Astro Bot PS5 Sales 'Aren't Huge' in UK, But There's Still Hope

I think word of mouth will help the game and goty nominations. Also a lot of people nervous about spending due to length and the UK public generally having no money.

Doesn't help Warhammer also came out which is a massive franchise. I think Playstation execs are smart enough to know that Astro is meant to be an evergreen title to sell over the years.

Astro was made by ~60 people over 3 years. I'd imagine it will make its money back easily if it hasn't already. I expect a huge marketing push during Xmas given its family-friendly appeal. Lots of parents will be thinking "hey, something I could play with the kiddos" and will pick it up I think.

I think its going to do well over time but i think it will very much be a slow burner in sales. Hope it does well though as its brilliant and a GOTY contender.

Honestly, as good as this game is, I thought it was gonna be a 40 bucks game for some reason.
70 bucks is way too steep for me right now for anything less than Rockstar/ Naughty Dog quality (maybe scope is the better word)

I wonder what Sony will consider a "success" in terms of sales.

I'd imagine costs were lower than a God Of War so hopefully they are satisfied enough to continue making more games like it.

Christmas sales will help as a lot of people probably think of this as geared to a younger audience or will rationalize the purchase as a family gift. Besides, playing Astro Bot on Christmas morning around the tree seems ideal.

physical sales chart pointless ignores by sonys data 80% of the market which is digital

Got my copy for £50, completed it and traded it in today for £38, bargain imo!

Would be a shame if this ends up not selling that well. I think it'll get some pretty good numbers by the time the holiday season is over though.

I think digital is the majority of it's sales. Also would be a great holiday pack in game for kids.

All i can say is, buy this game. It's worth your 60-70euros. For all those complaining that the PS5 era is lacking in good games.. Well this is a fantastic game. Yes it'sonly 12-15 hours long, but DLC is confirmed.
Also don't expect the price to come down soon. This is one of those games that is always going to have a relatively high price because of the status of this game. I specifically remember waiting for Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart to come down in price, because face it, that game is only 10 hours long for 70 euro. But i bought it a year after release in sale for 50 euro which is not exactly a fantastic deal.

This games is so good, i really hope it sells big and becomes a staple franchise for PS. As for the Physical sales. I wouldn’t look into that too much. Digital sales tower physical these days. Sony tells us all the time over 75% of its sales come from digital. Physical is soon to be gone when it’s no longer easy to get the parts for the drives and stores stop carrying discs which in some stores is already the case. I am having a blast with Astro Bot. It’s my game of the year and i really hope it sells big numbers and we see many more of them in the future. To have Astro and of course Mario, i couldn’t be happier.

@DDDD I think this is just Playstation now. Even Spider-Man 2 and Gowr went on sale after 7-8 months digitally and they still don't go beyond 30% off.

I'm disappointed in each and every one of you. Let's hope digital sales are strong.

I'd actually say it has more widespread appeal than GoW or SM... because it appeals to kids, adults with nostalgia and whatever else you want to throw in there. Not every game has to be AAA 500M dollar blockbusters; the simplicity alone of this game cannot and should not be underrated.

I'm.suffering a fever atm, so if that sound very biased or whatever else, I apologise 🤣🤣🤣

Easily one of the best live service games I've ever seen. Well done Sony.

Saying "aren't huge" by comparing sales with R&C which is a well known long running series since PS2 era and it has much bigger fanbase than Astro? Like come on now, Rift Apart clearly will have bigger sales than Astro.

But it's just two days and i heard it's no 1 at Amazon UK along with Amazon Japan, US, Germany, etc.

At least it already sold much better than the catastrophical flop which is Concord.

I dont think the Uk and Europe itself is the best indicator anymore. Seems like many have checked out on gaming as a whole there. Sales have been demonstrably down since the start of PS4 for those territories

@breakneck which reminds me i still need to pick up Spider-Man 2 sometime when it's in sale again. Maybe at the end of the year there will be good sales including this one.

I will buy it. But my backlog is just too big to pay full-price when on Black Friday I will get it 25% off (at least I hope so).
And to be clear: I do it that way because Sony allows me so. If they would adopt the Nintendo model of almost no discount in the first two years, then it would be day one for me.

