-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
[Sales Disaster] Apparently, FFXVI has only sold 3.5 million units since its release.
- Thread starter Oberstein
- Start date
Little Chicken
Gold Member
Could've been over 10 million with an Xbox launch 
mayham2199
Member
I disagree any Jrpg fan would jump right back in to a classic turn based FF game.
mayham2199
Member
We’re talking about sales not engagement numbers.Could've been over 10 million with an Xbox launch
Kacho
Gold Member
near
Member
Are we talking about expectations from fans or Square Enix? Either way, it's going to be considered a failure. This is Square Enix's highest-selling franchise of all time, and it always will be considered important, a franchise which has sold more than DQ and Monster Hunter combined. We don't know how much it cost to develop—it may or may not have been profitable—but the bar is high for a reason. These numbers indicate that the franchise hasn't gained enough market traction to sustain long-term growth and is instead showing signs of market resistance. This is bad. This is bomba
Northeastmonk
Gold Member
I don’t know. All I can find is that it sold a million copies at launch.
Final Fantasy is a much bigger IP. I have a lot of love for those games, but Metaphor did such a better job at being an RPG. I love action games but I’d rather play one made by Capcom. Keep NieR as SE’s action game that they don’t even develop themselves. I’m just fed up with SE outside their classic stuff. Kingdom Hearts III felt like a slug even though graphically it was great.
They get high sales for their games but no one wants to bad mouth at how much of a step back the quality is in their games. What SE does the best at now is remastering their old stuff. Even Bandai Namco has had better quality in story and gameplay. Next SE game that sounds good is the Front Mission 3 Remaster. I fear how dull the dialogue will be in Kingdom Hearts 4. Can’t wait to see the worlds though. As you can tell I’m not a huge numbers/sales kind of fan. I finished XVI, but you couldn’t pay me to play it again.
Last edited:
Hawk The Slayer
Member
This game had a great 1st week start but lost it's legs and got bad word of mouth. The RPG and the art style just didn't appeal to that many people. FFVII Rebirth is 100% going to end up being more if not already selling more due to better leg/word of mouth and a better and more interesting art style and character design.
BossLackey
Gold Member
It's fucking INSANE to me that they still haven't done this.
FF was the turn-based JRPG in the west for years. A return to that would make people go nuts.
Bond007
Member
Lmao, Clive. Im trippin
LordOcidax
Member
The strategy was to attract a new and younger audience making the game an action game and shiting on the hardcore audience… Now looks like the younger audience doesn’t give a shit about the Final Fantasy Franchise and the Hardcore audience doesn’t like the change… I think is matter of time to go back to the old formula… But who knows, is Square.
DonkeyPunchJr
World’s Biggest Weeb
It was bad as an RPG but I thought it was just as bad as an action game. Vast majority of enemies don’t even fight back, they just stand there like training dummies while you hack away at them slowly draining their health + cycling through your moves off cooldown.
James Sawyer Ford
Member
James Sawyer Ford kept telling me it was GOTY. Can't believe this happened.
It was for me. Great game. Have you played it?
A lot of the same people dunking on FF16 are shilling for stuff like Avowed, Starfield, and Hellblade
Last edited:
I collect VHS tapes
Member
Embarrassing
diffusionx
Gold Member
The totally weird thing about this mindset is that all evidence points to younger audiences liking turn based RPGs more than DMC games.
Square also can make competent turn based games, Octopath 2 is very good. I wonder what it would have been sold if it was FF16.
justiceiro
Marlboro: Other M
Would have double that if had same day release on Xbox.
LordOcidax
Member
I remember people here saying that turn based games was a thing of the past… maybe Square was gathering information in wrong places.
rubik's dude
Member
It could also just be course correction. Sometimes things trend one way only to trend back. When they said that, it may very well have been the case, and it could also be the case that turn-based is now popular again.
Seomel
Member
Well thats just dev without marketing. This is not american game per se and not every games costs 200mil to make you know
期待も開発費も膨らみ、７年ぶり新作「ＦＦ１６」６月発売…「ＰＳ５の普及が鍵握る」
【読売新聞】 スクウェア・エニックス（スクエニ）が６月、人気ゲーム「ファイナルファンタジー（ＦＦ）」のシリーズ１６作目となる最新作「ＦＦ１６」を発売する。約７年ぶりの新作で、これまでで最も前作との間隔が空いた。年々開発費が膨らんでい
RafterXL
Member
Yeah, it's sold more than both of those franchises, but per game it doesn't come close. There are like 130 FF games, so 190 million sold isn't as many as it would seem. Meanwhile Monster Hunter has sold half as many copies in 1/4 of games. And the last three Monster Hunters have sold half of that themselves. Same goes for DQ. The idea of FF is much larger than the franchise of FF. Fans need to re-align their expectations and Square needs to re-align their budgets to account for this.Are we talking about expectations from fans or Square Enix? Either way, it's going to be considered a failure. This is Square Enix's highest-selling franchise of all time, and it always will be considered important, a franchise which has sold more than DQ and Monster Hunter combined. We don't know how much it cost to develop—it may or may not have been profitable—but the bar is high for a reason. These numbers indicate that the franchise hasn't gained enough market traction to sustain long-term growth and is instead showing signs of market resistance. This is bad. This is bomba
If I want to play an action game, I'll play a real action game. I hate everything about modern FF combat. It's just a half-assed version of much better games. When I'm a 100 hour JRPG, I'd rather have a laid back tactical, party based combat over whatever it is they think modern audiences want.
