I didn't know this game sold twice as much as the third...

[King of Hell]

I always thought the 3rd game sold the most, even though this one is my favorite.
it appears that DMC3 only sold 1.3 million copies while this one sold over 2 million...
what even surprised me more is that DMC2 sold 1.6 million copies, more than DMC3!!
the sales figures are in wikipedia.

 

[aka958]

No one knew that DMC2 would be a dissapointment to the DMC series when it was released. That maybe people get low expectations and maybe stopped some from buying the awesome third.

 

[King of Hell]

its true in DMC2's case, but I thought with all the talk everywhere that the third game sold the most, not the least.

 

[DreadnoughtDT]

The third game sold the least because people were afraid of something like DMC2 happening again.

 

[Darth Angelo]

I very nearly never bothered buying 3 because of 2 but decided to at the last minute out of impulse.

I too thought that 3 sold most but that a majority of them were not fans of DMC before. That most of the people who bought 3 were just getting to the series because they heard about how awesome the third one was from a friend.
I really must try to flush out of my mind this stereotype that most people who became fans of 3 were total noobs who hate the first 2 because they were different.

 

[aka958]

The third game sold the least because people were afraid of something like DMC2 happening again.

Did you just repeat what I said?

 

[Eien]

That's an interesting bit of trivia KoH. Good to know.

 

[King of Hell]

well, DMC3 was the most hyped in the series, I could pretty much hear about it everywhere, so it definitely wasn't people being scared.
only DMC4 sold as much as the first, & that one was released on PS3, X360, & PC.

 

[Chaos Raiden]

Another possible factor is that DMC3 has an incredibly hard difficulty. Many players find that DMC3 (the original one) was harder than the first game, which may prompted players not to buy this game. As a response to the hard difficulty, Capcom released DMC3: Special Edition, with addition of Bloody Palace and Vergil, with more balanced difficulty.

 

[Lady Nevan]

And there is a little thing... DMC isn't popular too much. Am I wrong?

 

[DreadnoughtDT]

And there is a little thing... DMC isn't popular too much. Am I wrong?

You're right. It's far less popular than most "mainstream" games like Halo and Call of Duty. Y'know why? Because people seem to prefer garbage over the true gems. Like... Take Metroid Prime Trilogy. Three absolutely GORGEOUS games for the Wii. And they got game of the year, too. Yet they sold pretty poorly. Only just enough to garner a couple sequels.

My point being, people like the easy, crappy games over the games that don't hold your hand. It's the bitter truth as well. ;_;