@McTwist This game is worth the $70 IMHO.

There is so much charm! Image quality is absolutely pristine! There are so many nooks and crannies to look for in each level to collect everything! The music score is fantastic!

This is joy in its purest form!

Plus, it's completely polished on Day 1.

It’s a platformer. Was never going to sell Spider-Man numbers.

But compared to other platformers I think it will do just fine.

It’s a fantastic game. And just makes you smile.

‘"It's certainly sold more copies in the UK in just two days than Concord sold worldwide," he concludes.’

Such a perfect quote. Future devs can know that no matter how bad your game sells, as long as you do better than Concord…

That said, Astro Bot is a freaking masterpiece, and I loved every moment of my playtime with it. Nowhere near getting all the bots and puzzle pieces, but I finished the story and will pick it up again in a few weeks so I can begin the hunt for them once more.

I WANT TO BUY IT, BUT I’M POOR!

Not surprising at all really

When you have subscription services with hundreds of games on and the games will be going to other platforms in the future then it will affect sales

@GamingFan4Lyf
You kinda got me hyped lmao.
I haven't watched any gameplay on purpose, so I've had to take people's word for it, but man... I'm kinda craving the game lol

Let's see what the total sales are like after Christmas, there's going to be quite a few parents who get this as presents and are probably waitimg for a price decrease first.

I think some of it is to do with the whole Sony momentum in Europe/UK this year.
It’s been very quiet really with no big advertising campaigns and sort of big brand PR compared to other years.

This is what happens when you have quiet times.
Also I think they are down about 5 million consoles wise compared to PS4 same time line in Europe.

Additionally everything is so expensive now a days, even with some shop discounts.

Amazing game needs to sell millions, I know it won't because most don't know quality when it hits them in the face. Because it's not open world crafting nonsense it won't sell as well. Unfortunately that's the demographic of so called gamers nowadays.

@OldGamer999 Yet Sony keeps increasing their prices for everything. PS5Pro in little then an hour will be announced at 700 euro non disc version.

I thought the point of propping this up was to show that it didn't need huge sales because it wasn't made on a billion dollar budget

I so hope it to be much higher than the 5 mil. But we need to get the full data. I think there were lots of pre-orders.

@PuppetMaster You missed the meaning in that comparison. The PS5 install base at the time of Rift Apart's launch is a fraction of what it is for Astro's release.

So yeah, it tracking behind Rift Apart is indeed worrying (though I'm not entirely convinced of the merits of reporting just physical sales in one country).

I think it'll be in success in terms of it's budget and expectations but it was never going to sell huge, especially on PlayStation where many sadly don't appreciate these kinds of games.

Personally I loved it

@DDDD
I’m in UK pounds
I think the discless will be about £530 ish.

My brother who only ever played the original FF7, and the annual Cods/Maddens has gotten it. He loved the Astros Playroom. So now all he plays is Astro, FF7 and FF7 remakes

@OldGamer999 I would take that, I think it is going to be £600 - £650 and it won't come with a disc drive, they won't even market it with one IMO as it will then mean a price tag of plus £100, £700 - £750 would be bad optics!

I do hope I am wrong!!!!

Astro Bot would be the perfect gift to get by itself or even with a PS5 or PS5 Pro regardless of the person age 🤩

I hope it sells well, but every time a game sells well and people post "of course it did. Make a good game and people will buy it", I simply laugh. It doesn't work that way. Quality has very little to do with sales, unfortunately.

It's a very niche title despite it being a great game. I don't understand how so many of you don't seem to be able to rationalize that a 9 hour, child like in it's simplicity and tone, platformer may not sell massively.

This isn't the Nintendo switch. Despite the enthusiast nostalgia, it just doesn't have massive appeal just like the next Lego game doesn't. It still remains a great game for what it is, it just isn't going to be a massive blockbuster in terms of sales.

I have been following the top games in UK on PSN for the past 4 days and haven't seen astro entering it once. So it's no surprise. However I hope that the sales are decent enough, at least judging from psn store review numbers you could somewhat paint a picture. Wukong has 92k ratings and sold about 18million copies with PC included.

