Wonder how that game performs. Is 1 million good for vision of mana
Trials of Mana Remake reached
1 million copies sold on Feb 2021 in 10 months(release date of April 2020).
Visions also looking to open at a lower number than Trials of Mana in Japan based on pre-orders, although we'll know the actual numbers next Thursday.
At the same time, social metrics before the launch is looking to be weaker on Steam as well.
Will keep an eye on CCU during the weekend as it progresses but it looks to be less than Trials here too.
Basically all early signs point to Visions of Mana opening decently worse than Trials of Mana even though it is almost certainly a more expensive project(a remake vs the best a Mana game has ever looked in terms of presentation with seemingly more open environments).
No matter how you slice it, a regression like this is not good at all.
But really, I'm fairly sure that it's not really about the studio itself.
With giants like NetEase and Tencent, concentrating on their strength(GaaS, etc...) might feel like the best move for them and studios like this might just be a casually to shed some cost.
Edit:
Seeing reactions to the story in English, I can add one thing that is in the Japanese version of the same story: NetEase has been cutting staff at Ouka for a while, since this spring at least.