Capcom has admitted that Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, an action-tower defense hybrid that also represents a foray into new IP for the studio, underperformed compared to its expectations.
Per Automaton Media (which, in turn, cites a Japanese GameBiz report), Kunitsu-Gami received strong reviews from both critics and players, but failed to translate those reviews into unit sales.
Capcom blames this deficiency on "insufficient marketing and the failure to generate buzz prior to release", as Automaton says. In essence, not enough was done to let people know what exactly Kunitsu-Gami was before release, and that's never going to help unit sales.
The studio certainly isn't wrong when it comes to Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess' critical performance. The game has an 82 critic average on OpenCritic, with 90% of critics recommending it, and it enjoys scores in the 80-85 range across all three current-gen platforms on Metacritic as well.
Users also seem to have broadly positive opinions about the game. It currently has a 91% Very Positive rating on Steam across 1,149 reviews (at time of writing), so it's clear that those who are playing Kunitsu-Gami are enjoying it.
Unfortunately, it's often the case that critically-acclaimed games that exist within a particular niche can't drum up sales. Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess might be a tough sell for a lot of players; it's an action-tower defense hybrid, and it's not easy to see exactly what kind of game it is from screenshots, either.
Still, in the GameBiz report (for which we're using machine translation), Capcom says it intends to continue promoting Kunitsu-Gami in order to achieve its initial sales target, although it wasn't clear about what that target actually is.
Although sales of Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess were apparently lackluster, Capcom says games like Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster and Ace Attorney Investigations Collection have been selling as expected.
Additionally, the company is currently gearing up for the release of Monster Hunter Wilds in February, and if its beta performance is anything to go by, that game is likely to provide a massive boost to Capcom's finances when it's released.
If you'd like to see what Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is all about, you can check the game out right now on PC via Steam, as well as on PlayStation and Xbox.
