They were dissatisfied enough to cancel already announced DLC for XV
One game with a āgrittierā take is now what the series is going for?
I donāt have time to really look it up on mobile right now but SE said way back around XVās release that they recouped development costs on launch day and no, itās not something they were at liberty to lie about. Itās important to remember that any ādevelopmentā on the game prior to 2013 was minuscule. The game was made in basically 3 years, so this narrative that itās development was a giant money sink just doesnāt hold any water.
Pre-loading, my friend. Also they generally come with a few bonuses.
Oh, derp. I didn't even think about 'preorders' applying to digital games, that makes way more sense. In my head a 'preorder' is like the old school 'I physically went to Gamestop and put a preorder in the system for a physical copy of X game' scenario
I mean, you got this, Type 0, and SoP. Not that I don't play M rated games or anything, just that this is a series that has cute Cactuar and Moogles in it and even crosses over with Disney so the gore, sex, and some of the language can take me out of it a bit. I would feel the same way if, I don't know, Zelda became M rated.
Almost all the development costs that went into FFvs13 would have been written off as a sunk cost when the game was rebooted as FF15. They would have no impact on if the FF15 project was successful or not, and we know FF15 was very successful.
Yeah, TOTK benefitted from being a sequel to an extremely popular game. 16 is just another Final Fantasy, which has been an inconsistent brand for decades now.
Three games (2 of which are spine-offs) is your sample size for this? When Iām that same period we had XV, VIIRemake, and a spin-off in World of Final Fantasy. All games that had levity in them, though World is obviously on the other end of XVI from what has been shown. Did you actually play Stranger of Paradise? Because while itās āseriousā and ādarkā, itās also hopeful and optimistic in many ways?
I can see the reasoning for preload purposes and I"m sure there are other reasons to do so, but neither I nor really anyone I know has ever been much of a preorder-er. I didn't know it was something that was cared about all that much.
I didn't say it was bad per se, just that FF always had mature storytelling without it going completely overboard though. It's fine if you're into that, but it's simply not for me. I'll still play it, and might even like it but I'm not really into what I'm seeing at the moment.
Iām not putting any stock in that rumor, simply because I feel like the last time there was a āSony got exclusivity on this thing people thought was heading to the Switchā rumor it turned out to be a bust. Which may have been the Pixel Remasters? I forget exactly.
The thing is Iām not even sure this will hit 10 million, at least as a PS5 exclusive. FF7Rās last report was 5 million before it hit PC. You could argue the controversial choices with that stymied its legs, but even if this game is relatively well received, JRPGs not having big legs is pretty standard.
That's fair. I knew FFXV was around 10 million but didn't know FF7R was that much lower. I'm not really an FF fan myself, I probably like less than half the entries in the series, and didn't mean to come across as defensive it just seemed hard to believe this could be all that disappointing sales-wise and SE has a bit of a history of being dissatisfied with the sales of successful games. Reminded me of the situation with that Tomb Raider game from years ago that they were apparently disappointed with despite selling something like 8 million.
. Imagine adopting that approach to anything, let alone game development in 2023, then crying that not enough people are impressed by your work to pre-order it. Could never be Me. Zero sympathies, tbqh.
Thatās a pretty different topic. We still got four distinct mini campaigns all with their own playable character and a multiplayer mode out of it (and an anime OVA) which is far more than most games plus a separate definitive edition (which I think you could also get as DLC?). I canāt really think of any game comparable. Hope one day we hear the story of how a second season of mostly what if story DLC was green lit, why it was announced early without going on sale, and when it was ultimately mostly canceled outside of the Ardyn DLC which saw the director leave.
It did, but VIII wasnāt that far off from FFVII, especially considering it didnāt benefit from a PC release.
Yeah, they made back dev costs by channel-stuffing. Shipped figures to retailers arenāt sell-through to customers, but that doesnāt matter to SQE, they got their money.
Worldwide, you can still find āDay One Editionā copies at retail in 2023, many of which started selling for peanuts SUPER-early compared to any other FF title. Japan was including a copy in every game store fukubukuro because they wanted to offload their massive excess of inventory (since they cannot return unsold copies there).
FFVIII definitely does have a PC release. Unless Iām imagining the one on my shelf.
| FF | Platform | Release Date | FW Sales | +/- | since FF7 | LTD Sales | +/- | since FF7 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| I | FMC | 1987-12-18 | ?? | - | - | 520,000 | - | - |
| II | FMC | 1988-12-17 | ?? | - | - | 760,000 | - | - |
| III | FMC | 1990-04-27 | ?? | - | - | 1,400,000 | - | - |
| IV | SFC | 1991-07-19 | ?? | - | - | 1,440,000 | - | - |
| V | SFC | 1992-12-06 | 288,439 | - | - | 2,450,000 | - | - |
| VI | SFC | 1994-04-02 | 1,154,360 | - | - | 2,550,000 | - | - |
| VII | PS1 | 1997-01-31 | 2,034,879 | - | - | 3,937,899 | - | - |
| VIII | PS1 | 1999-02-11 | 2,504,044 | +23.06% | +23.06% | 3,501,588 | -11.08% | -11.08% |
| IX | PS1 | 2000-07-07 | 1,954,421 | -21.95% | -3.95% | 2,707,301 | -22.68% | -31.25% |
| X | PS2 | 2001-07-19 | 1,749,737 | -10.47% | -14.01% | 3,019,033 | +11.51% | -23.33% |
| XII | PS2 | 2006-03-16 | 1,840,397 | +5.18% | -9.56% | 2,464,679 | -18.36% | -37.41% |
| XIII | PS3 | 2009-12-17 | 1,516,532 | -17.60% | -25.47% | 1,967,887 | -20.16% | -50.03% |
| XV | PS4 | 2016-11-29 | 716,649 | -52.74% | -64.78% | 1,042,951 | -47.00% | -73.52% |
| XVI | PS5 | 2023-06-22 |
I said it didnāt benefit from it. It did not sell as well as FFVII did, since it lost the benefit of free advertising by being used as a 3Dfx GPU showcase like FFVII was.
This argument gets used a lot, but while it's true Final Fantasy used a new world and new mechanics with each numbered sequel, up through X it was always in the context of a turn-based RPG with a large cast set in a large-scale fantasy world with sci-fi elements. Job systems, materia, ATB etc. are interesting gameplay changes but it was still a game series that was always about managing a party, choosing your combat options from a menu, and exploring a story set in a unique pastiche fantasy world.
This is my first time seeing that rumour and Iām just not gonna believe it. Square isnāt that stupid.
X came out 22 years ago though.
when 1 out of 10 people say that I would agree with you, but I have see people say the same thing across my known 3 languages. I think it actually might be something wrong.
It tells you that SE are struggling to explain what the appeal is of the new game, and a lot of people are perplexed by the direction the series has gone.