Northeastmonk
Gold Member
I think this “younger audience” isn’t buying actual games, but rather currencies. They’re playing action games but Final Fantasy isn’t on their list. It’s GaaS or something like Rocket League and League of Legends. I’d love to see the young crowd purchasing that $60-$70 JRPG, but I don’t think it’s happening. I think there’s this large percentage of gamers who understand what long time fans are saying and that enforces their decision to not buy the expensive RPG on the market.
I think developers are clueless when they try and pin point what the market wants. They claim this is for modern audiences, but they’ve just turned their game into something else. They don’t stick with why people enjoyed those games to begin with. Make the controls better, make the graphics better, but don’t screw the one thing you were actually known for in the first place.
SimTourist
Member
They were disappointed when Tomb Raider reboot only sold like 15 million copies, this must be a complete disaster to SE.
anyasok
Member
This. Spectacular boss fights. Everything else Rebirth did better
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Well thats just dev without marketing. This is not american game per se and not every games costs 200mil to make you know
期待も開発費も膨らみ、７年ぶり新作「ＦＦ１６」６月発売…「ＰＳ５の普及が鍵握る」
【読売新聞】 スクウェア・エニックス（スクエニ）が６月、人気ゲーム「ファイナルファンタジー（ＦＦ）」のシリーズ１６作目となる最新作「ＦＦ１６」を発売する。約７年ぶりの新作で、これまでで最も前作との間隔が空いた。年々開発費が膨らんでいwww-yomiuri-co-jp.translate.goog
WOW! This is impressive. So, probably add another $30 million for marketing and that'll be a total that's less than $100m.
Kacho
Gold Member
Yep. No bueno.
Orbital2060
Member
The final Final Fantasy exclusive to PlayStation.
Shifty1897
Member
I'll keep saying it.
Should have been a spin off, shouldn't have had an open world or any RPG elements. Trim the story. Should have just been action set piece -> Boss -> Cutscene -> Repeat for 20 hours. Would have been a 9/10 like that.
Should have been a spin off, shouldn't have had an open world or any RPG elements. Trim the story. Should have just been action set piece -> Boss -> Cutscene -> Repeat for 20 hours. Would have been a 9/10 like that.
Last edited:
Punished Miku
Human Rights Subscription Service
There's like 3 people on this whole site that have said they like Hellblade dude.
ReyBrujo
Member
Truth be told if they had reached a milestone (like 5 or 10 million) they would have announced it.
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Member
Is that figure from Square-Enix's recent financial results meeting held back in February? If so, then yeah...not exactly great, considering we got the 3.4 million (sold-in) number a few days after launch over a year prior to that meeting.
I think it's definitely worth pointing out, then, that exclusivity wasn't the problem despite what some want to try claiming. Especially when we're seeing new IP like Astro Bot doing so well while being an exclusive, or established IP like Mario Party (Jamboree) doing extremely well while also being exclusive to one system. A game doesn't have a harsh drop-off and slow sales like XVI unless it simply isn't appealing to large segments of the market. The game alienated a lot of hardcore FF fans, and it likely didn't cross over cleanly to a big enough segment of non-FF fans despite the deviations.
I do also think Square-Enix talking so much about the eventual PC version before the PS5 version even launched, damaged potential sales of the game on PS5 and by the time it came to Steam, it'd seem large amounts of the customer base had moved on. It's likely games like Metaphor stole a lot of that potential thunder, and even VII Rebirth's PC announcement would've hurt it to some extent, too.
Square-Enix need to do a lot of soul-searching with Final Fantasy going forward. Simply making another XVI with XVII and making it multiplat Day 1 won't do too much. It might be time to do away with the hard breaks per entry where none of the story or characters persist, for example. It might be worth giving turn-based combat another look and exploring how to innovate with it (even including some real-time elements still). It might be worth finding more clever ways to utilize the fantasy elements in more off-kilter ways, and build a story universe that can be pushed in other media more regularly (i.e anime & manga).
Some of these things, Square-Enix have been doing with FF VII over the years. But the current remake project is mostly just that: a remake of a story that's already been told before. That said, it's not completely a bad thing to have a soft-reset with each new entry, since that offers an easier means for new players to jump in. Just that larger aspects of the world lore should be more interconnected between entries. Each installment should act more like a saga in a shonen anime where you have a principal cast of some mainstays but some other party members who are new to that installment, and maybe some of them become mainstays later on. Maybe main characters from a previous installment become secondary characters living their lives in the next, but you can interact with them as NPCs and maybe even do some quests for them.
