Vanillaware’s latest title, the sci-fi adventure game 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, was released for the PS4 in Japan on November 28, 2019. Two months later, as of January 28, 2020, Atlus has reported that 13 Sentinels has shipped 100,000 copies. This number includes the total number of shipments from the physical regular version, physical limited edition, digital regular version downloads, and digital deluxe edition downloads.

To celebrate this, commemoration artwork from Vanillaware character designer Yukiko Hirai has been released.

Debut Sales

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim originally debuted with mediocre sales at 35k copies sold during its first week, although Atlus had to send out an apology for shortages at online retailers.

Director Disappointment

In a Dengeki PlayStation interview from December 2019, the game’s director George Kamitani expressed regret at the game’s middling sales performance, stating that 13 Sentinels was sandwiched between big titles and that it’s also a game that’s hard to explain. This was conflated by the game’s difficult development.

Kamitani was sorry for Atlus but, on the other hand, he felt saved because 13 Sentinels has been highy rated by players. He said that, if word-of-mouth would grow and the game would sell more, then Atlus and Sega would be happy.

Kamitani’s wish would eventually be granted, as the game has continued to be highly rated by users and word-of-mouth for 13 Sentinels has spread. High profile game developers like Masahiro Sakurai have praised the game. 13 Sentinels ranked third in the Famitsu editorial team’s top 10 most popular games of 2019.

Continued Sales

Following director George Kamitani’s wish, Atlus apologized once more on January 14, 2020 for 13 Sentinels selling out at retailers and announced that regular physical edition versions of the game would be shipped sequentially, so if you want to make sure you can buy it, it’s recommended that you reserve it. These continued shipments would include the game’s first-print copy bonuses (indicated by a green sticker).

Since then, the game has continued to have consistent sales at retail. Via Famitsu sales data last week (from January 13 to January 19, 2020), 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim sold 4,329 copies with an 80-100% sell-through rate at retailers. This represents a 52% increase in sales from its previous week, and makes for a total of 57,681 copies sold through at retail.

[email protected] speculates that, assuming the game sold around the same amount last week at 4k copies for a total of 62k physical units sold through and a total shipment of around 65k copies, this would mean the ratio of digital sales would be around 35% for around 35k downloads.

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13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim was released in Japan on November 28, 2019. The game will be released in Traditional Chinese and Korea on March 19, 2020. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim was announced for English localization in June 2017. No Western release date has been announced as of yet.