While both Marvelous and the official Story of Seasons Twitter did not mention anything this week, Story of Seasons character designer Igusa Matsuyama revealed via their blog that the latest game, Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town, crossed the 200,000 sales milestone as of February 15, 2020. The sales milestone includes both physical and digital sales, and Matsuyama congratulated the producer and staff of the title for reaching the milestone.
In Marvelous’ investors’ meeting in late January 2020, it was only mentioned that Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town was doing well in terms of sales.
Friends of Mineral Town is a remake of the original Game Boy Advance titles and released in Japan on October 17, 2019, meaning that milestone bloomed around four months after the game launched. Back in October, Friends of Mineral Town debuted at 66,193 copies sold, according to Famitsu. That was already a comparable jump compared to the title right before that. The spinoff title Doraemon: Story of Seasons, debuted with 42,230 sales.
As for the previous mainline title, Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns, that game debuted with 100,319 sales in Japan, although it must be kept in mind that these are Media Create figures. The discrepancy in debut numbers between mainline games likely comes from the fact that Trio of Towns was an entirely original game, compared to Friends of Mineral Town being a remake. There’s also the difference between the platforms: 3DS vs Switch.
Compared to the original Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, according to Famitsu sales data compiled via Game Data Library, the lifetime recorded sales (during the weeks it ranked in Famitsu) is 161,430, meaning that the remake may have already surpassed the sales of the original game. If you factor in lifetime (charted) sales of More Friends of Mineral Town as well, 108,362, the Mineral Town games sold around 269,792 copies, and the remake that combines both might just surpass this figure in the coming future.
Matsuyama left a cute little image celebrating the milestone in their blog, with a cartoon version of their dog dressed as Pete.
Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town is available on Nintendo Switch in Japan. It will eventually be released worldwide by XSEED Games. Check out an interview with Igusa Matsuyama in our previous post here.
