Fire Emblem Fates Owes Its Existence to Awakening
You would think that based on the popularity of its characters that Fire Emblem has been one of the strongest franchises in Nintendo’s lineup. But that’s not the case at all. In fact, Fire Emblem at one time didn’t even transfer over to the states. Then it slowly began to trickle over. However, the franchise rarely got the sales Nintendo wanted. Then Marth and Roy were put in Super Smash Bros. Melee, Ike was added in Brawl, and then Robin and Lucina in the recent versions for Wii U and 3DS. But it wasn’t until Awakening, the most recent version of the game, that the series got the numbers Nintendo was hoping for.
In the recent Iwata Asks, Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata talked with the team about Fire Emblem Fates, and how it’s creation was not a guarantee:
“Hatano-san, who was working as the head of the sales department, he said ‘The Emblem series isn’t making the numbers, so this is going to be the last one.’ And the [development team] members said ‘This is going to be the last one, so let’s put in everything we want so we don’t have any regrets.’ Then we had a big list of different things, ‘I want to do this’ and ‘I wanna do this,’ and the result was Awakening.”
That game went on to sell millions of copies worldwide, a big bulk of it in the US and other regions. And so work began on Fates, much to the surprise of the Intelligent Systems team:
“We asked, ‘Huh? I thought this was supposed to be the last one?’ And [Hatano] said, ‘Of course. That’s how Sales works. If something sells, we start asking for the next installment.’ So we talked to everyone at Intelligent Systems and said, ‘So, now we have to hurry up and make the next one.'”
So Fire Emblem fans can rejoice because they are indeed the reason the series is continuing. Fire Emblem Fates is due out for the Nintendo 3DS on June 25.