Daniel Ahmad (ZhugeEX): Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is underperforming sales wise. Selling about half of what Remake sold in the same timeframe

[Lobster Roll]

BG3 is turnbased and pretty sure I remember Sven or someone from the studio going over that you have very strong stats from mobile gaming that turn based is a market with a higher cap than people give it credit for. (duh as if we didn't know from Pokemon which we for some reason are always dismissing)
And before people go but it's a different type of turn based! You can throw all the same arguments at CRPGs that you dismiss JRPGs with.
BG3 wasn't completely out of nowhere success either, Larian clearly nurtured the break out to it with both Original Sin releases both doing numbers that you wouldn't except from the "genre".

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Oh yeah. Turn-based games have been absolutely thriving the last several years and it's no surprise that they're both critical darlings and sales monsters. People love turn-based RPGs in general and there is an endless amount of creativity and strategy that exists within that approach to gameplay. Look at how the Yakuza series exploded with Like a Dragon and Infinite Wealth. Look at BG3 cleaning up GOTY awards. Look at Persona 5 and Royal top the charts. Look at Pokemon, despite running at 480p and 10fps continue to be a global phenomenon.

Turn-based games are going to keep throwing their weight around and people are going to keep buying them like crazy. Like when Persona 6 drops, watch them put up numbers that Final Fantasy only wishes it could get for its newer, numbered entries.

 

[dglavimans]

Hmm.

View: https://x.com/genki_jpn/status/1780404754063241365?s=46

 

[FrozenIn]

This is literally me. I never grew up with Playstation consoles, I obviously knew about FF7 on the PSX, but I never played it myself. FF7R was my first proper venture into the franchise, and both it and Rebirth are two of my favourite games ever made. Since then I have jumped into FF14, FF16 and bought the Pixel Remaster. I love it!

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Add another to the list.
Since I never played the original, the locations were all new to me, and it was one fun moment after another. In particular the Observatory was such an enjoyable time.

There is a sentiment that games don't wow us as much anymore, which I used to agree with. FF7 Rebirth changed that, and I am happy that a project like this exists.

Spoiler: FF16 v FF7 Rebirth

I had issues with FF16's open world, but thinking back thats not surprising. FF7 Remake project had the benefit of decades of content set in the world, and the usual go to game for praise, Witcher 3, was based on a large amount of source material. Its not easy to conjure up a world like that, and only Elden Ring seems to have managed that well outright.

What I am saying is that I am looking forward to playing FF16 Remake in my fusion powered apartment (rented, of course).

 

[Rappy]

Hmm.

View: https://x.com/genki_jpn/status/1780404754063241365?s=46

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What are you trying to say with this post when we already knew about Japan sales?

 

[Raigor]

Hmm.

View: https://x.com/genki_jpn/status/1780404754063241365?s=46

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there's nothing to "hmm" about, Rebirth is way down compared to Remake in Japan and WW.

 

[Gorger]

This is literally me. I never grew up with Playstation consoles, I obviously knew about FF7 on the PSX, but I never played it myself. FF7R was my first proper venture into the franchise, and both it and Rebirth are two of my favourite games ever made. Since then I have jumped into FF14, FF16 and bought the Pixel Remaster. I love it!

Click to shrink...

Awesome love how many people who gets introduced to the franchise thanks to the remake. It's kinda similar how a lot of people got introduced to RE thanks to RE2/RE3/RE4 Remake. You still have a lot of great FF games to play like 9 and 10 which are my favorite after 7.

 

[foxuzamaki]

I was reading some Japanese impressions and while it's not a large sample size; the general reason why some people didn't buy the game over there tends to boil down to 2 reasons.

1. They don't have a PS5

2. The fanbase doesn't really have time to play games like they use to

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Thats the gist IB forum has came up with, it's not on the console of choice in Japan, and the franchise(and PS nowadays) have mostly only appealed to the 30+ crowd

 

[foxuzamaki]

I think this is actually more on SE not following up on XV's commercial success than XV not being able to draw in a newer/younger audience.

