com...an-ip-for-playstation-says-boss-herman-hulst/

 

[__SteakDeck__]

Astro Bot is a fun game but in hindsight it's a vastly overrated platformer that doesn't have the same relevance and staying power as the cream of the crop of the genre.

 

[AJUMP23]

I need to play this and make it 4 million and 1.

 

[Mr Hyde]

 

[yurinka]

Shame if this was on Nintendo consoles would have sold 20 million, the game is pure joy,

But it doesn't compare favorably to It Takes Two, also a new IP, GOTY winner that didb't have Sony's marketing and retail push:

That doesn't sound good if you account that huge install base.

These MORE THAN 4M players (so can be 800M) isn't people who played the game, it's people who played a post launch DLC challenge level that people plays after completing the game.

Many people who played the game may not have played this level. Some people buys a game and never plays it, or plays only the first levels. Or got the game when released and didn't come back to play the post launch free DLC levels.

So there must be a pretty big percent of Astro Bot players not included in these over 4M players. We have no idea about its sales, but it should be the best selling internally developed Japan Studio game ever, or at least to be in track to achieve it.

We know the game has more than 4M players (not units sold), which could be 4.1M or 75M. It doesn't make sense to compare it to It Takes Two, since Astro Bot is a PS5 only game and It Takes Two was released in PS4, PS5, XBO, XBS, PC, Switch and way earlier (4 years ago).

Ehh I'm sure it still made money. So long as they're not losing money it's worth it to pump out critical darlings and fan favorites.

I think Doucet confirmed in some interview shortly after launch that the game was already profitable. They did it in almost 4 years with a lead dev team of just 65 people (addint the rest of the people, the game credits includes 514 workers). So yes, the game must be pretty profitable.