Daniel Ahmad (ZhugeEX): Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is underperforming sales wise. Selling about half of what Remake sold in the same timeframe
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NPCs talking over each other in general is such a mess im surprised its still in the game.
Fair enough, it can be hard to tell jokes apart sometimes, haha.
It's just a big thing with FF arguments I've noticed is a lot start with "I like this, how could anyone not" or "I hate this, it's the worst ever". Opinions are what they are and that's fine, but it gets ugly when differing opinions about video games turn into fighting over them. Since FF changes this up so much, what someone values can greatly differ from another, and it gets heated.
I just sometimes try, and perhaps poorly at times, to mitigate it a little.
From personal experience going into kalm and hearing the threat level line dozen of times : Chatter is def not good, but at least there's no one shouting about fresh mutton. (If you know you know)
You were very clear, don't worry about it. It just seems like everyone's talking past each other at this point.
I actually really like town chatter. It's nice to stop and listen to the character dialogue, some of the characters have mini-arcs.
Its annoying when there are too many chatters happening near you though and they kind of stack but it is what it is.
The discussion gave me flashbacks and i needed to put that evil back in the world.
I just uninstalled and am gonna watch the story via youtube. Probably burnt out 100%-ing the first few zones and didn't particularly like the combat or the majority of the minigames. It's not a bad game but its criticisms are well-founded. The open world is much worse than an ubisoft game's and there are so many systems. Like FFXVI, upgrades and leveling tends to feel rather unrewarding too. That crafting system has gotta go too.
I fired up the old FF7 on switch and found myself having more fun lol.
I fired up the old FF7 on switch and found myself having more fun lol.
I love Xillia to death (except for the second one) and you'd swear that lamb was all they ate in that world.
DQ12 isn't gonna exist without a switch version, which will effect the PS5 version no matter what
I completely agree. Easily the worst part about both Remake and Rebirth. The shotgun blast of NPC chatter in Nibelheim was a warning.
I guess this is off topic and is more general SE than Rebirth to a degree, but I'm very interested to see if we'll see anything from Square in the next few months with the rumors of a Playstation Showcase rolling around and SGF being a month out. Because right now aside from Dawntrail coming out in a month or so SE has... nothing? Like we know Remake part 3 is vaguely 3 years out or so but genuinely nothing. Asano apparently said he's announcing a new bravely so maybe that'll be like a Switch or Switch 2 thing but outside of that, the only two games in their lineup we know about have no release dates and then the restructuring happened so I'm excited to see how things all play out over the rest of the year so to speak.
Well not FF but rumours are that Kingdom Hearts comes out next year, so it wouldnt shock me if we saw that at the showcase and they start of that marketing spree. Time it to release it alongside the new switch next year, boom (assuming it is not exclusive to PS5, which would be a little funny if it were).
This fiscal year is probably Dawntrail, an Asano game, and (gods willing) FFT Remaster. Maybe a surprise C string game like Itadaki Street. We'll at least see KH4 but I don't know if it will release this fiscal year.
I am now curious to see what their forecast for the new FY is, it does seem like it's going to be a potentially slow one.
FF IX remake is also still MIA and could come out "soon" maybe? Though there were rumors that development is not going smoothly.
What, a scaled down, smaller scope remake of a PS1 FF game isn't easy??
And talking about bosses in abundance is a bit exaggerated. Having 30-something bosses is not a figure to go crazy over in an FF or JRPG. These used to have 40-50 bosses always.
I'm still salty about the digital version of IX. It runs from the mobile controls and I absolutely hate that shit on the console. We'll see what they do with a proper remake of 9 cause the digital version wasn't it.
I kinda dislike all the updated digital PS1 FF. I still bust out my Vita or PS to play the originals, lol.
To the point of enemy and boss variety. Rebirth definitely has a lot. More than most games, especially with regular enemies.
There are lots of bosses as well. I agree that the regional bosses were fought a bit too often though in the combat sim.
Rebirth has made me realize that Barret needs to stay in my party at all times mostly because he's the only one that can hit aerial enemies much more easily.
Gone are the days when Cloud could just bum rush behind a bird and still hit them easily whether they were up in the air or not.
Gone are the days when Cloud could just bum rush behind a bird and still hit them easily whether they were up in the air or not.
Cloud can stay in the air indefinitely. You just gotta dodge and then hold attack. Cloud will jump towards the enemy in the air and from there you can mash attack and also dodge in the air.
Tifa can stay up there as well but you need to launch her with a synergy skill.