Let's say a 16-17 years old played XV and fell completely in love with it 8 years ago. Where should they go next for more FF like that? The answer is nowhere cause we don't have another FF game like that (at least we didn't until Rebirth which is kinda similar to XV in some aspects, but it's also the second chapter of a requel so, that's a different hurdle of its own).

That has been the case for FF for a good while now. I don't think FF is necessarily failing to bring in a younger audience, I think it's probably more that they are bringing in different younger audiences with each entry to a varying degrees and then abandoning them since each FF is vastly different from the last one.

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I know we've all been down this road a 100 times but I think Sakaguchi was onto something keeping the 1st 10 titles roughly turn based.
There were evolutions to the formula but a FF fan knew what they were getting with each entry. Now FF can almost be anything except a turn based game.
The last game was just basically DMC, and if your someone who started on let's say FF6, than 16 is just nothing like that entry, why would you stick around? And that's while FF still technically is keeping an older audience.

 

[Abrasion Test]

I know we've all been down this road a 100 times but I think Sakaguchi was onto something keeping the 1st 10 titles roughly turn based.
There were evolutions to the formula but a FF fan knew what they were getting with each entry. Now FF can almost be anything except a turn based game.
The last game was just basically DMC, and if your someone who started on let's say FF6, than 16 is just nothing like that entry, why would you stick around? And that's while FF still technically is keeping an older audience.

Click to shrink...

When you buy a Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, Persona, etc game you know there's a core loop there that you're gonna get. Obviously there are evolutions and changes from it, but the identity and feeling is there.

When you buy a FF game the only mainstays are having really good music and some characters, abilities, creatures that share the same name. It's basically the same as Sonic where the games have no core identity. Reinvention is good, but even when Zelda did it the series core design tenets are there, just expressed differently.

 

[TonyBaduy]

the highest selling Zelda of all time before BotW and TotK was TP with like 8m units. yes, it was never a mainstream hit

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What sale's threshold would it have need to sell over to be considered mainstream during that era though? If we are going by 20m-40m then most games were definitely not mainstream, just a couple Mario games, the Wii Sports/Fit series, Minecraft, Kinect Adventures and GTAIV would have been the only mainstream games during that time, not even Just Dance 3 cracked 10m on Wii at the time from what I am seeing so... Maybe you are being too restrictive about what you consider mainstream fo the time?

List of best-selling Wii video games - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

List of best-selling PlayStation 3 video games - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

List of best-selling Xbox 360 video games - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Son of Sparda]

I know we've all been down this road a 100 times but I think Sakaguchi was onto something keeping the 1st 10 titles roughly turn based.
There were evolutions to the formula but a FF fan knew what they were getting with each entry. Now FF can almost be anything except a turn based game.
The last game was just basically DMC, and if your someone who started on let's say FF6, than 16 is just nothing like that entry, why would you stick around? And that's while FF still technically is keeping an older audience.

Click to shrink...

Yea, I think FF needs to establish a core gameplay loop and structure for itself at least for a few games if it hopes to keep a notable portion of the newer audience that they draw in with a new mainline release.

I've talked about this a lot both in this thread and in other similar discussions and I hope SE tries to do that instead of reinventing the wheel with each new mainline entry.

 

[NukeRunner]

Hmm.

View: https://x.com/genki_jpn/status/1780404754063241365?s=46

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The budget of Rebirth versus Princess Peach or Unicorn is likely staggering, so not much to really be proud of especially in contrast to the prior entry. It's a shame, but we should accept the data regardless.

 

[Saito Hikari]

Oh yeah. Turn-based games have been absolutely thriving the last several years and it's no surprise that they're both critical darlings and sales monsters. People love turn-based RPGs in general and there is an endless amount of creativity and strategy that exists within that approach to gameplay. Look at how the Yakuza series exploded with Like a Dragon and Infinite Wealth. Look at BG3 cleaning up GOTY awards. Look at Persona 5 and Royal top the charts. Look at Pokemon, despite running at 480p and 10fps continue to be a global phenomenon.

