It's hard to predict how well Death Stranding is going to sell, says NPD analyst
Death Stranding is a bit of an unusual game when it comes to sales predictions, because things could go either way.
Projecting the sales potential of Death Stranding has seemingly been harder than anticipated for industry analyst Mat Piscatella. The NPD Group's veteran analyst said Kojima's latest could either be one of the year's top ten best-sellers, or relegated to the top 20.
"The 84 Metacritic score suggests the game shouldn't come out on either a high or low end of the sales spectrum, but where it will fall? Very difficult to say," Piscatella told Gamedaily.biz.
"If I had to make a call, I'd say a top 20 selling game of the year, but also wouldn't be surprised if it placed somewhere else. As with everything else about this game, the forecast is something that's tough to wrap one's head around."
Piscatella collects the data the NPD Group publishes on the health of the US games market every month in its well-known reports, so it's interesting that even he can't quite pin it down.
Other analysts Gamedaily spoke to peg it at two to three million, or five million as the most optimistic prediction. Game companies rarely publish hard sales figures, but Sony has a habit of revealing sales numbers when a game is doing very well, so we may yet get something out it.
Death Stranding launches this Friday November 8 on PS4.