thoughthaver
Chain Chomp
it's technically at a small fraction of its popularity already
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Sales Data Famitsu Sales: Week 9, 2024 (Feb. 25 - Mar. 3)
- Thread starter Luminoth9090
- Start date
what it has in common is the ability to pretty much go anywhere. but there's a good deal about FF1 that a modern spin can take from, which is what I'm getting at. sales are irrelevant, especially when trends ebbs and flows over time. what's popular now is player driven gameplay that allows for expression in some way. open world is one method of that, which early RPGs had, including FF, in some way. custom characters is another method, which, again, FF1 had with the ability to create a cast of Warriors of Light with any job and name.
I mean, they already made this, twice. both were very successful at it. making a more solo-able (and offline) version of this would be in line with current trends
Elementary
Tektite
Yes that's what I said in the original post. FF15 is part of the mismanagement, because despite being an outright success, it's turned a lot of people off of Final Fantasy.
Tentacle-tropes
Kremling
There are more believable reasons for why people are being turned off of FF such as limiting platform choice or designing the wrong type of game. If being really successful means people are being “tuned off” then it means the franchise has no viability in the future or has a means of growth. So I very much doubt this is the case here.
terribleidiot
Piranha Plant
^ I don't at all.
XV was the last FF game I played. I bought a PS4 to play it.
I won't do that again.
While you can cite Metacritic etc and sales, I really think there's a lot of people who bought FFXV who didn't like it. Or at least a lot who bought it and felt ambivalent about it. I guess the best metric of that is the NEXT games sales. The reaction to XV effected XVIs sales and the reaction to XVI effected Rebirth's sales.
XV was the last FF game I played. I bought a PS4 to play it.
I won't do that again.
While you can cite Metacritic etc and sales, I really think there's a lot of people who bought FFXV who didn't like it. Or at least a lot who bought it and felt ambivalent about it. I guess the best metric of that is the NEXT games sales. The reaction to XV effected XVIs sales and the reaction to XVI effected Rebirth's sales.
Elementary
Tektite
Mass Effect 3 did exactly that. ME3 released on Xbox, Playstation, PC and the freaking Wii U. It reviewed in the 90s and won dozens of awards and sold over ten million copies. It had a multiplayer scene that people still talk about fondly today.
It also tore out the heart of Mass Effect as a franchise before Andromeda buried it. It's going to take years of work for ME to get back to the prominence it had, assuming EA doesn't EA Bioware should the studio's next game underperform.
So yeah a game can be a success at every level, in every way, and and still damage the brand.
If FF7Rebirth has disappointing sales WW, if I was Square-Enix's president I'd at least try and talk to Sony about letting them release FF7 Remake on Switch 2 + XBox.
I mean realistically, what is even the benefit to Sony at that point, you're forcing a 3rd party partner to really hurt one of their major brands that they rely on whereas the Playstation gets some big 3rd party game like every month anyway, so past a 12 month exclusivity window, really how much do they benefit from forcing Square-Enix to not be allowed to release they games anywhere else.
Sony will likely be petty and won't allow it, but it doesn't hurt to ask.
Or you know maybe just retool FF7 Remake Part I with some improvements from Rebirth, dub it a "new" game and just release it on all platforms and then do the same a little later for Rebirth. What is Sony really going to do.
I mean realistically, what is even the benefit to Sony at that point, you're forcing a 3rd party partner to really hurt one of their major brands that they rely on whereas the Playstation gets some big 3rd party game like every month anyway, so past a 12 month exclusivity window, really how much do they benefit from forcing Square-Enix to not be allowed to release they games anywhere else.
Sony will likely be petty and won't allow it, but it doesn't hurt to ask.
Or you know maybe just retool FF7 Remake Part I with some improvements from Rebirth, dub it a "new" game and just release it on all platforms and then do the same a little later for Rebirth. What is Sony really going to do.