Astro sits just over 11k votes and is on PS5 only. Compared to other recent games that are usually big like NBA and Star wars the reviews are like 5-6 times bigger than those games. Even the likes of space marine 2 doesn't have anywhere as close..

While we can't take it for granted, but it can paint somewhat of a picture.

Since it just came out on Friday, wouldn’t panic just yet. It didn’t get a full week.

Just because a game is great doesn't mean it'll sell well and likewise just because a game sold poorly doesn't mean it was a bad game.

As a big Jrpg fan, I accepted this a very long time ago.

Yep wouldn't expect this to sell more than a couple mill worldwide at best.
And this is why Sony and Microsoft don't bother if it hasn't got a gun or a racing car.

People that don't play Nintendo just want . A refreshing can of mountain dew, Doritos, sports and violence

@MrPeanutbutterz Are you denying R&C as a franchise isn't much bigger than Astro Bot?

Even when PS5 install base still small, R&C already has advantage with millions of loyal userbase from PS2 era who will support Rift Apart.

And i wouldn't call the sales worrying when it's just two days in one country.

@McTwist The game is great. And it is 60$/£ game, not 70.

I know it's a "good" game and all, but yeah... the overall child friendly aesthetic just doesn't do it for me, and puts me off quite a bit. I'm not saying I need every game to be "sombre dad vibes", such as Sony have been accused of in the past, but cutesy animals and bright popping colours everywhere just aren't my thing.

Looking at large player samples available from various tracking websites it looks like the game sold around 2m in launch week. I’d imagine that’s a super strong number. Seems to be about 3x as many people playing it on PS5 compared to the launch week for Star Wars: Outlaws.

Also, the comparison with R&C is an extremely poor one, no idea what he’s thinking. Rift Apart was a pack-in title and practically the only Hardware available the launch week(when the PS5 still 100% sold out every day) and this data tracks pack-ins as physical sales.

@AdamNovice Astro Bot never left the top 3 of “games in your country” for the UK since launch. Unless your UK chart differs from mine…

@PuppetMaster Eh, no, I'm not.

Tell me this - how does people being fans of the franchise since the PS2 games negate the fact that at Rift Apart's release in June 2021 was to an install base of about 9.5 million consoles vs. Astro Bot's release this week to an install base of circa 60 million consoles?

Astro Bot has a clear and distinct advantage here that (according to the limited scope of this article) wasn't capitalised on.

I am currently waiting for a sale as I have enough to play atm. Hoping it hits a good sale around Xmas as it feels like a perfect holiday game

If it doesn't sell well people have no right to complain that Sony aren't making a variety of games or "bring back single players games"

@KundaliniRising333 I'm not surprised by this, at all. Astrobot might be a "good" game, but it has 0 appeal to me. I understand Sony have to escape the "sad dad emulator" criticism, but this isn't an aesthetic I enjoy in games. As you say, just like Lego, (or SW Outlaws with its weird axolotl), feels like its pandering a bit to a younger crowd. Rather put some tyranids to the sword in Space Marine 2.

Always figured this game would be niche.
I reckon 1 million sales in it's launch window with a lifetime sales of 3. The price isn't helping, it might make sense with it's budget, but a lot of people don't see platformers as £60 worthy. (I'm still picking it up mind you 👍)

@MrPeanutbutterz You think Astro Bot have big advantage over Rift Apart just because current PS5 at 60 million userbase?

That's like saying Astro Bot gonna sell more than Rift Apart, at least 2 million copies in 2 days and one country, despite Astro is a very young franchise that only has 1 VR game and 2 tech demos.

You're not making any sense 🤦‍♂️

They should have called it Call of Duty: Astro and Soap.
I love Astro to bits, but it’s not cheap. I can see a lot or people waiting for a sale. Unfortunate, but understandable.

I'd have thought Brits needed a bit of joy. Whenever I speak to friends or family there they always sound fed up. No offense.

