I feel Sega was building up to Banana Rumble with the release of two lower-budget remasters before the release of Banana Rumble, which had significantly more effort put into it as a brand new game, with a much larger development team.
Including publishing staff, 553 people were involved with Banana Rumble's development – 200 more than Banana Mania!
And the Nintendo exclusivity is probably a byproduct of Banana Mania seemingly selling most of its copies on Switch, which bore out in the UK despite that country not being a strong market for Switch (Switch only surpassed Xbox One sales in late 2022):
- In October 2021, a busier period for game releases, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania, charted at number 8, selling 70% of its copies on Switch.
- Sega pens what I suspect is a exclusivity deal with Nintendo for Banana Mania's 2024 release. This leads to Nintendo marketing the game in a Nintendo Direct designed to showcase third party content. There is evidence that suggests Nintendo also helped out with distribution of the physical version in Europe.
- Banana Rumble releases to weaker sales in an already quiet period for new releases, charting at number 16 in the UK. According to Chris Dring, games only need to sell a few thousand copies in the summer to make it into the top ten, let alone the top 20.
- In Japan, Banana Rumble's performance is similarly weak to previous games. Assuming a generous digital tie ratio of 50%, 3000 copies were sold at debut across both physical and digital formats.
- In North America, Banana Rumble seems to have shifted between 1000 and 2000 copies via Amazon. Yet the Switch version of Unicorn Overlord, a game released in March, has sold between 5000 and 6000 copies in the last four weeks. Yes, Banana Rumble has only been out for two weeks, but these figures suggest it's selling slower than the months-old strategy RPG. Not a great sign if you ask me.
While the exclusivity deal with Nintendo probably covered much of the game's development, distribution and marketing costs, I think the performance of Banana Rumble is likely going to give Sega pause as to whether they continue investing in the series.
We might see an adjacent title crop up on Apple Arcade, similar to what happened with Samba de Amigo, but I wouldn't be surprised if Banana Rumble underperformed relative to Sega's own expectations, and that will hurt the franchise's future if true.
I was expecting the game to do better as a Switch exclusive pushed to the audience, but maybe it just seems like there are more Super Monkey Ball fans than there actually are. The game's good – if not remarkable – and a quality effort from Sega, it's a little sad seeing a debut like this.
by LightPad