Anyways, Barret is great in this game and I also have him most of the time.
I guess with Cloud, he just feels incredibly inaccurate with it, but I've never done the dodge and then hold attack so I'll see how that works out. I've used Tifa in a couple of instances for birds as well and she was much more comfortable than Cloud at first.
I suppose I'm just lazy because all I need to do is switch to Barret, lock on, and shoot, lol.
In reality, much less use is made of that approach than initially seemed when you do the tutorial with Barret in the Remake. I thought they were going to implement a character focus system similar to FFX or Fantasian where, depending on the situation, one character may be more valid than another, but in reality, this rarely happens in this game. In the end, you can beat the game with the same three characters, and choosing one over another depends more on the player's preference than on a mechanical need. It's something they could delve into more in the third installment.
It is not the case. Generally in a trilogy with "similar review scores", sales trend including games and movies, is generally Part 3 > Part 1 > Part 2.
Part 3 maintains 90 score then it will be the best selling game of the trilogy.
And revenue of REBIRTH in western markets (in YEN) is close to REMAKE thanks to low exchange rate of YEN. So it is still profitable.
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I think this is what annoys me the most about this whole thing.
I love FF7, I wanted it to do well (I think these low sales are kinda deserved because what they've done is a turn off and I can't fault people for jumping ship), and I wanted a resurgence in popularity for it all over again. That would've been a dream because this story and characters needs to be remembered for as long as possible.
But nope, they fucking blew it because they got all pretentious and profound with the story. They got all up in their own arses trying to be clever and copying Marvel movie tactics.
Then again I can't say I'm surprised with Nojima's writing seeing as he wrote that horrid X-3 followup story with Tidus' head exploding...
Non FF7 fans from the outside looking in just see a bunch of wild shit that makes zero sense, does not speak to them at all, they hear and see all this conflicting talk surrounding the game... and this is supposed to bring new people on board Square?
I think they're so entrenched in FF7's legacy to the point where they can't think straight. They're not aware of how alienating it is for non hardcore fans.
Hamaguchi getting promoted tells me that they probably think they did nothing wrong with how they handled the story. I am fully expecting the last game to do worse than Rebirth, and honestly... kinda deserved as well with that ending.
I know some people were waiting to see just how off the rails they went in Rebirth before deciding whether to jump ship or not. "The ending for Remake is up in the air. I'll see what they do in the next game before deciding if I want to continue following this or not."
That's the vibe I got after 4 years of following the conversation online. Nomura was right to be nervous.
Yeah but if I don't give a chance to DQXII PS5 in Japan only have Monster Hunter Wilds. That's kinda sad!
Movies are *very* different from games. The percentage of people that start a blockbuster movie and then finish it is probably near 95-99% in theaters and then probably around 50% or much higher for home video viewings (second one really depends on the movie, but I'd assume highly rated blockbusters do well for completion on home viewing).
The percentage of people that start a long narrative video game and finish is typically between 30% and 50% depending on the game.
Even for FF7 Remake, the percentage probably peaked around 53% before it was "free" and now it's around 35% on PSN. Even on Steam, only 30% of FF 7 Remake players have the completion achievement after 2 years (and that's with the players typically paying at least $35 for it).
So the universe of ticket buyers for a movie trilogy can indeed increase across iterations because you're adding nearly all of the original theater audiences with a big chunk of the home video audiences and seeing expansion across iterations.
For long narrative video games, the evidence is largely going to point to sequels underselling (and being played significantly less) than the first game.
Far more people will play FF7 Remake than will play FF7 Rebirth over time. The same will be true for FF7 Rebirth being played far more than FF7's 3rd game.
That's the nature of this business. Probably less than 20% of people that play FF7 Remake will finish the 3rd game (and that's being very generous). This will be true even for people that buy the full "trilogy bundle" in 10 or so years from now.
This is probably the main reason why I'm so skeptical about the plan to make this remake a trilogy. It's just *really hard* to sell a trilogy of long narrative video games because of how the audience plays the games...
In all honesty, given SE knew all of the above, the fact that they're doing this trilogy is even more stunning; fans should appreciate it because you will likely never see anything like this again. It's just a really tough sell.
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I wonder what was said over at the InstallBase thread on this subject that has everyone there in even bigger doomer mode than this forum over the past couple hours? Granted, revealing hidden content in that forum over here would be in very bad taste, but it sounds catastrophic going off of the reactions over there.
I don't want to be rude to the fine folk at IB by cross-posting, but it's definitely worse than my lowest expectation. Looking forward to the quarterly result at the end of next week.
