It's very interesting to see how there's entire generations of Japanese gamers that grew up mainly on mobile games and Nintendo. I'm sure that won't have an effect at all.This is what Japanese made for shit posting sometime ago. says that FF aren't really cultivated a new fans in Japan.
General buzz about the game seems low. I’ve seen almost nobody talk about it outside of enthusiast forums. Especially compared to SF6 etc.
I'm sure based upon sales SE would rather 16 sell more like 13 or 15 then 7R.
Yes, XIII and XV both had these problems. And that's why XIII was notable as the beginning of the franchise's decline, which XV inherited and led to a massive over-shipment to retailers WW in its launch year, but especially in Japan. XVI is not the first game to suffer this problem, but it may be the most blatant expression of said suffering, a culmination of it, if you will.
Yeah. This the most surprising thing cause I thought the game has been heavily marketed. But I don’t see much either. Of course in gaming fourm I do.
And it seemingly still suffers from performance issues, going by what was said on the Kinda Funny Gamescast. x(
Rebirth is going to sell worse than Remake because a number of people were turned off by how they were redoing the game either mechanically or narratively. And unlike things like X-2 and XIII-2 this is a direct continuation of the story in the previous game so it's not like they're going to pull in new players to replace those ones.
XV had a very long tail if I remember correctly, but ended up being one of the best selling entries in the series.
I forget if it was Retronauts or USGamer (wait those are the same people) but I remember one of the people affiliated with them pointing out that starting with X two things started happening. One, they seriously started putting the Final Fantasy name on projects that didn't start out as FF games (which isn't that new a phenomena outside of Japan when you consider how Mana and SaGa were originally branded in the US). Two, stuff that was usually done in spinoffs, like changing the combat system, increasingly happened with the main games to the point where there's very little connective tissue in the franchise outside of chocobos and maybe moogles (not a guarantee) or the summon pantheon (which gets shaken up every so often like with VIII and XII).
Didn't the series peak sales-wise with VII though? There was a significant drop off in sales with VIII, IX didn't sell well due to
I’m not the best person for sales knowledge, but Final Fantasy XV sold over ten million copies ultimately. The actual number they wanted/needed to hit was much lower, but the director’s personal lofty goal was 10 million and they ultimately hit that. It was a big success.
that 10mil numbers kinda lost a meaning when it frequently hit a bargain bin.
They crowed about how it shipped more copies quicker than anything before, but maybe a lot of those sat around?
That’s how a lot of bigger games operate. It got a lot of sales at higher prices upfront and then made steady sales at lower prices which not every game does as well. Someone more interested in sales than me could try to map average price to the sales milestones, but the main point here is a ton of people did pick the game up. If Square was happy with it, generally I don’t care beyond that.
I’ll admit that I’m something of an outsider looking in regarding Final Fantasy, but my perception was that the brand is a lot stronger now then it was at XV’s release, given the reintroduction of FFVII into the limelight and the continued success of XIV. So it’s surprising to me that XVI isn’t tracking above the prior entry, especially as it has seemed pretty heavily anticipated from what I’ve seen.
Final Remix sold like shit though
They already accounted for that
You are overstating how well XV reviewed
There's a difference there, but not huge. Relative to time from system launch the game launch is just a few months earlier, and PS5 might be now/soon ahead of PS4 anyway.
Yea, XV is sorta the odd one out, although I'd wonder if even with 10 million in sales if they actually recouped the development costs given how protracted the development was. But something with that game really resonated with people even despite all its faults which is still cool to see.
Plenty of people were annoyed about the loss of the dual screen since it's derived from Solo Remix, and the replacement control scheme for playing on TV, plus I'm guessing a portion of that fan base had already moved on. I think people also felt kinda burned after Solo Remix sorta promising the new content that would eventually come with Final Remix only for it not to happen in Solo Remix.
I agree. I believe that's why the sales plummeted for Remake, divisive ending and a padded out game (combat was fun though).
All the hype before and during release notwithstanding, FFVIIR seems to have sold on the lower end of mainline Final Fantasies; I don't think we ever got an official update past the 5~ million figure
The problems the FF series currently faces do go back to XV and XIII, and even further back I'd argue to X-2 and XII.Doesn’t that hold up for XIII and XV too though? I mean, they’ve been on this track for such a long time now. I don’t think it’s just the experimental action combat systems that are the core of the issue with the franchise, FFVIII’s combat system was turn based and that turned me off at the time too. I think it’s more the series has a wider identity crisis at this point, scattered across so many sub-series and ideas, but you’ve also got this AAA game trend of big series all wanting to be a big action game with rpg elements, no matter whether it started as an rpg or an action game. So it’s kinda torn between FF being all over the place (when the series has a history of experimentation, which is cool), but also the money being at a particular junction point between so many genres. I don’t know if that makes any sense. Sorry if not. I’m kinda having trouble getting my head around my own point
I brought up Octopath as sure, it’s a different IP. But as someone who loved the older FF games it’s exactly what I want out of FF, lots of wonderful characters, scenarios, crazy steampunk vehicles and cities side-by-side with raw fantasy, the melodrama alongside the humour and the camraderie. I just don’t really need FF any more when Octopath II is the older FF games with a great battle system in all but name. I guess that’s why 2DHD exists, to serve people like me who just find that’s exactly what they want as a mix of the old and the new, rather than whatever the latest game with the FF branding on the box is.
