Capcom's announcement of a sequel to Ōkami came as a big surprise last year, not least because the original is notorious for being a commercial flop. But in a recent interview, Capcom producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi pointed out that Ōkami's reputation for underselling is no longer deserved, and because of that the publisher has wanted to do an Ōkami sequel for a while.
Speaking to IGN, Hirabayashi observed that while Ōkami did undersell on its initial launch in 2005, its various ports have provided a consistent trickle of sales across the last twenty years, racking up a total of 4.6 million units across its different versions. "I know specifically that people are still enjoying this game, just from the numbers. Normally when we look at games, the sales sort of slow down and they decrease steadily," Hirabayashi told IGN's Rebekah Valentine." But for Ōkami, we see that it's been a steady stream of people always enjoying the game. So in that way Ōkami is a very, very unique IP."
