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The Future of Final Fantasy, discussion thread

Dardan Sandiego said:
Rebirth seems like a pretty significant step into the right direction in terms of gameplay, world structure and variety but is almost assuredly held back by being a sequel, a partial remake, not really a remake, and part of a convoluted multimedia compilation of media spanning close to three decades. If you aren't already part of the core target audience for it, it looks extremely uninviting and I feel they were never able to shake off this image. I constantly see people even in enthusiast spaces who believe that you first need to play several games and watch a movie for Rebirth to make sense which seems like a pretty big marketing failure.
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Would love to be a fly on the wall in the Square Enix offices when they approve the pitch "it's a remake but also a sequel and will be multiple AAA games." Even though I enjoy how the Remake trilogy is messing around with things, it just seems very impractical from a business sense. I can't see many other companies going for something like this nowadays.
 
Regulus Tera said:
I cannot post it because apparently I’m blocked by him, but Jeff Grub confirmed on Twitter that Pikmin 4 has sold more than Rebirth, which I wish were something I could show sales thread aficionados back in the 2000s.
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The PS5 exclusivity was a really bad decision for Square Enix.

I mean, we don't know how much money Sony gave them. Maybe it was enough that the mediocre sales won't hurt them.

Hypothetically if Rebirth had the Switch install base, it would've ran Pikmin 4 into the ground.
 
JorgenRaft said:
It's one of the best selling games in February for US/UK so "bombed" would be pretty unlikely despite Square's frequent overestimations for their projections. Not every country mirrors Japan.
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guess it being the best selling game of feb wasnt enough then. outsold by the titan of the industry pikmin lol.
 
Hopefully they can get a pc version of rebirth out sooner rather than later. It would help sales, I’d double dip, because I really enjoyed the game overall and would love to let it shine on my 4090
 
JorgenRaft said:
Yeah, it's too bad sales stopped after February.
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.... the game dropped 89% in its second week in the U.K. ... and every other piece of tracking shows it having bad drops in other areas too
I get what you're saying, but using legs of all things for Rebirth is something. Especially since Ahmad's statement about being about 50% of Remake was about current figures.
Best hope for good legs is a good PC port coming out by the end of the year.
 
AngryAlchemist said:
.... the game dropped 89% in its second week in the U.K. ... and every other piece of tracking shows it having bad drops in other areas too
I get what you're saying, but using legs of all things for Rebirth is something. Especially since Ahmad's statement about being about 50% of Remake was about current figures.
Best hope for good legs is a good PC port coming out by the end of the year.
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Oh no, its immediate legs aren't looking great but OP's original assumption was that it "bombed," which is more what I was originally arguing against. If it didn't break even after February, it probably will at some point. But yeah, the PC port will be the best shot at reinvigorating the sales.
 
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An episodic series has two points where it has a chance to be a big hit, the very beginning and when it's all finished, the middle is only going to draw in the hardcore long-tail players. Rebirth is an unfinished story at both ends, and they've been more up front about the fact that it's three games compared to when Remake was launching, which is good for the sake of transparency, but I imagine plenty of people hear that and decide they can simply wait until it's one complete full package. Not to mention some casual folks who don't closely follow this stuff may have been turned off completely when Remake ended how it did.

In short I do not think FF7 will be looked upon as a failure in the long run, but they have been spending the entire three and a half past console generations trying to figure out what the future of Final Fantasy should possibly look like, and I have a feeling they're not going to stop taking wild stabs. FF17 will probably be as different from 16 and 7R as they are from each other, but using them to inform their decisions.
 
Ripfeld89 said:
and I have a feeling they're not going to stop taking wild stabs. FF17 will probably be as different from 16 and 7R as they are from each other, but using them to inform their decisions.
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FINAL FANTASY XV, XVI and Remake/Rebirth should be enough barometers for Square to know what they have to do in order to make a nice FF game. There's no need to keep reinventing the wheel.

Re: Rebirth sales - the game has all triggers for it to not sell like a standalone game, which is a shame.
 
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The moment they are on switch/2 I'm gonna buy them. Currently I'm not interested on ps5 for multiple reasons, and my notebook is to weak for newer games...but I don't really intend to upgrade it.

I probably am not representing a mass audience.

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Downsize the production, figure out a new mechanical base that works. Seems as if rebirth is a solid one.
 
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I don't even know how to guess.
They got some things right with XVI, namely the char design and environments.
But the progress back to the roots needs to be much more robust, including turn-based battles.
 