Turn-based games are going to keep throwing their weight around and people are going to keep buying them like crazy. Like when Persona 6 drops, watch them put up numbers that Final Fantasy only wishes it could get for its newer, numbered entries.

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For the most part, I'd argue that different styles of turn based have different market caps.

Pokemon, BG3, and mobile gachas like Honkai Star Rail really appeal to number crunchers, and there are A LOT more of them this forum and the overall JRPG community would expect. But the JRPG community, particularly fans of SE JRPGs in particular, have been conditioned on early era FF/Dragon Quest adjacent turn-based combat systems, and that's the image turn-based holds within the overall mainstream community too, an image so strong that even the JRPG community itself will jump through hoops to disqualify Pokemon and HSR as JRPGs. When BG3 came out, I saw plenty of people in the BG3 community saying 'I thought I hated turn-based games, turns out I just hated JRPG turn based'. Even now, Infinite Wealth and the Persona series may have been considered successes for their respective franchises... But they are still peanuts compared to the real juggernauts of Pokemon, BG3, and HSR.

If true JRPG turn-based wants to thrive again, a developer is going to have to step up with a combat system that allows for immense player skill expression rather than typical old style FF/DQ, also within a package containing a great story and world design. Or else the number crunching crowd won't turn up for it.

Before someone argues Octopath, it allows for a lot of number crunching, but it matters little in the end because enemy design is an afterthought. Pokemon is carried by a competitive scene along with a consistent release cycle that keeps the franchise relevant, HSR also has a very consistent content release cycle along with some teeth in its difficulty and rather unique turn-based mechanics design that are rarely seen in other turn-based games, and BG3 is far better as an overall package than pretty much every JRPG out there.

 

[BBboy20]

Yea, I think FF needs to establish a core gameplay loop and structure for itself at least for a few games if it hopes to keep a notable portion of the newer audience that they draw in with a new mainline release.

I've talked about this a lot both in this thread and in other similar discussions and I hope SE tries to do that instead of reinventing the wheel with each new mainline entry.

Click to shrink...

Was Versus 13 not meant to be a mainline game? If so, it makes me wonder if even Square also got into thinking it needed to reinvent things after 15's release with how 16's devs were talking about their game.

 

[entrydenied]

Was Versus 13 not meant to be a mainline game? If so, it makes me wonder if even Square also got into thinking it needed to reinvent things after 15's release with how 16's devs were talking about their game.

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I think Versus was meant to have a big budget as a mainline game.

I actually beg to differ that FF development teams don't try to iterate. If you look back at the FFs developed by CBU1 people, you can see that Rebirth is an iteration of what came before. I think the biggest influence is actually Lightning Returns. Rebirth is an expansion of what was done in that game. It reminds me of how the world in LR is designed, the sidequests have similar structures, and even the battle system has LR influences. There are Toriyama Motomu's fingerprints all over Rebirth lol

People who enjoyed Rebirth but skipped FFXIII-2 and LR should go back to play those 2 games.

 

[Majunior]

We still have sales figures that are well below the major industry standards. Without forgetting that for Persona 5 this includes all spin offs and new versions. and finally we must not forget that it is for Persona 5 and Like a Dragon we are talking about games which have finally had translations in the different European countries

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I don't know what you mean by "industry standards", but P5 sold almost four times as much as P4. That's REALLY significant.

 

[Squall93]

I don't know what you mean by "industry standards", but P5 sold almost four times as much as P4. That's REALLY significant.

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I'm talking about franchises that are above 10 million sales (without having to release X remaster or port). For the moment in the world of JRPG to reach close to 10 million a game must be released in several versions or even on several generations of machine

 

[Jiggy]

The budget of Rebirth versus Princess Peach or Unicorn is likely staggering, so not much to really be proud of especially in contrast to the prior entry. It's a shame, but we should accept the data regardless.

