What is the BEST SELLING METROIDVANIA?

“before reading, it’s important to understand that on the best of days finding official sales data is difficult. There are some publicly traded companies like Nintendo that might officially releasing sales information during a quarterly earnings report or you might get an official statement from the development studio announcing a sales milestone. Both of these options are few and far between and even in these “best case scenarios”, there is usually large gaps of time between these official statements, which means that sometimes we can extrapolate based on trajectory and popularity. These are by no means concrete numbers, but it can be fun to take what information we know and create some educated conclusions”

With Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown taking the series in to the “premium” Metroidvania genre, it got me thinking: What is the best selling Metriodvania of all time? It also made me wonder about the sales expectations that Ubisoft might have for the return of the series?

The average price for the genre probably would fall somewhere between 20-30 dollars, making the “premium” Metrodivania an endangered species. The only other “premium” Metroidvania that comes to mind is Metroid and one would assume that Ubisoft is basing Lost Crown sales roughly from Metroid Dread, due to its recency. Im not sure if Nintendo view Metroid Dread as a success, but it did become the best selling entry of the series with a little over three million within about a year of release. It’s likely around 3.5 million as of now if we were to keep extrapolating the sales data.

Due to the nature of sales data, this is by no means an exact science, but can help give us a better idea in general and since the waters are already murky enough, we are only going to be focusing on 2D Metroidvanias as opposed to 3D. Most 3D Metroidvania’s aren’t referred to as such and would include the Arkham series with Batman Arkham City at around 12.5, Control at around 3 million, Metroid Prime with 2.8 million and Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order that amassed over 20 million. On the 2D side of things, you could also include games like Dead Cells with over 10 million, but it’s definitely not a traditional Metroidvania.

When it comes to traditional 2D Metroidvania, Hollow Knight is likely the best selling of the genre with 2.8 million as of February 2019. It’s safe to assume that those sales have likely doubled with how much the cult status for that game has grown with the anticipation of Silksong, more and more people have the chance to see what all the hype is about.

Looking at the best selling 2D Metroidvania with sales somewhere between 4-6 million for Hollow Knight, I would go out on a limb and say that based on my experience with Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, the accessibility features, it being released multi platform and the name recognition of Prince of Persia, I would say that it has a chance at becoming the best selling 2D Metroidvania…at least until Silksong comes out and then who knows what could happen.

UPDATE - October 2024

After taking about six months to release onto Steam, many people viewing the price tag as too high for the genre, there has been a report that The Lost Crown fell short of sales expectations, whatever that number was. It has also been suggested that the team has been sent to work on other upcoming Ubisoft projects.

However, as we are almost at the end of the year, we can still say that Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is one of the best games of 2024. There was even The Mask of Darkness DLC that was only about five dollars that added about five more hours that was filled with original content. If you haven’t bought this game, it’s an essential 2024 purchase.