They have the foundation and structure to support that attempt. If they can do such while also taming the budget costs down some (they don't need VII Rebirth sized scope & budget; something between RS2R and VII Remake/Rebirth for visuals would be more than adequate for new mainline FF titles), I think they could truly revitalize the IP as undisputed king of JRPGs.
I think it's definitely worth pointing out, then, that exclusivity wasn't the problem despite what some want to try claiming. Especially when we're seeing new IP like Astro Bot doing so well while being an exclusive, or established IP like Mario Party (Jamboree) doing extremely well while also being exclusive to one system. A game doesn't have a harsh drop-off and slow sales like XVI unless it simply isn't appealing to large segments of the market. The game alienated a lot of hardcore FF fans, and it likely didn't cross over cleanly to a big enough segment of non-FF fans despite the deviations.
I do also think Square-Enix talking so much about the eventual PC version before the PS5 version even launched, damaged potential sales of the game on PS5 and by the time it came to Steam, it'd seem large amounts of the customer base had moved on. It's likely games like Metaphor stole a lot of that potential thunder, and even VII Rebirth's PC announcement would've hurt it to some extent, too.
Square-Enix need to do a lot of soul-searching with Final Fantasy going forward. Simply making another XVI with XVII and making it multiplat Day 1 won't do too much. It might be time to do away with the hard breaks per entry where none of the story or characters persist, for example. It might be worth giving turn-based combat another look and exploring how to innovate with it (even including some real-time elements still). It might be worth finding more clever ways to utilize the fantasy elements in more off-kilter ways, and build a story universe that can be pushed in other media more regularly (i.e anime & manga).
Some of these things, Square-Enix have been doing with FF VII over the years. But the current remake project is mostly just that: a remake of a story that's already been told before. That said, it's not completely a bad thing to have a soft-reset with each new entry, since that offers an easier means for new players to jump in. Just that larger aspects of the world lore should be more interconnected between entries. Each installment should act more like a saga in a shonen anime where you have a principal cast of some mainstays but some other party members who are new to that installment, and maybe some of them become mainstays later on. Maybe main characters from a previous installment become secondary characters living their lives in the next, but you can interact with them as NPCs and maybe even do some quests for them.
They have the foundation and structure to support that attempt. If they can do such while also taming the budget costs down some (they don't need VII Rebirth sized scope & budget; something between RS2R and VII Remake/Rebirth for visuals would be more than adequate for new mainline FF titles), I think they could truly revitalize the IP as undisputed king of JRPGs.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Sure, but TPP and Ground Zeroes combined sold around ~17 million units, they were extremely successful games, and generally outside of some studio meddling, they're also very well regarded by most fans of the franchise.
XVI is pretty divisive all things considered, I liked it .. but a lot of people on GAF clearly don't.
Last edited:
asdasdasdbb
Member
Yet again, FF needs to be on Switch.
What I was thinking was that Square should try to get FF7 Remake Part 3 out by the end of next year... then work on FF17 afterwards using it's Engine, being Switch 2/PS5(6) Day 1. And then if FF17 still flops, that be the end of the franchise's new games.
What I was thinking was that Square should try to get FF7 Remake Part 3 out by the end of next year... then work on FF17 afterwards using it's Engine, being Switch 2/PS5(6) Day 1. And then if FF17 still flops, that be the end of the franchise's new games.
Physiognomonics
Member
I liked FF15 as it felt like an actual adventure. The main problem on FF15 was the annoying characters and their childish behavior.
ShadyAcshuns
Member
Should have stuck with RPG design.
Loomy
Thinks Microaggressions are Real
Only 2 issues with FF16 combat. Difficulty needs to be better balanced and more diverse, and the ability to switch to and control other companions. Other than that, it's fine.
Main story was fine, but man, the side quests were massively disappointing. I don't feel like I know the world at all.
This is not an FF16 problem though. Rebirth also underperformed according to SE.
Also, at no point in the article do they call FF16 sales a disaster or quote Square Enix calling it a disaster. As far a we know, sales were disappointing, but I don't know if we should be editorializing headlines.
Main story was fine, but man, the side quests were massively disappointing. I don't feel like I know the world at all.
This is not an FF16 problem though. Rebirth also underperformed according to SE.
Also, at no point in the article do they call FF16 sales a disaster or quote Square Enix calling it a disaster. As far a we know, sales were disappointing, but I don't know if we should be editorializing headlines.
Square soft biggest mistake are changes and direction of the series that they did with FF16, making the game mature theme, not ATB, not much party base, lack of rpg elements, and not turn base. And this game should had not been a numbered FF game. They could had use a different title for the game.
Nonehxc
Member
Don't hold it against him, he's LOST
Guerilla Munch
Member
I was like 8 hours into the game and asking myself "why hasn't anyone else joined my party yet?" Then I asked in the OT and found out it's just solo Clive for the entire game so I stopped playing lmao
Production values are top notch, but holy fuck this franchise needs to rediscover its roots
Production values are top notch, but holy fuck this franchise needs to rediscover its roots
Similar threads
- Locked