Click to shrink...

Rebirth was in development for only 3 years and had Sony deals to likely offset a good chunk of the dev cost

Impossible to know what the budget is but FF16 reportedly broke even at 3m sales and that was in development much longer than Rebirth

 

[Majunior]

I'm talking about franchises that are above 10 million sales (without having to release X remaster or port). For the moment in the world of JRPG to reach close to 10 million a game must be released in several versions or even on several generations of machine

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Pokemon consistently gets over 10 million sales.

 

[GhostTrick]

Rebirth was in development for only 3 years and had Sony deals to likely offset a good chunk of the dev cost

Impossible to know what the budget is but FF16 reportedly broke even at 3m sales and that was in development much longer than Rebirth

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I often see people saying that.
Is there something to back that up ?

 

[Jiggy]

I often see people saying that.
Is there something to back that up ?

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Do you... think Square made the game exclusive out of the goodness of their hearts?

 

[GhostTrick]

Do you... think Square made the game exclusive out of the goodness of their hearts?

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No, I don't think so. But there's a difference between "they did it for free" and "the amount of money was so high that it likely offset the developpment cost or at least a good part of it".

 

[hydrophilic attack]

i wonder what the physical/digital split is for top games in japan. in the uk, we know it's around 40/60. with some extrapolations from information shared by mat, i have extrapolated it's about 20/80 in america. i wonder if 50/50 is about accurate for japan, or if they're still more heavily shifted towards physical versions.

 

[Vault]

Comparing sales to Princess Peach Showtime and Unicorn Overlord is pure cope lol.

 

[Jiggy]

No, I don't think so. But there's a difference between "they did it for free" and "the amount of money was so high that it likely offset the developpment cost or at least a good part of it".

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I don't know what the size of the deal was

IIRC MS spent $100m on Tomb Raider exclusivity so I would hope Square got something in that range

 

[Squall93]

Pokemon consistently gets over 10 million sales.

Click to shrink...

Pokemon is a special case. It is to be put in the same basket as GTA, Call of Duty or FIFA, it is a particular license which is not representative of the entire genre in which its games belong.

 

[Gay Bowser]

I don't know what the size of the deal was

IIRC MS spent $100m on Tomb Raider exclusivity so I would hope Square got something in that range

Click to shrink...

It's worth noting that these sorts of deals (in the very rare case that we actually do get reliably sourced numbers for them) are virtually never, like, "Platform Vendor hands Third Party one hundred million dollars, asks them to develop the game" type deals. They're almost always deals where, like, some upfront cash might change hands, but a big component of the deal is also a confirmed amount of marketing spend, as Platform Vendor markets both the exclusive and their console together, etc. etc. It really isn't ever as simple as "Company X pays development costs of Company Y."

 

[Jiggy]

It's worth noting that these sorts of deals (in the very rare case that we actually do get reliably sourced numbers for them) are virtually never, like, "Platform Vendor hands Third Party one hundred million dollars, asks them to develop the game" type deals. They're almost always deals where, like, some upfront cash might change hands, but a big component of the deal is also a confirmed amount of marketing spend, as Platform Vendor markets both the exclusive and their console together, etc. etc. It really isn't ever as simple as "Company X pays development costs of Company Y."

Click to shrink...

Unless Square is getting absolutely fleeced by Sony then some amount money must have changed hands in some way, marketing agreements on their own don't result in platform exclusivity anymore, especially for a major release like this

 

[dex3108]

Rebirth was in development for only 3 years and had Sony deals to likely offset a good chunk of the dev cost

Impossible to know what the budget is but FF16 reportedly broke even at 3m sales and that was in development much longer than Rebirth

Click to shrink...

Rebirth has 3 month exclusivity deal. You don't pay a lot for 3 month exclusivity.

 

[Majunior]

Pokemon is a special case. It is to be put in the same basket as GTA, Call of Duty or FIFA, it is a particular license which is not representative of the entire genre in which its games belong.

