PlatinumGames designer Atsushi Inaba has been speaking to EDGE Magazine about Infinite Space in it's latest issue.

“The biggest problem with Infinite Space was when SEGA undershipped the game and it sold out instantly! We lost the chance for a bunch of sales! Honestly, the reason that Infinite Space failed… It’s not right to say that it failed, because from another angle this is actually its greatest success: during production the scenario kept getting bigger and bigger, and so the ROM size started getting bigger, and the schedule got stretched as we added more and more. But in the end that’s what people loved about that game. So it’s difficult to separate the success and failure of that title, because they’re one and the same thing.” - Atsushi Inaba

The game sold under 40,000 units in its first week in Japan, and didn’t sell too well in North America also. It seems to me dear old Sega came close to ruining the future of two of their titles. Thankfully Bayonetta's overt quality has endured enough for Nintendo to take on a new game in the franchise, in contrast, I doubt we'll be seeing this game again.

http://nintendoeverything.com/102237/platinum-games-on-infinite-spaces-biggest-success-and-failure-which-are-one-and-the-same/

Always good to hear some inside baseball on Infinite Space, easily my favorite J-RPG of this generation. Too bad it didn't sell well, though it's not surprising. It struck me as the kind of game that, if released on a major console in the late '90s, would have been an instant classic. But released at the ass end of the DS life cycle after a glut of RPGs on the platform and with no marketing push, and few copies distributed, no wonder it did poorly.

It also wasn't well received by some reviewers, who I think did it a disservice in exaggerating its difficulty. The game is not extraordinarily challenging once you understand the systems in play. Admittedly, the game doesn't communicate those systems up front very effectively, but the information is there in the game for those who seek it out. I'd consider its true challenge level as about average.

Anyone who places character development and story ahead of systems in RPGs should definitely give Infinite Space a genuine chance.

@Wong_Fei_Hung: Thanks for making this topic. Always interesting to hear more about this game. I'm really glad that GB did a Quick Look of this game, as it was pretty much the only site where I heard about the game, and thankfully I was able to find a copy of it a few months after release at a Toys 'R Us. It was totally worth it, and I never realized just how few copies were produced.