Good grief. Can't we give Astro Bot some more time? The game just came out last week. And you state yourself in the article this is for "physical UK sales for Astro Bot." So no digital sales numbers, and just one region, in less than 7 days.

@trev666 this figure is highly misleading and release period sales are always much much closer than this figure people keep quoting without context.

That figure is based on all games sold over the financial year, including all those catalog games that are on sale on the store and all of those digital only games. It doesn’t speak for release period comparisons. Over time the ratio over any given game is naturally going to shift towards digital. People buying out of print games on the store for a few pounds in a sale years after its release is distorting this figure

How do we know this? Uk and European physical vs digital data when that’s released. A clearer view of the ratio for this game will become available after the month has finished

@PuppetMaster It's literally got six times the install base to sell to in its launch week vs. what Rift Apart had.

And no, it's nothing like saying what you just said.

@breakneck Warhammer doesn't impact Astro Bot's sales at all, those are for vastly different audiences

@MrPeanutbutterz There were so little choices for the PS5 with games with a lower install base. When I got my PS3 I also had 3 choices for games and yes that made games sell a lot more because there was nothing else. How many sales did Rachet and Clank achieve eventually longer time discounts with your logic it should have sold 10 million plus?

Welcome to physical media in 2024, i will be your tour guide.

Jokes aside, I think most of this game's audience is digital since Astro's Playroom, its tech demo predecessor, was a pack-in game for PS5.

If Sony isn't selling a PS5, Astro and Lego Horizon pack in bundle for Christmas, they are missing a trick

they will bundle it with ps5/ps5pro, I was hopping for better sale numbers after the excellent reception and praise! I hope it does better in the long run.

@Flaming_Kaiser That has nothing to do with what I said.

This is why we can't have nice things

Tbf I know it's an excellent game and I do want to get it at somepoint, I don't know anyone that's got it or has any intention to anytime soon

If we want to keep getting games like this, people need to vote with their wallets and buy it.

Why should games developers 'take a punt' with something a bit different if game players/buyers dont do the same?!

I only saw 3 people playing it launch day on my Friends list but 12 people own the game now since Friday.
To put that in perspective, 5 months later, less people have still played Stellar Blade.
My estimate is that's Astro doing pretty decent.

Just finished it 100% with all the trophies too. Good game, really enjoyed it and it's not too long too. Managed to do it in about 15 hours of play time. There were many moments where it made me giggle while playing.

I live in the UK, and UK gamers have always preferred dumbed down games and what is perceived as cool such as Call of Duty, Gears of War etc. Even since the SNES days some of yhe very best games like Final Fantasy 6 were never even released here.

It has always been style over substance in the UK games market.

The game will be fine overall. People need to stop expecting everything to be huge over night. As long as a game is profitable and a company makes money all is well. And I’m sure they made their money back if they didn’t already. As the studio is small and the time frame for development good. Not everything is going to be big, life doesn’t work like that. This is why the entertainment industry is lame these days as everyone is chasing huge. With a 0 or 100 mindset in regard to success. We need more middle games. This just isn’t my type of game.

Turns out launch sales are 21% higher than Rift Apart. (Physical + Digital)

@CupidStunt is there something wrong with cool games ? COD & gears used to be good at one point

@nomither6 Until this gen with Switch dominance, unless a game is about violence it generally does not sell so well. Fifa and generic FPS 101 will sell better.

Gears has great graphics but the gameplay of a mobile phone game (and a vile toxic online player base), so famously wrote by Edge magazine

I loved Astro's Playroom, and I'm really looking forward to this, but it's very hard to justify £60 for this kind of game.

I know that games prices have stayed still for a long time, and I know high quality work should be rewarded, but on the other hand Dune: Part 2 cost $190M to make, and I can buy that for £14, and Astrobot cost approx $50M-$75M, so the increase in production costs aren't that decisive a consideration.

And the other thing is, unless you get swept up in the hype, it's always possible to just wait that much longer. If Astrobot had released at say £45, I would have pre-ordered, and even at £50 I may have bought it already, but now when it goes on sale at £45 in a few months, I'll probably think "hmm, I can wait for a deeper sale for a 9h platformer"