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You don't get to 10M with bad word of mouth
The contraction has more to do with NOT being like FF15. 16 is the opposite, gameplay-wise, so anyone who jumped in the IP because of the open world wouldn't have much reason to go back. Combat is also radically different, as well as story vibes
rick_C
Piranha Plant
Sony is not care about the profit in buying exclusive, they just want to make other platforms lose. They will only accept cross-platform plan if the exclusive cannot even make a balance. We can see this attitude in Microsoft acquirement of Activision: they reject the contract from Microsoft that ensure COD will be cross-platform. All Sony want is crushing Microsoft, but not money. This attitude is one of the reason that lead to their low profit rate.
Sony doesn't care about the FF7 low sales. The only thing they care about is some chip on their shoulder grudge where they want to dominate the console market and remove Microsoft from the picture. That's all they ever cared about. They never aligned their ship for sustainability and profitability; they aligned it for dominance. Now it may be too late to turn or too difficult to turn.
ItWasMeantToBe19
Manakete
Hey, I doubt it!
Tentacle-tropes
Kremling
So you’re trying to tell me that 15 is similar to ME3 in that it is a game which is a penultimate game within a trilogy. That people adored two previous games for & were eager to see the conclusion of; only for that third game to fall flat on its face in execution in quite a few areas leading especially the ending. Causing a lot of unease in the audience which led to a popular theory gaining traction & the studio in question even teasing it. Only to then 180 & release a bandaid of an ending. Yeah, I’m not seeing the similarities here nor seeing how 15 tore the franchise’s heart out.
Let’s not even talk about how Andromeda also fell flat on its face after initial hype. There are aplenty of analysis videos & articles there for why that failed to deliver what people wanted.
What’s really doing FF in is SE management issues such as:
- Limited platform releases
- EGS exclusive
- Missing out on Wii/DS/3DS
- Tying themselves up as Sony exclusive
- Poor PC releases
- Poor surrounding support
- Burying the Dissidia sub games
- Butchering the Crystal Chronicles Remaster
- Low quality output in stuff like Chocobo GP or FFExplorers
- Making games that don’t resonate with audiences
- The Crystal Novalis trilogy particularly parts 2/3
- FF16
- FF14 before they blew it up
- Taking forever to make these games
- This is one that you can point FF15 at
Which do you think is more believable:
- That ~7mil odd people were so turned off of FF from 15 that they refused to buy 16
- Or that 16 was a game designed for a limited audience further limited by platform choice
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your first metric isn't even measurable
ItWasMeantToBe19
Manakete
FF15 had a followup title that bombed pretty badly and Square claims that FF15's DLC sold pretty badly, but Square's reaction to FF15 has always been very odd.
Square livestreaming and hyping up the cancellation of the FF15 DLC was just fucking weird... And it was much weirder when KH3's ending included Nomura going on a long rant about Tabata ruining Versus XIII.
Have... Never seen that in a AAA game before.
Personally, I think FF15 really sucks and has the worst gamefeel of any open world game made recently (even worse than Assassin's Creed) while having a pretty bad open world as well.
Square livestreaming and hyping up the cancellation of the FF15 DLC was just fucking weird... And it was much weirder when KH3's ending included Nomura going on a long rant about Tabata ruining Versus XIII.
Have... Never seen that in a AAA game before.
Personally, I think FF15 really sucks and has the worst gamefeel of any open world game made recently (even worse than Assassin's Creed) while having a pretty bad open world as well.
- Pronouns
- he/him
It's really going to be interesting to see what the Circana numbers look like for Rebirth at the end of the month.
X on the other hand launched slightly inside/outside the first year of the PS2 in both territories and was probably seen as a "showcase" game for what the system was capable of much like VII was for the PS1 (and couldn't be completed in a weekend rental unlike The Bouncer). And mechanically the franchise had already excised many of the mechanics that soured people on VIII so while X was turn-based, it was probably more familiar to fans of VII than VIII was.
EDIT: If you look at GDL (JP retail sales) data.... VIII had a ~500k jump in first week sales over VII (which was absoultely massive if you look at VI's FW/LTD sales). IX actually does respectively with first week sales less than 100k short of VII. X is about 300k short of VII.
