Friday, November 22, 2024

Astro Bot has outperformed ‘virtually every non-Mario platformer in a decade’ in Europe | VGC

Must read

PlayStation’s Astro Bot has had a better launch than virtually any non-Super Mario new 3D platform game released in the last decade in Europe.

That’s according to GI.biz journalist Christopher Dring, who has knowledge of the PS5 exclusive’s sales performance in the region, including both physical and digital data.

According to Dring, a month after its release, Astro Bot sales are currently 34% higher than Sega’s most recent flagship Sonic game, Sonic Frontiers, and 52% bigger than Activision’s Crash 4.

“Astro Bot has done better than basically every new 3D platform game in the last 10 years (Mario aside),” Dring wrote on X. “Its true success won’t be known for years, but it’s had a strong start for the genre.”

Dring noted that he’s not allowed to share specific sales figures due to the terms of his agreement with European data distributors.

Sony hasn’t released official sales figures for Astro Bot, but according to research firm Circana, the game enjoyed a “solid” commercial start in the US market.

“Across both physical & digital, Astro Bot ranked 2nd in unit sales in the US for w/e Sept 7th (behind only NBA 2K25), and the Astro Bot DualSense was the week’s best-selling accessory,” Mat Piscatella, executive director, video games at Circana, said on Bluesky. “Solid week 1.”

Astro Bot has been critically acclaimed, earning it a score of 94 on review aggregation site Metacritic. VGC’s Astro Bot review called it “the best 3D platformer in a decade”.

PlayStation and Team Asobi have announced that Astro Bot‘s free speedrun DLC will be released later this year.

VGC recently got the chance to visit the studio behind Astro Bot, Team Asobi, for an inside look at the development of the game, and the history of the franchise.