I don't have an account there but I'd assume there's some kind of tracking data showing that sell through is sub-2m or something.
sub 2 mil would be quite surprising that would put it around something like FE engage. I'm doubtful of the speculation.
I've never heard of that website before.
Is it a notable and huge forum for video game talk?
Its the forum where the ex-sales era people splintered off to. So yeah, if its sales related, its most likely a legit discussion.
Sub 2 mil doesn't really track with its chart placements in relation to DD2 which was announced at 2.5 million or its marginally better performance over XVI in EU. That's the very upper range of "double-digit percentage under XVI in NA" and would make it considerably less than half of what Remake sold which various analysts have put it at.
That just smells of conflating its Japanese sales performance with the rest of the world. Either that or some weird math with the recent write-off that journalists have said are more to do with internal projects being canceled.
If it really did below 2 million in a month that is 100% panic mode for Square and the point where they cough up money to get out of the contract with Sony for the third game or reduce budget/scope. That's the sort of launch that does not cover development + marketing costs even with a $50 million dollar money hat cushioning the blow. Square only take in at maximum 65% of revenue since Sony gets a 30% cut and Epic (Unreal Engine) gets a 5% cut. That would mean a take of ~$140 million USD which is less than what Remake was estimated to cost for the development budget alone.
That just smells of conflating its Japanese sales performance with the rest of the world. Either that or some weird math with the recent write-off that journalists have said are more to do with internal projects being canceled.
If it really did below 2 million in a month that is 100% panic mode for Square and the point where they cough up money to get out of the contract with Sony for the third game or reduce budget/scope. That's the sort of launch that does not cover development + marketing costs even with a $50 million dollar money hat cushioning the blow. Square only take in at maximum 65% of revenue since Sony gets a 30% cut and Epic (Unreal Engine) gets a 5% cut. That would mean a take of ~$140 million USD which is less than what Remake was estimated to cost for the development budget alone.
Some very notable sales people jumped ship and are over at IB now, it is reputable in terms of getting some hard numbers imo.
Sub 2 million is a disaster if true.
it doesn't look good. legs seem to be shaky at best. it might be under some other JRPG releases that are definitely not what you think of high tier releases
obviously, take all of this with a grain of salt.
but, either way, it's not looking good for Rebirth. i wouldn't exactly call panic mode, but...don't ever expect this sort of endeavour again
obviously, take all of this with a grain of salt.
depends on how much it did sub 2 mil, on how much Sony is paying it, etc
but, either way, it's not looking good for Rebirth. i wouldn't exactly call panic mode, but...don't ever expect this sort of endeavour again
DD2 was global shipment, and Rebirth's placement in relation to DD2 was US only dollar sales. Seems to be still on track with Daniel's tweet considering the time frame.
IB doesn't have hard numbers for this btw, if anyone is wondering. But they are more meticulous in number crunching, though in this case it was a hearsay.
I really have to wonder what SE was expecting for this game's sales. They know that direct sequels of JRPGs tend to lose sales by significant margins (the sales collapse from 13 to 13-2 to Lightning Returns is the optimal example).
Maybe they were hoping for this to be closer to X-2's sales situation, but that just never seemed all that likely given PS2 era was so different.
Maybe they were hoping for this to be closer to X-2's sales situation, but that just never seemed all that likely given PS2 era was so different.
Cloud: Dodge + hold square teleports him to the aerial enemy
Cait: Dodging makes his attacks ranged
Aerith and Yuffie: Ranged attackers anyway
Tifa: Most party members have a synergy skill the launchers her up into the air to hit enemies
Red: Idk, barely used him tbh... I imagine he's like Tifa and uses synergy skills?
They added so many more options for aerial enemy fighting compared to Remake
who knows. some sequels sell amazingly. SM2, GOW R. idk, it's hard to say. a lot of factors
the real problem here is....Part 3. if the dropoff continues and what people have been hearing, emphasis on hearing, are true, then man....that's going to be rough
Yea, I tried the Cloud stuff and that works out pretty well. I must have missed that in a tool tip or something along the way. I haven't gotten Cait or Yuffie yet. I'm only in Chapter 4 lol.
no....but maybe a reduction?
are they really going to massively cut the budget mid development with Dawntrail dropping a bucket load of money closeby? idk, it's hard to say
Yeah I think a visually appealing game like Remake/Rebirth, but one that stuck closer to being a remake than a sequel would have been safer, especially has they limited the scope to one large release.
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