Fuga: Melodies of Steel sales tripled during its discounts during Anthrocon and Steam's Anthro Festival
CyberConnect2 CEO Hiroshi Matsuyama revealed the sales strategy and results for the Fuga: Melodies of Steel series in a Japanese interview with Automaton. He explained how his company successfully sold the games to the US' furry community, as well as the gamers in France. One of the successful examples was the threefold increase in the games' sales when the company put them on discount when the Anthro Festival was held on Steam.
The specific statements were precluded by a rundown of the distribution of digital sales for the Fuga series based on platforms and countries, which has so far surpassed 500,000 downloads. For the former, Matsuyama noted that the top two platforms comprised around 70% of the overall sales, with Steam leading at 40% and Nintendo Switch trailing closely with 30%.
As for the countries, the top four in order were the US, Japan, China, and France. And Matsuyama also provided more insights for countries outside of Japan. He already had the intention to have the Fuga games sell well in France by including a French voiceover option and having the region in the game's world based on the same country.
However, he found the game's popularity in China to be rather unexpected. Even though the games have also supported subtitles in both Traditional and Simplified Chinese, they are not actually being sold legally in China. It turned out that the Chinese players ended up buying the game via VPN through the US or Japan.
Matsuyama went on to explain how the US topped the country-based sales list by a wide margin:
I feel like the reason why America is so strong is because, of course, it has a lot of furry lovers. But more than that, it has a lot of game fans. That's why for the Naruto Ultimate Ninja, Dragon Ball Z Kakarot, Demon Slayer: The Hinokami Chronicles, and .hack series, all of them also had the most sales from the North American market. That's why America is a really big gaming nation.
Among all those, there hasn't been a lot of varieties of furry games, has there? That's why I feel like people in America are enjoying Fuga: Melodies of Steel—including its world setting—as a game with high enthusiasm. And also because we're self-aware of that, we also act on adding more fans with a clear strategy of regularly visiting events like Anthrocon, the American furry convention that has over 9,000 participants.
The first time CyberConnect2 held a panel at Anthrocon was in 2023. But regardless of our first appearance, we had 170 people coming to our side. Since then, we have applied to have a panel at Anthrocon every year.
When the interviewer asked whether that enthusiasm would also connect to the game's actual sales performance, Matsuyama affirmed on that with the following addition:
These are actually connected. When we held a sale for Fuga: Melodies of Steel during Steam's Anthro Festival, we managed to rake up a lot of sales. Anthro Festival really acted as a stimulus to awaken the originally latent American furry fans. The sales were up by 3 times, but those mostly came from America.
The annual Anthrocon event has proved to become a major outing for the Fuga series. CyberConnect2 held a reveal event for Fuga: Melodies of Steel 3 at last year's Anthrocon 2024.
This year's Anthrocon 2025 will take place in Pittsburgh on July 3-6, but it remains to be seen what kind of involvement the company will have here, as the third entry will be released eariler on May 29, with its season pass DLC roadmap also already revealed.
The entire Fuga: Melodies of Steel series, including the upcoming Fuga: Melodies of Steel 3, are available worldwide on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam and Epic Games.