Last year, NIS America released DanganRonpa as well as its sequel, DanganRonpa 2, exclusively for the PlayStation Vita. By all accounts, these were niche games that should have, at best, garnered a cult following, and then sunk without a trace- they were visual novel games (a genre that has traditionally been unpopular in the west), anime styled (at a time when more and more games are adopting the western aesthetic), and exclusive to the PlayStation Vita (a platform that is dead, and has no retailer support in the west).
Instead, they went on to become unexpected critical and yes, commercial successes- today, NISA announced that the combined sales of the games in the west are now at 200,000 units.
“Combined sales of the first two Danganronpa titles – Trigger Happy Havoc and Goodbye Despair – now total more than 200,000 across Europe and the US,” NISA told MCV.
“That’s just on PS Vita – it’s quite an impressive number.”
It definitely is, and it warms my heart to see these games being successful. Both titles (the second more than the first, but the first was great too) are the most compelling game experiences I have had in a very long time.
The future bodes well for DanganRonpa in the west too- the action game spin off based on the series, Another Episode, will be launching exclusively on the PS Vita later this year. In Japan, developers Spike Chunsoft have already begun work on a proper DanganRonpa 3.
May it be every bit as amazing as the other games in this franchise have been so far.