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it's weird how the franchise was not only Square biggest game series during 7-10, it was THE biggest gaming franchise at the time, arguably even more popular than Mario with only pokemon edging past it

I really wonder what was the turning point from top of the world to being to embarrassed to officially show rebirth's numbers?
 
SpaceGodzilla said:
it's weird how the franchise was not only Square biggest game series during 7-10, it was THE biggest gaming franchise at the time, arguably even more popular than Mario with only pokemon edging past it

I really wonder what was the turning point from top of the world to being to embarrassed to officially show rebirth's numbers?
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Didn’t FFXV sell well though? Wiki lists it as one of the best selling, although multiplat now (I still remember the wild ‘betrayalton!’ gamer outrage over FFXIII going multiplat!) carries a lot of weight.

By May 2022, Final Fantasy XV had sold ten million units worldwide across all versions, making it one of the best-selling Final Fantasy games of all time.[138]
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en.m.wikipedia.org

Final Fantasy XV - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org

Is it really FF sales that’s the problem, or that the slightly-increasing sales cap is proportionately out of scale with the ballooning development costs of the tentpole games in SE’s leading series?

Rebirth seems like a weird case in that it’s a direct sequel that isn’t a good jumping on point (unlike most video game sequels- even something like Mass Effect 2 made it easy for new players to get on board and catch up, I still haven’t played the first one). It’s also the middle part of a trilogy that carries the weight of knowing you’ll need to wait a few years for the finale. It’s also only available on a single platform, and that platform isn’t the leading one in Japan. FFVII is an extremely popular chunk of FF’s fanbase, but Rebirth feels pretty exclusionary to any new players that aren’t already at least one game deep into it’s mythos.
 
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SpaceGodzilla said:
it's weird how the franchise was not only Square biggest game series during 7-10, it was THE biggest gaming franchise at the time, arguably even more popular than Mario with only pokemon edging past it

I really wonder what was the turning point from top of the world to being to embarrassed to officially show rebirth's numbers?
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I think one of the issues is that people will look at the current state of FF, and use whatever their personal criticisms are of the recent games as evidence of why they're not selling well.

If I try and remain objective, I think the issue set the series popularity is as follows:

- Square's release strategy sucks. You have Rebirth releasing less than a year after XVI, but years after Remake, so at the same time they're leaving too much time between instalments but also competing against each other for mind share.

- Their marketing in general is not very good.

- For some reason they pivoted XVI towards a character action design, despite this historically being a genre with a very low ceiling for sales.

- More generally, they haven't kept up with the rest of the RPG market. Back in the 90s, the only comparable franchise they were competing with was Pokémon. Now, consumers are buying games like The Witcher, Skyrim and Baldurs Gate en masses. Those games are redefining the modern RPG landscape, and Square in the meantime is off playing in their own bubble.

I'd argue it's exactly the same position the Zelda series was in post-Skyward Sword. It's not that the games are bad, it's just that the developers have refused to keep track of what the rest of the industry is doing, and have kept getting more and more insular with their design decisions, which means they're appealing to a smaller and smaller base.
 
I think they can do:

  • Be it a annual IP, only one game per FY
  • Be FFXVII an open world game with a combat system like an evolution of FFVII Rebirth but with its own setting
  • New FF Tactics with a mid sized budget
  • remakes of FFVIII/IX/X. Full 3D games with free camera, new QoL features but overworld map is the same
  • new Dissidia FF more faithful to PSP games
  • new Chocobo Dungeon with mid size budget
  • new Crystal Chronicles as an Action-RPG with city-building/management and tower defense elements.
  • innovate with new ideas for FF games
 
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JazzPotatoes said:
- More generally, they haven't kept up with the rest of the RPG market. Back in the 90s, the only comparable franchise they were competing with was Pokémon. Now, consumers are buying games like The Witcher, Skyrim and Baldurs Gate en masses. Those games are redefining the modern RPG landscape, and Square in the meantime is off playing in their own bubble
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I wholeheartedly disagree with this part.
The Witcher is a horrendous example in that the gameplay is maybe passable for player agency in the roleplaying part.

BG maybe fine, but it's a crpg with ridiculous options for roleplaying. In a good way.

Skyrim? Also player agency first.

FF was never about that, it was a relatively linear story, mostly turn based fun but not to complex gameplay.