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You're underestimating how hard it actually is to get 10 million sales. Anything that sells over 10 million is a "special case" automatically because that's not representative of any genre. JRPG is already a sub genre within a genre, so having even one franchise that reaches 10 million is really good.

 

[John Harker]

About to be overtaken by dragons dogma .
That move wasn't on my bingo card

 

[Vareon]

Was Versus 13 not meant to be a mainline game? If so, it makes me wonder if even Square also got into thinking it needed to reinvent things after 15's release with how 16's devs were talking about their game.

Click to shrink...

I have no basis on this, but I think it was supposed to be the first of its kind--an action RPG Final Fantasy that is equal to mainline efforts, as opposed to XIII's turn based (that was still trying to replicate Advent Children's combat scenes). With Nomura and Yoko Shimomura being attached to it, there was a feeling that this was Kingdom Hearts team's take on a Final Fantasy title. It being carried on as a mainline feels like a testament that Versus has enough groundwork already to become one.

 

[Hero]

About to be overtaken by dragons dogma .
That move wasn't on my bingo card

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That's brutal to hear but honestly SE management needed a wake up call. I'm hoping the new CEO will change up business tactics and realize that there's no growth to be had by repeating the "PS[#] exclusive for X years before PC gets a full price port".

 

[duckroll]

That's brutal to hear but honestly SE management needed a wake up call. I'm hoping the new CEO will change up business tactics and realize that there's no growth to be had by repeating the "PS[#] exclusive for X years before PC gets a full price port".

Click to shrink...

What if the new CEO's business tactic is letting Kitase and Nomura go?

 

[Hero]

What if the new CEO's business tactic is letting Kitase and Nomura go?

Click to shrink...

One of the two of our proposals is more likely than the other.

 

[idiotmode]

Idk I think there's a middle ground for TB being successful that people aren't acknowledging. But I do find it strange that the argument seems to be implying that FF is struggling because it's not TB? I don't think it would do worse or better as either system. Granblue Fantasy: Relink had virtually zero advertising and no massive pre launch hype as an action RPG and still broke 1 million by week one WW. It had higher steam numbers than Y8 or P3R even.

If FF went back to TB while staying exclusive, I don't see it performing much better than XVI or Rebirth tbh. That's a bigger knife in the series' gut than not having a command window with XVI level graphics, like be serious guys. I'd love to see what they'd try with a turn based combat system though don't get me wrong.

 

[Fishook]

Gamers and the Game industry have created this problem. As a 50 year old gamer who plays around 20 hours a week on a high end PC.

The younger aged range are so used to cheap/free games, and when they do buy the occasional games they want 100hr epics to justify their cost. Add in subscription services no wonder why sales are dropping for FF as it seen for older gamers who do not have the time anymore to keep up. So they are selective of what they buy/play.

 

[idiotmode]

What if the new CEO's business tactic is letting Kitase and Nomura go?

Click to shrink...

Kitase was just promoted like lol what would be an insane strategy ig. If anything retention of staff allows SE to make their games quicker not to mention that the pool of devs in JP doesn't seem that large going by the fact that SE seems to be always hiring. So I don't see any perks there.

 

[Mephissto]

At the end if the day I personally am happy with all the recent FF games overall (though I am not too big on XVI) and think the franchise is in a good place quality wise.

XVI and likely Rebirth seem to have sold ok but not great.

The things SE needs to do succeed is:

Drop PS exclusivity. PC is growing, console is declining. Build an audience across all platfarms that can run your game. Have PC ports ready day 1.

Don't water down the brand with too many shitty spinoffs, mobile games etc.

Release a standalone Queen's blood client for all platforms and IOS/play store.

Better marketing. Like the TGA performance was great but I doubt it is something that convinced many people to buy the game.

Besides that they just gotta continue with their quality releases.

 

[Kuro]

I got the impression that Hashimoto and the previous CEO were the ones signing the exclusivity deals. Maybe it was a group effort lol idk.

