Given the huge drop in sales between those two games and how much the world has changed since, it doesn’t make sense for Koei Tecmo to bother with western markets.
Selling 80,000 copies of Xtreme and 30,000 copies of Xtreme 2 in a continent of 750 million people is abysmal. The comparison is even less favorable: Europe is a continent of nearly 4 million square miles, 50 countries and has a population of almost 750 million people. So yes, while Koei Tecmo can sell more in North America, it’s still just not worth the publisher’s time or money to actually do so. After all, it sold more, right? Well, take a moment to consider that while Japan is a single country of 145,000 square miles and 126 million people, North America is an entire continent of nearly 10 million square miles, made up of 23 different countries and has a population of 565 million people. Simply put, it costs a lot more to market and distribute a game in North America than it does in Japan it’s not a 1:1 comparison of sales figures. Xtreme 2 has sold just 0.25 million worldwide to date, less than half of what Xtreme Beach Volleyball sold. The ratios by territory are roughly the same, but the numbers are much lower for each.Īt first glance, you’d think that means that North America is the obvious market for the game. Here’s the breakdown by territory:īy the time we get to 2006’s Dead or Alive Xtreme 2, the numbers drop precipitously. It’s simply not worth Koei Tecmo’s time or money to properly localize, promote and print the game for the western market when time and time again that market has proven unreachable.Īccording to VGChartz, 2003’s Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball has sold 0.59 million copies worldwide to date. There’s a real cultural barrier here to take into account, but what really matters to Koei Tecmo is that those attitudes translate to poor sales figures. No, despite what Play-Asia or even Koei Tecmo says, the real reason Xtreme 3 isn’t coming to the West is that there just isn’t a market for games of this type here in the US the way there is in Japan. It’s shameless pandering and nothing We would never forget about boobs. That’s nothing more than a cheap marketing ploy from Play-Asia, who stands to gain the most by puffing out its chest and rushing to the defense of upset fans by reminding them that importing is always an option. Of course, you could argue impotently like importer Play-Asia did recently that Koei Tecmo’s decision is the fault of “social justice warriors,” but that’s not at all the reason the game isn’t going to be released in the West. So don’t worry, Team Ninja and Koei Tecmo aren’t just suddenly uncomfortable with the idea of making a sexy game where sexy ladies do sexy stuff like this: In the same year, producer Yosuke Hayashi bragged about going “hands-on” with women’s breasts to properly model the bounce and jiggle for Dead or Alive 5, and responded to allegations of sexism by claiming nothing more than a mission to create “the cutest chicks in video games.” In a 2012 interview with Gamasutra about the developer’s then-upcoming Dead or Alive 5, game director Yohei Shimbori even described a request from his overseas office to “tone down the sexiness” and instead upped the breast size of female characters.
Dead or alive xtreme 3 full#
Xtreme 3 will be releasing a full decade after Xtreme 2 went on sale, and in that time, the game industry - and the world around it - has undeniably seen some dramatic changes that Team Ninja has rejected. Naturally, everyone’s been focusing on the statement the publisher gave fearing backlash in a climate sensitive to the treatment of women in gaming, but there’s really only one reason the game isn’t coming to the West: it won’t sell. There’s been a surprising amount of controversy recently surrounding publisher Koei Tecmo’s decision not to release its upcoming babes-in-bikinis volleyball game Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 outside of Japan.
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