While character action was a weird decision (then again, moving it into the for a while healthier KH direction kinda made sense), but simply making it a western RPG would be ...meh.

Take a look at persona, Pokémon (ironically), asano games. Just copying western rpgs is a bad decision. Maybe leave the pseudo adult drama of 15 and 16 and return to diverse party's and fun.

FF 16 and remake would habe been in my shopping cart... If they where not stuck on ps5.

In short: don't make it something completely else, but re-establish what worked. It had goofy, fun, worlds. A unique magitech twist. Spectacle in fights. And a lot of optional exploration trinkets on a linear story path to break the game.

They had a lot of great ideas with remake 2, now refine those ideas in a NOT trilogy, NOT remake game, not stuck on 1 console, with maybe slightly more fun/less seriousness in the characters (slightly, don't overdo it).
 
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FINAL FANTASY needs the Mario approach:
• Strong flagship game
• Diverse spinoffs

And I mean consistently, not the release mess they have right now
 
Aether said:
I wholeheartedly disagree with this part.
The Witcher is a horrendous example in that the gameplay is maybe passable for player agency in the roleplaying part.

BG maybe fine, but it's a crpg with ridiculous options for roleplaying. In a good way.

Skyrim? Also player agency first.

FF was never about that, it was a relatively linear story, mostly turn based fun but not to complex gameplay.

While character action was a weird decision (then again, moving it into the for a while healthier KH direction kinda made sense), but simply making it a western RPG would be ...meh.

Take a look at persona, Pokémon (ironically), asano games. Just copying western rpgs is a bad decision. Maybe leave the pseudo adult drama of 15 and 16 and return to diverse party's and fun.

FF 16 and remake would habe been in my shopping cart... If they where not stuck on ps5.
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I disagree on a few points here.

FF was actually noted back on the day for being one of the more flexible console - the Job system became iconic because it allowed players to tailor characters to whatever build/style they wanted. Yes, it became more restrictive as the series went on, but I think most would agree that at it's best, the Job system allowed for a great degree of player flexibility.

Similarly, while FF was never like Baldus Gate in terms of player choice, the older games did allow you a lot of freedom in exploring the open world, completing side quests, and sometimes even getting to choose main quests outside of a set order.

The point is that as time has gone on, other series have kept up with audience expectations and evolved to meet those expectations. The Witcher 3, for instance, is beloved because the vast majority of side quests have a level of production value rarely seen in RPGs before. Even minor quests were fully voiced acted and had interesting story lines. FF used to be the benchmark that other series had to measure up against, but it's now struggling to match the same production value and scope that those games now offer.

It's not about east vs west, it's about RPG fans expecting a certain level of production value and polish from their AAA RPGs. When games like TW3 offer huge fantastical worlds to explore, then cutting the world map exploration and having a hub and a select screen isn't going to cut it. When games like Baldurs Gate offer multiple ways to play a character, deciding to make a character action combat system and ditching the RPG elements isn't going to cut it.

The RPG market is more competitive than it's ever been. FF can't just coast on name brand anymore, they need to actually start reacting to the industry.
 
Square obviously would like FF to appeal to fans of God of War and Spider-Man. Those games

1. Are overwhelmingly combat and story driven

2. Focus a great deal on cinematics

3. Have stories interconnected over many titles

4. Have terrible level and mission design and bad character customization

But God of War and Spider-Man are selling in the 20m range while FF7R2 will be lucky to hit 4m.

Not clear why they are struggling so badly compared to God of War in particular. God of War was a whatever tier brand before 2018. I also think the new God of War games are just not good and have all of the negatives of the FF7R trilogy, but are much worse combat and story wise.
 
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FINAL FANTASY needs a consistent identity like the Persona franchise. The only thing FF had ever needed was to keep evolving its turn based combat, and they were doing it right with FFX, kinda with XII and XIII. I only played Remake’s demo, but from the few I remember, it was a nice evolution of ATB
 
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Dardan Sandiego said:


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lmao

I don't know I'm okay with it. The new gold/bronze-ish font goes well with the reds and oranges of the phoenix logo I feel. (Edit: watching the video it actually transitions into the old silver so I'm dead wrong on that!) That said what I really want is sparkling logos and splashscreens for all of SE's Studios, not just III. They should get on that with this new restructuring as there's no more opportune moment ahah.
 
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watching the Job Action trailer, why haven't they made a single player game that looks like this? I mean, sure you could say "just play FF14", but that's not the point

 
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