 

[plow]

Idk I think there's a middle ground for TB being successful that people aren't acknowledging. But I do find it strange that the argument seems to be implying that FF is struggling because it's not TB? I don't think it would do worse or better as either system. Granblue Fantasy: Relink had virtually zero advertising and no massive pre launch hype as an action RPG and still broke 1 million by week one WW. It had higher steam numbers than Y8 or P3R even.

If FF went back to TB while staying exclusive, I don't see it performing much better than XVI or Rebirth tbh. That's a bigger knife in the series' gut than not having a command window with XVI level graphics, like be serious guys. I'd love to see what they'd try with a turn based combat system though don't get me wrong.

Click to shrink...

Yeah it's silly i think. People take LAD and Persona as series that are growing compared to Final Fantasy and take that as a confirmation that SE is doing everything wrong with the series. The truth could very well be, that the 8-10 million is a ceiling for these kind of games. The market overlaps a lot between Persona/LAD/and FF so i presume a lot of people who buy LAD games or Persona games also buy Final Fantasy games. ( Cue before someone quotes this saying "I bought Persona, LAD but never touched FF). The new LAD and Persona are probably reaching people that are already into those kind of game ( Like me, i never touched a LAD game before LAD7 ). I seriously doubt they are expanding outside of the core "JRPG" audience and even if they grow insanely, they would probably have the same ceiling as Final Fantasy games.

So it Persona and LAD growing does not mean that Final Fantasy has to grow to. The situation is not the same at all.

 

[Ascheroth]

Pokemon is a special case. It is to be put in the same basket as GTA, Call of Duty or FIFA, it is a particular license which is not representative of the entire genre in which its games belong.

Click to shrink...

Honkai: Star Rail earns $100+ millions a month.

 

[DesVoeux]

There's a lot of arguing over numbers, but I would say that specific sales numbers (especially compared to other games) are mostly irrelevant. Square Enix is a publicly traded company, and investors just want to see the numbers (whatever they might be) go up. Growth is what matters to the stock market. That's why Capcom's stock is up 323% over five years vs. Square Enix's 46%. (For comparison, the overall Nikkei index is up 71% over the same time period.)

 

[GhostTrick]

Yeah it's silly i think. People take LAD and Persona as series that are growing compared to Final Fantasy and take that as a confirmation that SE is doing everything wrong with the series. The truth could very well be, that the 8-10 million is a ceiling for these kind of games. The market overlaps a lot between Persona/LAD/and FF so i presume a lot of people who buy LAD games or Persona games also buy Final Fantasy games. ( Cue before someone quotes this saying "I bought Persona, LAD but never touched FF). The new LAD and Persona are probably reaching people that are already into those kind of game ( Like me, i never touched a LAD game before LAD7 ). I seriously doubt they are expanding outside of the core "JRPG" audience and even if they grow insanely, they would probably have the same ceiling as Final Fantasy games.

So it Persona and LAD growing does not mean that Final Fantasy has to grow to. The situation is not the same at all.

Click to shrink...

The problem isn't that FF isn't growing. The problem is that it's shrinking.
If FFVII Remake could get as high as 7 million units despite all the shortcomings attached to these exclusivity deals + handling of Intermission, should we really believe there was no way these 7 millions could've been 10 millions, if not more, if handled properly ?

People are taking exemple of other series because it's evidence that there is growth OUTSIDE of a single platform.
Unless we're supposed to believe that FF sold as much as it could and that no sales exists outside of PlayStation.

(And btw, Nier Automata is the evidence that yes, there is growth for JRPG outside of PlayStation. So is Persona and Yakuza.)

 

[Hero]

Yeah it's silly i think. People take LAD and Persona as series that are growing compared to Final Fantasy and take that as a confirmation that SE is doing everything wrong with the series. The truth could very well be, that the 8-10 million is a ceiling for these kind of games. The market overlaps a lot between Persona/LAD/and FF so i presume a lot of people who buy LAD games or Persona games also buy Final Fantasy games. ( Cue before someone quotes this saying "I bought Persona, LAD but never touched FF). The new LAD and Persona are probably reaching people that are already into those kind of game ( Like me, i never touched a LAD game before LAD7 ). I seriously doubt they are expanding outside of the core "JRPG" audience and even if they grow insanely, they would probably have the same ceiling as Final Fantasy games.

