Koei Tecmo has been a staple of the video game industry since its creation in 2009. Since then, it has hosted several video game companies but most notably among them in recent memory is the famous Team Ninja, the team behind smash hits like Nioh and Ninja Gaiden, and more recently, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty as well as Rise of the Ronin. Unfortunately, it seems that Team Ninja by themselves can’t carry Koei Tecmo’s video game division, as the holding company has adjusted its financial forecast after disappointing game sales as reported by videogames.si.
This is unfortunate, as Koei Tecmo, specifically their star developer Team Ninja, create quality games. However, since Nioh 2 one could argue that Team Ninja has struggled to match Nioh 2 in terms of uniqueness as well as quality. While last year’s Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty was an interesting direction to take their games, it wasn’t received as well as smash hit Nioh 2 critically. That reception may have impacted their more recent release, Rise of the Ronin, which was released this year and all evidence points to it slightly underperforming financially, even though it was quite unique and very good in its own right. While Rise of the Ronin was the talk of the town for a short while, Capcom’s Dragon’s Dogma 2 quickly became the go-to open world game to discuss.
Though in that case one could argue that, quality aside, exclusivity hurt Rise of the Ronin more than anything. Rise of the Ronin released exclusively for Sony’s Playstation 5, a console not many people own, which drastically cut down the width of the net Rise of the Ronin was casting. No doubt once the game become a multiplatform game it’ll begin to see a rise in numbers, but sadly in regards to Koei Tecmo’s financial report that’s not what they’re concerned about.