After playing Ghost of Tsushima, Bart felt incredibly comfortable.
The ga's graphics were impressive, with so scenic views becoming popular photo spots for players. Recently, he frequently saw people sharing screenshots of the photo mode in Ghost of Tsushima on forums and Facebook.
So players, when adjusting the filters and certain areas, could even make the images look so realistic that it could easily be mistaken for real-life photos.
He saw so people, who didn't know much about video gas, mistakenly think these were photos of so stunning location.
He couldn't help but feel a little excited when seeing this.
Video gas could also achieve such lifelike realism—this made the future look promising.
The entire gaplay experience was smooth, and the enemies were easy to defeat, which was in stark contrast to the exaggerated difficulty of Sekiro. It felt like night and day.
How did Sekiro set up its difficulty?
After finishing Ghost of Tsushima, Bart found himself still thinking about Sekiro.
...
He thought that if the developers lowered the difficulty later on, he might still be interested in it.
Because the ga's action system was incredibly smooth, and it was obvious that a lot of effort had been put into the action chanics.
However, the high difficulty had driven away many players.
If the difficulty was reduced, he believed a lot of people would return to try it again.
What he didn't realize, though, was that after completing Ghost of Tsushima, apart from so morable scenery and the story, he was already beginning to forget about it.
He finished the ga, and that was pretty much it; there was nothing else that stuck with him.
In this regard, Sekiro, which he had refunded early on, had left a much deeper impression on him.
Especially the giant "Death" ssage every ti he failed.
Even while playing Ghost of Tsushima, the word "Death" would sotis flash through his mind.
This was very strange.
He clearly disliked Sekiro's difficulty.
But... it seed like sothing about the ga had unconsciously pulled him in.
After finishing Ghost of Tsushima, he almost imdiately clicked to uninstall it.
He didn't want to play the ga a second ti.
Because open-world gas like this were becoming quite common recently, and he just viewed the ga as a quick entertainnt snack.
Much like how he could eat a burger and drink soda repeatedly without ever getting bored, but wouldn't rember the burger or soda after it was finished.
Another reason he uninstalled it was because his console only had 1TB of storage.
Ghost of Tsushima took up over 100GB.
That was a significant amount of space on his console.
But the impressive graphics of the ga made it worth it, and Bart could acknowledge that.
Still, once he was done, he decided to delete it and make room for other gas.
After uninstalling, Bart aimlessly sat at his computer and opened up the gaming forum.
He then, almost unconsciously, clicked into the Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice discussion.
At this mont, the most talked-about gas on the forum were Ghost of Tsushima and Sekiro, both currently on sale.
In the Ghost of Tsushima discussion, many players were praising the ga, giving it high ratings, and saying how much they enjoyed it.
So industry professionals were even studying the developnt model of Ghost of Tsushima, hoping to replicate it and create their own open-world gas.
But looking at Sekiro, the most frequent posts were complaints and criticisms.
So players felt deceived because of the ga's high difficulty, with so even so enraged they smashed their TV or gaming consoles.
However, after the developers were inford of this, they reached out to a few randomly selected players, offering them a free console, a better TV, and, of course, a copy of Sekiro, in an effort to make up for their frustration.
This marketing tactic was well-received and helped alleviate so of the players' dissatisfaction.
But Bart thought that if these players were given another Sekiro ga, it might make them want to smash their consoles and TVs again.
If it were him, he'd probably feel the sa way.
Others criticized Gastar Electronics Entertainnt for becoming a bit arrogant, no longer prioritizing the players' experience.
They suggested that if they had added a difficulty adjustnt option, everyone could enjoy the ga.
Instead, they had left Sekiro with no difficulty settings, forcing everyone to be punished by the ga's brutal challenge. Of course, this made the players unhappy.
This only served to highlight Ghost of Tsushima's more player-friendly nature, which led to an imdiate surge in sales for Ghost of Tsushima.
Within a week, Ghost of Tsushima had surpassed 10 million copies in sales, entering the 10 million club.
Industry experts had predicted that a ga like Ghost of Tsushima could eventually surpass 10 million sales, but they thought it would take at least a year and a half.
Instead, Ghost of Tsushima achieved this in just one week.
This made everyone even more amazed by Gastar Electronics Entertainnt's marketing genius.
Looking at Sekiro's sales for the first week, it had only sold just over 1 million copies.
Considering the ga's first-day sales were over 3 million, this ant that in the following days, not only did the ga not see any sales increase, but its sales dropped dramatically due to the high number of refunds.
This ga was a complete failure.
Reputation, once damaged, is hard to recover.
Luckily, the ga's developer, Gastar Electronics Entertainnt, had the financial strength to absorb this loss.
Other companies would have gone bankrupt if they tried sothing like this.
It also helped that Gastar Electronics Entertainnt operated under an independent stock ownership system, with its president, Takayuki, making all the decisions. This ant they didn't need to worry about shareholders' opinions. Whether they lost money or made money, it was entirely up to Takayuki—no one could say anything about it.
This was definitely a positive for them.
Sure, these sales figures would be sothing to boast about for other companies, but for Gastar Electronics Entertainnt, it felt a bit lackluster.
Sales might continue to decline in the future, and many industry professionals were amazed at how Gastar Electronics Entertainnt had the guts to reveal Sekiro's real-ti sales. Most other companies would hide their data, trying to avoid embarrassnt after such a failure.
Bart could only express his disappointnt, but subconsciously, he still hoped for sothing.
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