Bravely Default Sells Over A Million Copies, Surprise Hit For Square Enix

By Joshua Murney Posted on July 31, 2014

For those who thought the JRPG genre is dead, think again. The Nintendo 3DS exclusive, Bravely Default, has reached one million copies sold worldwide, publisher Square Enix told Dengeki Online.

Square continued saying that 400,000 of those copies were sold in Japan, while 600,000 copies were sold overseas. This is great to see as the JRPG genre has been having trouble selling outside of Japan. The game sold 200,000 copies within the first three weeks of its North American release. This milestone has placed the new IP above the sales of modern entries in the Final Fantasy series, which are also published by Square Enix.

Bravely Default was originally meant to be another entry in the Final Fantasy franchise before being scraped and turned into a new series. The widespread success of the game has made Square Enix re-evaluate how they have been approaching game development. The company has said it wants to go back to making games for their core audience, rather than focusing on making games for customers on a global scale.

Bravely Default released in Japan on June 2012, in Europe on December 2013, and in North America last February. The success of the title has already spawned a sequel called Bravely Second. The game doesn’t have a release date and currently doesn’t have release date in the west, but if these sales are any indication of Square’s audience, I’m sure it will be announced soon.