But yeah, it's been all downhill since VII/VIII no matter how you slice it, at least in Japan.
What I think the FFVII exclusivity deal (please note that as best we know it's only for the 7 Remake subseries and not the franchise as a whole) has to do with is nostalgia and specifically for a single entry in the franchise. Unlike Nintendo and even Microsoft (if we're being generous), Sony has done a piss poor job of managing their legacy IP. A lot of the franchises that propelled PS1 and PS2 to domination are either MIA or have gone third party at this point. Tekken, Twisted Metal, Jet Moto, Metal Gear Solid, Grand Theft Auto, Coolboarders, Parappa, Syphon Filter, etc.. This has been Sony's big problem since the PS3 era and it's been festering ever since and fully came out into the open this generation when they started doing things like shuttering Japan Studio.
Square-Enix is one of the few companies that's still willing to play ball with Sony about exclusivity. And as we've seen with each successive FF release that window is shrinking. But Final Fantasy VII was a massive joint venture for the two companies, and it cannot be understated how huge a marketing push there was for the game back in 1997. For a lot of people Final Fantasy VII is synonymous with Playstation. Sony wants Final Fantasy VII exclusively on their platform because it's a familiar brand for the Playstation players, especially those who are older and maybe want to relive their childhood or pass on the experience to their offspring.
This is one of the reasons that Nintendo has been so dominant, because people are always having offspring and there's a pattern where people trade in their Nintendo systems when they reach adolescence and then return to the fold once they reach their mid-20s/early 30s and are buying systems out of a sense of nostalgia.
But Sony doens't really have that luxury because they've failed to invest in their own Legacy IPs and isolating 3rd parties with their incessant push to win the spec war which has forced many of them to go third party to justify the cost of development.
IX had the misfortune of launching at the very end of the PS1's lifespan (the PS2 was already out in JP when it launched there) and followed a fairly divisive entry in the series which likely turned off a lot of the new series fans who were brought in by the VII's bait and switch marketing. Once again: "You're only as good as your last game".The series saw a pretty sharp decline with IX which X then reverted. XII might have been a bit of a dud sales wise but XIII, XV and the MMOs were all pretty successful, much more than the traditional, non-experimental entry.
X on the other hand launched slightly inside/outside the first year of the PS2 in both territories and was probably seen as a "showcase" game for what the system was capable of much like VII was for the PS1 (and couldn't be completed in a weekend rental unlike The Bouncer). And mechanically the franchise had already excised many of the mechanics that soured people on VIII so while X was turn-based, it was probably more familiar to fans of VII than VIII was.
EDIT: If you look at GDL (JP retail sales) data.... VIII had a ~500k jump in first week sales over VII (which was absoultely massive if you look at VI's FW/LTD sales). IX actually does respectively with first week sales less than 100k short of VII. X is about 300k short of VII.
But yeah, it's been all downhill since VII/VIII no matter how you slice it, at least in Japan.
I strongly doubt it's about damaging MS. I could've sworn the whole ABK debacle showed how far behind MS was compared to Sony and Nintendo. Sony really doesn't need to punch down and won't for a good while.
What I think the FFVII exclusivity deal (please note that as best we know it's only for the 7 Remake subseries and not the franchise as a whole) has to do with is nostalgia and specifically for a single entry in the franchise. Unlike Nintendo and even Microsoft (if we're being generous), Sony has done a piss poor job of managing their legacy IP. A lot of the franchises that propelled PS1 and PS2 to domination are either MIA or have gone third party at this point. Tekken, Twisted Metal, Jet Moto, Metal Gear Solid, Grand Theft Auto, Coolboarders, Parappa, Syphon Filter, etc.. This has been Sony's big problem since the PS3 era and it's been festering ever since and fully came out into the open this generation when they started doing things like shuttering Japan Studio.
