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In Japan, Knack 2 debuts at less than 1% of its predecessor

Where does the term Rabbits Land come from? Is it reffering to the videogame by Ubi?
Either the original Knack is a horrendous game or nobody played it in Japan when they got it fo free with their Playstation.
 

faridmon

Member
300k for First game? thats a lot.

Didn't think it was a title that would sell in Japan considering the lineage being western and the art style not having any Japanese aesthetic.

What gives?
 

Glass Rebel

Member
Where does the term Rabbits Land come from? Is it reffering to the videogame by Ubi?
Either the original Knack is a horrendous game or nobody played it in Japan when they got it fo free with their Playstation.

It's definitely the former plus a bit of the latter.
 

Jacknapes

Member
Knack was near enough bundled with the PS4 in the UK as well, many copies were sold because Mum's and Dad's (and some others) forgot to pre-order a game with the PS4, so places like GAME sold copies of Knack. I think i counted every other PS4 was sold either Knack or Killzone Shadow Fall.

But damn, them figures are just so low for Knack 2.
 
Without a huge marketing push i dont think its possible to overcome a sub 60 metacritic score from the original game, even if the sequel is alot better.
 

Ogni-XR21

Member
How representative was the demo they released for Knack 2? That's the only experience I ever had with Knack and it really did not sell me on the game at all.
 

Peff

Member
How representative was the demo they released for Knack 2? That's the only experience I ever had with Knack and it really did not sell me on the game at all.

It's one of the worst levels of the game, absurdly enough. The action/exploration ratio is generally in favour of the latter, and when it starts to shift in the last third both Knack's moveset and enemy variety are much better than in that level anyway.
 

MrHoot

Member
Maybe this will give a rest to the argument of "Knack (the first one) sold well so it means it's good!" whenever talking about this meme of a game. It is not my wish to bash the dev itself, all my best to them and to their credit, the second game is at least improved significantly. But whoever came up with the actual design of Knack, the character...eeh, better luck next time ?
 

Maedre

Banned
Loved Knack 1 but the Demo of Knack 2 did nothing for me. Without the Demo I think I would have bought the game.
 

Zafir

Member
I'm sure those 300k people who played the first one were disappointed enough to never try a Knack game again.

I did put some time into Knack 2 due to them mis-pricing it as free on the EU PSN stores. It's much improved over the original and is actually quite an enjoyable platformer, but I just don't think it was ever going to overcome the hurdle of the impressions of the first. The first game just wasn't very good, and Knack 2 doesn't really differentiate itself enough. Plus I don't remember much marketing anyway.
 
Knack is a terrible character with every character design in the game being terrible.
First game sold due to memes and bundles but it was terrible.
The sequel is less terrible but all around mediocre and not with experiencing

Memes might help in the West, tho. People like that $40 price tag
 

Ridley327

Member
Knack is a terrible character with every character design in the game being terrible.
First game sold due to memes and bundles but it was terrible.
The sequel is less terrible but all around mediocre and not with experiencing

Memes might help in the West, tho. People like that $40 price tag

It already flopped in Europe. NPD isn't out for September for a couple of weeks, but I wouldn't at all be shocked if it failed to make it to the top 10 PS4 games for the month, let alone the overall top 20.

Sony would have been better off donating the budget of the game to a children's charity; at least that would have been something kids wanted.
 

Shredderi

Member
Tbh, Knack is kinda ugly. The artstyle is very very bland and doesn't seem inspired, and the character itself is ugly as hell. That's not the kind of mascot that's gonna pull good numbers. I'm guessing Sony will be done with letting Cerny do more of these games. If they'll let him do another game it will have to be something new and... not knacky.
 

Nev

Banned
Was anybody expecting a sequel of a failure of a garbage basic ugly brawler disguised as a platformer to actually sell?

Why? Because it became a stupid meme in Neogaf? Well here's how much that helped.
 

pelican

Member
I'm amazed Sony has not revoked the free Knack 2 license via creating a NZ account & grabbing it.

As far as the game goes - played it for an hour. It was 'okay'.
 

Usobuko

Banned
I was wondering why I got a deja vu moment then I realized there was a thread made on Fifa selling less than 1% on Switch.
 

Kouriozan

Member
I'm amazed Sony has not revoked the free Knack 2 license via creating a NZ account & grabbing it.

As far as the game goes - played it for an hour. It was 'okay'.
Didn't need to make a new account, I waited midnight local time and could grab it on any EU store.
 

ODDI

Member
After playing the absolutely magnificent demo of Knack 2, I daresay it is a game every PS4 owner should have in their collection. It is a crowning achievement, not only for Sony, but for Japanese video game development as a whole. It is one of the finest and most refined games to come out this generation, with stunning visual design and the most fluid combat since Bayonetta. Knack is a household brand by now, and there should be comics, cartoon series and merchandise galore for it. Sony, please hear our cry. We want lunchboxes, t-shirts, sweaters and coffee mugs with your new mascot.
And this is how Knack 3 was made.
 

Synth

Member
Now is the perfect time for a sequel to Ryse, right guys?

I honestly don't think a Ryse sequel would perform anywhere near as badly. Both games received plenty of criticism for their gameplay, but Ryse's presentation was at least near universally praised, whilst Knack;s was the opposite.

Ryse also earns more benefit of the doubt for not being entirely reliant on launch windows and mass bundling, because it both wasn't bundled to anywhere near the same extent, and has over a million owners on Steam from a port a year later.
 

Tevious

Member
Also maybe now they'll release the original on ps plus....

Don't count on it.

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Toxi

Banned
Is there a worse, uglier, less interesting mascot than Knack? It's really, really ugly.
Uh

I was gonna answer with something controversial like Megaman or Mario just to rustle people's jimmies, but then I thought again and realized that would be unfair. Knack truly is a monstrosity.
 
It's the "Launch Fallacy" as I call it or "Brickwall Gaming"

When a system launches, there aren't many games to play. Let's take Lost Planet as an example. If you liked actions games, there weren't a ton of options when 360 launched. Lost Planet was one of the only options. Your options are low and depending on the type of games you like, your options may be stare at a brick wall or play Lost Planet.

Lost Planet is more fun than a brick wall.

At some point though, the library of the system grows. Fans of the genre have many many entires to pick from. Brick wall is no longer an options. It's just games. In a world where it's game vs game rather than game vs brick wall, Lost Planet couldn't find an audience.

I believe Knack is a brickwall game. When there's literally nothing to play in that genre but Knack and it's either play Knack or stare at a brick wall, wow Knack can do really well in the market. When there are games to play in the genre other than Knack, well people call a spade a spade and Knack 2 does 1% what it's predecessor did.
 

Mr-Joker

Banned
Not surprised at all, the only reason Knack 1 did well was because it was released during the launch period of the PS4 or was part of a bundle.

From playing the demos of both games Knack is well very mediocre and the character design is just bland, uninspired and just a poor man clone of Crash which is why Knack 2 bombed because the market was never interested in the series, thus making Knack a bigger joke than Sonic.

Not surprised. Red Steel on the Wii was similar - mediocre launch title that sold well, followed by a much improved sequel that sold really poorly.

To be fair unlike Redsteel 1 the second game required the motion plus add-on.
 
Hot damn! Being a PS4 launch title certainly helped the first game a ton. I'm envisioning a world in which Knack continues to see declining sales, but keeps getting sequels anyway because Mark Cerny wants them. Knack 5 on PS5 will finally be the game that's just an outright masterpiece thanks to continued refinement.
 
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