So it Persona and LAD growing does not mean that Final Fantasy has to grow to. The situation is not the same at all.

Click to shrink...

Persona and LAD's budgets are no where near what it costs to develop a numbered mainline FF title. Their success is measured differently, but declining sales of mainline FF titles is not a good look when budgets are going up. XVI and Rebirth won't hit even 8 million units without ports beyond PC and steep discounts.

 

[mclem]

One mild thought on the turn based vs real time discussion : I've not played the Remake family, so I don't know how much it hinges on action skills, but, well, I'm in my forties now, and the reactions very much aren't what they used to be - and that's as a dedicated gamer, a more casual one may well have a more significant decline. It does make me wonder if real time goes some way to alienate the original audience, but less out of an unwillingness to learn and more out of a difficulty in keeping up?

(But it's quite possible it's a very gentle, not terribly twitchy real-time experience, so ignore all that if so!)

 

[sfortunato]

Pokemon is a special case. It is to be put in the same basket as GTA, Call of Duty or FIFA, it is a particular license which is not representative of the entire genre in which its games belong.

Click to shrink...

What does "special case" mean?

Pokémon is a video game and people buy it because it's a video game. It's a turn-based jRPG and the fact that it's selling 25-27m units means that being a turn-based jRPG is not detrimental for millions of people.

The fact that has gameplay mechanics people like is a merit, not a demerit. Nothing prevents Square Enix to develop a game people would like to buy. It won't perhaps reach the same numbers but in a market where classic Japanese franchise were able to reinvent themselves to sell 10, 20, 30m units I think it's on Square Enix.

 

[sfortunato]

Yeah it's silly i think. People take LAD and Persona as series that are growing compared to Final Fantasy and take that as a confirmation that SE is doing everything wrong with the series. The truth could very well be, that the 8-10 million is a ceiling for these kind of games. The market overlaps a lot between Persona/LAD/and FF so i presume a lot of people who buy LAD games or Persona games also buy Final Fantasy games. ( Cue before someone quotes this saying "I bought Persona, LAD but never touched FF). The new LAD and Persona are probably reaching people that are already into those kind of game ( Like me, i never touched a LAD game before LAD7 ). I seriously doubt they are expanding outside of the core "JRPG" audience and even if they grow insanely, they would probably have the same ceiling as Final Fantasy games.

So it Persona and LAD growing does not mean that Final Fantasy has to grow to. The situation is not the same at all.

Click to shrink...

Persona and Like A Dragon weren't used to say that Final Fantasy should grow, rather to demonstrate that being a classical turn-based jRPG doesn't alienate consumers, rather it might even increase popularity of franchises.

Final Fantasy could achieve 10m+ sales (now it's pretty far behind even 8m) because it's a big budget game developed by one of the most important companies in the market and with a huge legacy.

No one would have thought Zelda could sell 30m+ after Skyward Sword, yet here we are.

 

[Eien1no1Yami]

What if the new CEO's business tactic is letting Kitase and Nomura go?

Click to shrink...

I was really hoping not to get involved this much in this thread for personal reasons but after reading this I really hope you're jesting here duckroll and don't
really think that by removing any of those people is gonna have any positive effect or strategy change in SE's management.
If you're not please just think of it for a moment..

Like this is one of the reasons there's no point participitacing in any discussion in these threads, you guys are in panic mode and not thinking straight...

 

[Linus815]

The reason for growth for LAD and Persona is them embracing multiplatform and global releases.

You could say that its also proving that classic turn based gameplay is still "cool" in 2024 and I'm right there with you but I really don't think it would make much of a difference for FF if it was turn based in terms of sales.