Square-Enix is one of the few companies that's still willing to play ball with Sony about exclusivity. And as we've seen with each successive FF release that window is shrinking. But Final Fantasy VII was a massive joint venture for the two companies, and it cannot be understated how huge a marketing push there was for the game back in 1997. For a lot of people Final Fantasy VII is synonymous with Playstation. Sony wants Final Fantasy VII exclusively on their platform because it's a familiar brand for the Playstation players, especially those who are older and maybe want to relive their childhood or pass on the experience to their offspring.
This is one of the reasons that Nintendo has been so dominant, because people are always having offspring and there's a pattern where people trade in their Nintendo systems when they reach adolescence and then return to the fold once they reach their mid-20s/early 30s and are buying systems out of a sense of nostalgia.
But Sony doens't really have that luxury because they've failed to invest in their own Legacy IPs and isolating 3rd parties with their incessant push to win the spec war which has forced many of them to go third party to justify the cost of development.
This is very likely what's going to happen. S-E already did a similar technique with Intergrade to encourage people to buy a PS5 (which also reset the clock on the Remake exclusivity deal and delayed the PC port). And we saw something similar with Nier Automata when the XBox port came out which included the DLC that had been released a year prior.
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rick_C
Piranha Plant
I think Nintendo did the right thing, as Iwata said in GDC2005, one thing that haven't changed over time, is IPs. But that is not what i want to mention.
We can see that the next Silent Hill will also be 1 year PS5 console exclusive too. Also Sony had countless "tricky" exclusive like language exclusive, DLC exclusive, promotion exclusive, etc, in different games before. Obviously the reason is not something like childhood experience, but to damage Xbox (although Xbox have problem himself though). I sure that we will see more 3P PS console exclusive in the future too, as Sony think buying exclusive is important to crushing other console, although it seems not work to Nintendo.
Tentacle-tropes
Kremling
I don't know the history of these projects really well but wasn't Final Fantasy Versus XIII stuck in complete development hell under Nomura, cancelled/stripped from Nomura, and all the assets handed to Tabata who was more or less told to make something shippable out of this mess?
thoughthaver
Chain Chomp
amazing debacle they are in honestly. still in the spec wars against xbox and pc, xbox is on its way out, literally unwinnable against pc and now your games cost the same as a marvel movie and you have to launch on the crowded out steam store. getting clapped in japan and can't do anything about it cuz nintendo is inside the absolutely safe capsule, cushioned by animal crossing lego sets. still buying out timed exclusives because your games take a decade to make and you need exclusives but can't get them to stay permanent because everything is expensive af and everyone wants infinite growth. and all of this was preventable if they hadn't shut down a bunch of studios and if they bothered to grow their franchises instead of relying on fickle third parties.From the mouth of Christian Svensson:
TLZ
Like Like
This is silly conspiracy theory.
Look. Let's not pretend these companies are our friends. They all rather see the competition bankrupt and gone so they have total domination. Nintendo tried this in the 80s/90s. MS tried this in the PC space and with the Xbox (Bill Gates saw the PS as a threat to their brand being in every home and thus we got the Xbox). But not everything is a conspiracy. Let's not let our hate biases do the talking.
Tentacle-tropes
Kremling
Pretty much. The whole development process we can glean is pretty interesting as a read
Zeal543
Paratroopa
Not sure if this is serious or not but yes it was. The amount of money they'd make off releasing on Xbox likely isn't as much as whatever Sony paid them for exclusivity. This was a good deal on square's part and a poor one on Sony's, assuming the exclusivity fee was hefty.
fourfourfun
Moblin
I feel that all we need is a Final Fantasy to be hyped for, and a pivot into trad armour & castles was never going to be it. I think they wanted to make a play for the XIV crowd but seems like what works in MMO doesn’t in single player.
rick_C
Piranha Plant
When MS try to acquire Activision, Sony said MS is going to make COD exclusive in order to prove MS is going to monopoly. But then MS show the cross-platform plan to Sony, Jim Ryan said they don't want any deal, they just want to block the merge. That clearly show that Sony was not worried about exclusive from the beginning, they just want to damage MS.
