If You Want The Last Guardian to Sell, Maybe it Should Be An FPS

Yes, I am aware that this is a joke.

Also, there is nothing I’d despise more than the news that The Last Guardian had gone the shooter route. I would never say it would make the game better, nor would I say developers should simply cater to the mainstream gamer at all times. That’s not the point.

I’m merely making an observation: Considering what Guardian is supposed to be (gameplay-wise) and what tends to sell extremely well in the industry today, making the long-awaited IP some sort of fantastical shooter like Titanfall would very likely yield much better sales results.

Can we really argue otherwise?

Would Shadow of the Colossus have any hope of outselling a game like Destiny today?

As we all know, the team that created the acclaimed PlayStation 3 exclusive, Shadow of the Colossus, is creating The Last Guardian. Well, presumably; we haven’t heard much concerning the specifics of the development team. At any rate, as artistically triumphant as Colossus was, and as beloved as it is by core gamers (let’s face it, casual gamers haven’t even heard of it), it would only sell the tiniest fraction of what a Call of Duty, Battlefield, or Destiny would sell in the market today.

And if Guardian is anything at all like Colossus – i.e., a more adventure/puzzle-driven game – then it’s only going to cater to a select group of gamers. Although I’m not a fan of the word “hardcore” due to the inherent subjectivity of the term, I’d have to concede that only the core gaming crowd would be interested in the concept. On the flip side, the shooter category often owns the sales charts, and by a large margin.

So yeah, Guardian as an FPS would, on paper, be a better financial bet.

The non-formulaic games have extreme difficulty selling as well as the formulaic

Shooters and open-world action games are the norm. Is there any high-profile AAA game on the horizon that doesn’t fall into either category? Titanfall, inFamous: Second Son, Watch Dogs, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Evolve, Battlefield: Hardline, Destiny, Far Cry 4, Sunset Overdrive, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Assassin’s Creed: Unity, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Batman: Arkham Knight, etc. Yes, a few of those are RPGs, but they’re also open-world, aren’t they?

There are a few exceptions, like The Evil Within, LittleBigPlanet 3, Driveclub and Alien: Isolation. But as per usual, the biggest games do appear to be following a set formula and of course, those are the games that will top the sales charts. It’s inevitable. The Last Guardian, if it is what we think it is, would have no hope of competing. That doesn’t mean it can’t be successful, of course; look at Heavy Rain, which ended up selling over 3 million copies and was deemed a huge success. Of course, that’s only a fraction of the sales of the Battlefield, Assassin’s Creed, and Call of Duty franchises, now isn’t it?

We have to be realistic. It’s true that Guardian would indeed sell a lot more copies if it was a FPS. There’s one big caveat, though: It’d actually have to be good ‘cuz it’s a new IP.