On June 2, it was announced that cumulative sales for Bandai Namco’s action RPG Scarlet Nexus had surpassed 2 million copies. In what can only be described as a massive coincidence, the date also happens to be game director Kenji Anabuki’s 2,000th day of self-promoting the game on his X account.
Released in 2021, Scarlet Nexus follows a group of psionics (people with extrasensory powers) as they fight to protect humanity from a mind-eating extradimensional race known as Others. While it took roughly a year for it to sell one million copies (this was largely due to the game being free on Xbox and PC Game Pass), reaching two million copies took a little longer.
Post translation:
As we announced at The Game Awards, Scarlet Nexus is currently being developed in full swing, and set for release in Summer 2021! To celebrate the announcement of the release window, I’ll be sharing a screenshot every day from today until the official date!
Anabuki has been posting about Scarlet Nexus since December 11, 2020 – more than half a year before the game was released. Though his initial promise was to post an image of the game every day before the official launch, he announced that he would continue posting until he reached his 200th day on June 28, 2020. On June 30, however, he decided he would “continue a little more” despite the difficulties. But it seems “A little more” meant something different to him, as he is still going strong five years and 2,000 posts later.
Anabuki’s posts contain a mix of official images and in-game screenshots, some of which were taken using the game’s Photo Mode. As some posts feature more than one image, the total number of pictures he posted likely exceeds 2,000.
For his 2,000th post, Anabuki thanked Scarlet Nexus fans, giving special mention to those who took the time to respond to his posts. Though his dream of creating a sequel goes as far back as September 6, 2023 (when he made his 1,000th post), he hasn’t given up on it and looks forward to fans’ continued support of the franchise.
On a related note, Anabuki is a massive fan of his own characters. Known as the developer who ran in full cosplay of his characters three times in the Tokyo marathon (once as Yuito Sumeragi from Scarlet Nexus, another as Kasane Randall from the same franchise, followed by Luke fon Fabre from the Tales of Series), he believes it is important for developers to openly show love for their creations, as it is a way to express gratitude toward players and those who love the characters to this day.