You said this is a conspiracy.
Further more, when you talk about Nintendo and Microsoft tried to do that, thats ok. But when we talk about Sony also tried to that,
You said not everything is a conspiracy.
Ok, you are right.
Thats why i think Sony actually dont care about FF7RB poor sales, they just want make it wont launch in other consoles. At this point, Sony achieved their objective, only Square got damaged. I pretty sure the last FF7R, FF17 and FF18 will also similar as this one, unless Square change their mind.
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fourfourfun
Moblin
I was ok with it, especially with the crew banter and looming nighttime evils. However, I feel like Square have real issues resolving open world vs linear story telling. They needed to pick one and tailor to it.
Linkstrikesback
Starman
- Pronouns
- He
this is the definition of a conspiracy theory.
To even begin to suggest Sony don't care about making money over all else is just... Not sensible on any level. Console wars nonsense about how they're doing it because they just Want other people to not have things is just not possible to even begin to have a discussion about because it's a stupid line of thought on literally every level
the game was in dev hell because it was all hands on deck to finish 13. and then FF14 happened. if I remember correctly, there wasn't even so much of a game to hand off to Tabata
Jon Turner
Rattata
- Pronouns
- Him
That would be very interesting if they did that with both Remake and Rebirth for Switch 2. As someone who doesn't really buy that these games will never hit Nintendo consoles, I am hopeful it does come to pass. In the meantime I'm pretending that article was never written since it was a mistake anyway.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
XV was a neat game with great vibes and I so wish it were a complete game from the start.
I mean this in the nicest way, but XV didn’t kill Final Fantasy ya nitwits. There’s too many factors at play here to pin a decrease in sales on your personal anecdotes.
I’m actually pretty optimistic about Final Fantasy after Rebirth. People like this game. Square is surely aware that being a direct sequel to a game that sold 5 million on PS4 (7 million includes Intergrade) isn’t likely going to get them those same numbers on PS5 that easily. But it’s hands down the most positive I’ve seen people be about Final Fantasy* in quite some time, and I don’t doubt they’re taking note of it. Makes me wonder what kind of an experience XVII will be?
Edit: * With the exception of XIV. But frankly XIV is a different beast entirely, and hardly belongs in the conversation. It’s pretty unapproachable for a lot of people in being a thick ass MMO.
I mean this in the nicest way, but XV didn’t kill Final Fantasy ya nitwits. There’s too many factors at play here to pin a decrease in sales on your personal anecdotes.
I’m actually pretty optimistic about Final Fantasy after Rebirth. People like this game. Square is surely aware that being a direct sequel to a game that sold 5 million on PS4 (7 million includes Intergrade) isn’t likely going to get them those same numbers on PS5 that easily. But it’s hands down the most positive I’ve seen people be about Final Fantasy* in quite some time, and I don’t doubt they’re taking note of it. Makes me wonder what kind of an experience XVII will be?
Edit: * With the exception of XIV. But frankly XIV is a different beast entirely, and hardly belongs in the conversation. It’s pretty unapproachable for a lot of people in being a thick ass MMO.
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JorgenRaft
Chain Chomp
Yeah. Remake, 16, and Rebirth have been been the best single player installments that the main series has had in a long time. If it continues to sell well enough (on top of the presumably fat Sony paycheck they're given) then I'm totally happy with the direction its going. Just a question if SE and Sony and content with the results as well, as much as SE is known to overblow sales expectations.
They could limit the ambitions of the series in future installments to make it work on more restrictive hardware like Switch, or whatever system is next, but I prefer mainline FF being able to push beefier machines without having to worry about making it work on less capable hardware. And it's not like Switch has anything to worry about as far as a lack of RPGs.
It is a bummer for Xbox only players that don't end up getting them, though, especially since they come on PC later. I wonder how much of that is the Sony deal and how much of that is SE just seeing the effort for that port not being worth it.
