I feel Sega was building up to Banana Rumble with the release of two lower-budget remasters before the release of Banana Rumble, which had significantly more effort put into it as a brand new game, with a much larger development team.
Including publishing staff, 553 people were involved with Banana Rumble's development – 200 more than Banana Mania!
And the Nintendo exclusivity is probably a byproduct of Banana Mania seemingly selling most of its copies on Switch, which bore out in the UK despite that country not being a strong market for Switch (Switch only surpassed Xbox One sales in late 2022):
- In October 2021, a busier period for game releases, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania, charted at number 8, selling 70% of its copies on Switch.
- Sega pens what I suspect is a exclusivity deal with Nintendo for Banana Mania's 2024 release. This leads to Nintendo marketing the game in a Nintendo Direct designed to showcase third party content. There is evidence that suggests Nintendo also helped out with distribution of the physical version in Europe.
- Banana Rumble releases to weaker sales in an already quiet period for new releases, charting at number 16 in the UK. According to Chris Dring, games only need to sell a few thousand copies in the summer to make it into the top ten, let alone the top 20.
- In Japan, Banana Rumble's performance is similarly weak to previous games. Assuming a generous digital tie ratio of 50%, 3000 copies were sold at debut across both physical and digital formats.
- In North America, Banana Rumble seems to have shifted between 1000 and 2000 copies via Amazon. Yet the Switch version of Unicorn Overlord, a game released in March, has sold between 5000 and 6000 copies in the last four weeks. Yes, Banana Rumble has only been out for two weeks, but these figures suggest it's selling slower than the months-old strategy RPG. Not a great sign if you ask me.
While the exclusivity deal with Nintendo probably covered much of the game's development, distribution and marketing costs, I think the performance of Banana Rumble is likely going to give Sega pause as to whether they continue investing in the series.
We might see an adjacent title crop up on Apple Arcade, similar to what happened with Samba de Amigo, but I wouldn't be surprised if Banana Rumble underperformed relative to Sega's own expectations, and that will hurt the franchise's future if true.
I was expecting the game to do better as a Switch exclusive pushed to the audience, but maybe it just seems like there are more Super Monkey Ball fans than there actually are. The game's good – if not remarkable – and a quality effort from Sega, it's a little sad seeing a debut like this.
Posted by LightPad
12 Comments
Had no idea there was a brand-new game or the fact it was already released.
I loved the original on GameCube, but didn’t care for Banana Blitz (or the original Wii release)
Banana Blitz, Banana Rumble, Banana Mania. These titles are too similar and interchangeable to be useful in marketing. Most people seeing the new title in a store (B&M or eshop) will probably not even notice it is a new title.
I am fine with the series disappearing. I paid full price for the last Monkey Ball expecting it to play similar to the GameCube version and it sucked. No chance I will buy a MB title ever again
No Monkey Target, no sale. It’s really that simple.
Performance amongst the naming convention is killing it.
If this truly is the end then I think the ultimate death of the series will be the fact that they haven’t put out a great game in almost 20 years.
The original game on the Gamecube is one of my favourite games of all time. I didn’t think the second one was *quite* as good but it’s still great. There was a GBA game that was surprisingly solid for the platform followed by the port of 1 & 2 to Xbox & PS2.
That was 2005. Since then, it’s been 19 years of games that are alright at best.
When they finally did the remake of 1 & 2 a few years ago, I pre-ordered the deluxe edition because I was so excited and it… wasn’t good.
I feel like if that remake was good, it could’ve given that series the shot in the arm it needed but instead, a lot of people seemed to just feel burned by it. I know I did and that feeling has not inspired me to go out and buy this new one at full price.
My guess is that if the sales are that bad, that Sega won’t wait too long to release the game on pc and other platforms.
It’s really surprising that the new MB game is switch only because they said not too Long ago they wouldn’t make exclusives anymore due to lower sales potential.
And MB proves that.
I recently bought Unicorn overload cause it went on sale for $30. Similarly this would be an instant buy at that price.
If only they could just release a fucking normal monkey ball game
This is sad to hear, I saw the Banana Rumble trailer recently, so I went and got Banana Mania cause wanted to play the remakes/originals first. After I’ve finished Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, I’m gonna jump on Super Monkey Ball!
It’s a real shame because Banana Rumble is actually really good, with some fans arguing it could as well be the proper Super Monkey Ball 3 we never got. Sega fumbled the marketing hard on this, making it seem the focus was the multiplayer aspect which ended up being the worst part of the experience, while having a very solid main campaign.
It’s unfortunate. I’ve been enjoying banana rumble. I think the names are getting too confusing by having “banana” in every title… and I also think the previous two were… not good. Mania was such a missed step, when it had everything going for it.