They could limit the ambitions of the series in future installments to make it work on more restrictive hardware like Switch, or whatever system is next, but I prefer mainline FF being able to push beefier machines without having to worry about making it work on less capable hardware. And it's not like Switch has anything to worry about as far as a lack of RPGs.
It is a bummer for Xbox only players that don't end up getting them, though, especially since they come on PC later. I wonder how much of that is the Sony deal and how much of that is SE just seeing the effort for that port not being worth it.
Jon Turner
Rattata
- Pronouns
- Him
Maybe Nintendo has gotten more JRPGs since FF, but not having future entries on Nintendo consoles just isn't right. I had been rooting for FF7-12 to be back on Nintendo platforms for years. If Switch 2 is capable of running them then there's no reason they should be put on. As for the exclusivity deal, as far as we know, it's still timed. That's all the info we have. There have also been rumors of 16 and Remake getting potential XBox ports, but that's about all I heard at the moment.
terribleidiot
Piranha Plant
Not all metrics are. Not everything is quantifiable.
That decision might have been made as far back as the early 2010s, so potentially 10+ years ago. Not only were episodic releases more common back then, but a huge project like remaking FF VII has to have a corresponding planning / pre-production phase, no doubt about that. And given that it was first announced in 2015, there’s no doubt in my mind that the episodic nature was decided upon by that point at the latest.
terribleidiot
Piranha Plant
Btw I think it’s a combination of the two. I think FF15 had great marketing and launched at the right time. It also had pretty steep discounts. It drew a lot of new fans in. I think lots of new fans played it and shrugged. I don’t think they were turned off as such. I think loads of new fans bought it and came to the conclusion that FF just isn’t that good or interesting and thus never even considered 16 as a purchase.
I can’t prove that, obviously. It’s impossible to. But it does kinda feel right.
Tentacle-tropes
Kremling
As I said earlier deep discounts can only take you so far with the length its tail. It suggests that the wom was pretty good all things considered. I don’t deny that good marketing & being at the right place helped. And, while some would not be interested from the franchise after 15; I don’t think they represent a massive amount of consumers. The bigger issue would be making a game they didn’t jive with or want. Helping mitigate these issues would have been putting these two games on PC day 1 at least while also being solid ports.
Then it's a useless statement. There are other, better reasons to explain the drop off that are based on observation
terribleidiot
Piranha Plant
I think that's an incredibly reductive way to argue these quite nebulous points.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
And FFXV was a friends first FF, and he's since gone on to buy/play every game.
So whose anecdotal evidence is better? Yours or mine?
It's not nebulous when we have usable data, statements of direction, and observation of the game qualities themselves. Just saying "people didn't like it" has no value. We can reasonably surmise that FF15 did nothing to the brand's value
Tentacle-tropes
Kremling
At least in JP we’re having a funeral since even with the most generous digital split it still isn’t great.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This was a foregone conclusion. We should have had that funeral when it was clear Japan was done with home consoles.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Remake came out at the beginning of a global pandemic when everyone was stuck inside their houses. Plus, it came out on a system that was in twice as many households at the time. I think folks need to chill.
Also, can you source this claim? I don't doubt it, but my Google Fu isn't working for me.
the game/system ratio has been going down with each successive game, even post-pandemic. it's not unreasonable to say they are hemorrhaging players
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Rebirth is still one of the biggest opening week games in Japan on PS5, as was 16 before it. I think if there's a funeral it's for the PS brand in Japan which is having a negative impact on FF due to it being an exclusive.
Tentacle-tropes
Kremling
The only forgone conclusion here is Sony’s relevance within the region as a whole. JP isn’t done with home consoles since Switch is part home console. SE can fix it their issue but being tethered to PS hasn’t done them any favors.
I can hear the keyboards from here, lol
now that 2023 numbers are out on install base, DQ11S (once again) shows its legs. I'd say a lot of people skipped out on the PS4 version, that could have happened here as well. of course, depending if they even want the game
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I was going to say something about Switch being a home console and then I saw @ILikeFeet 's post and felt bad about myself.
Carry on.
