Final Fantasy XVI and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth did not meet sale expectations says Square Enix

[Edmund]

Nintendo fanboys on Resetera saying that these 2 games should release on the Switch day 1. lmao. Performance mode of these 2 games on the PS5 aren't looking good yet they think they'll be able to run on the Switch. It's gonna be 144p and 10 fps. Maybe 480p and 20 fps on the Switch 2.

 

[mibu no ookami]

FF7 remake trilogy would of been boring and not as much fun to play if they made it 1:1 faithful to the original with just better graphics.

I like the changes they made to the story in Remake and so far with Rebirth. It’s adds to enjoyment of playing the game. The game is more of a sequel really than a direct remake. I’m happy they made that decision.

People who want to play the same original game can still do so.

The original game is extremely dated and doesn't age well.

The fact that this isn't selling to expectations helps prove my point.

I'm someone who bought Remake but didn't buy Rebirth, that's the result of alienation.

Look at RE2. Obviously there are some liberties, but this is too far.

 

[Vertigo]

They’ll definitely be on a Nintendo handheld within the next decade. Oh noes. Square is multiplatform pub with loyalties to no one (like their drama with Nintendo isn’t historic).

This year represented the last year before they decided to change their strategy altogether and gut. Let’s see how they handle the next. I expect only one or two releases named either final fantasy or dragon quest — and that’s it.

 

[RE4-Station]

The thing square needs to figure out is how to give the newer ff games legs like what with capcom did with resident evil.

FF7 remake had one of the biggest lauches ever for a PS4 exclusive when it launched:

Final Fantasy 7 Remake Is The Fastest-Selling PS4 Exclusive

Final Fantasy 7 Remake has sold 3.5 million copies in three days.

screenrant.com

But then only only about 3 and a half years later only sold 7 million: https://www.pushsquare.com/news/202...remake-crosses-the-7-million-copies-sold-mark

Re7 kept selling after its launch and got a huge boost from re8.

Re2 remake sold very well in its first year and got another boost from re3 remake and then both games got another huge boost after RE4 Remake came out.

I think ff7 and ff7 rebirth are the better remakes but square has to find a way to keep the legs going stronger after launch month sales. Its a shame foamstars didn't do better as than game is actually really fun and even expands on what splatoon does. At least 1 and 2 since i never played splatoon 3.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

What AA or AAA game ever met the sale expectations for Square Enix?


2023: Final Fantasy 16 sales did not meet high expectations, says Square Enix president
2022: Guardians Of The Galaxy didn't meet Square Enix's sales expectations
2021: NEO: The World Ends With You Sales Lower Than Expected
2020: Marvel's Avengers hasn't met Square Enix's expectations
2019: Just Cause 4 performed below expectations; “we sold fewer units on launch than we had anticipated”


Square Enix's leadership are pretty much a meme at this point. 6 years in a row where your projects fail to reach expectations just means you're incompetent at managing expectations, not that the output of your teams is sub-par.




As for my take on the Final Fantasies:

FFXVI: I wanted to play it on PC so I could play it on my desktop and then bring it with me on my handheld. Turns out I should wait a bit more for them to patch the performance and stability.

FFVII Rebirth: I wanted to play it with better graphics on the PS5 Pro, but turns out Sony thinks of Europeans as lower-class customers for the PS5 Pro so I'll just wait until the game is on PC as well.

 

[Ico]

we know their expectations are always crazy, but they should stop messing around with easy mistakes in these games...

the customers showed up and accepted real time action by selling 10M copies of XV, square enix let those people down by messing the story and cancelling dlc that everyone was hyped so it could fix the story

7M people showed up again for 7R, the action gameplay was fire again, BUT AGAIN they keep messing with the story of those games bro, why put multiverse into it...

XVI didnt had party members despite having the best action gameplay of square enix, i think if they build up from here it can surpass KH as THE action jrpg title of SE, just need smooth development and dont follow story trends

 

[Etifilio]

3 million copies in a week - did not meet our expectations

what do they expect to sell, honestly? 10 million in the first week? not even Spiderman makes these numbers

 

[toadsage44]

Rebirth is a fine but still bloated game.

I've been watching someone stream Rebirth on twitch and I've said a number of times that it's way too big for its own good. I picked up Remake in 2020, but the size of Rebirth makes me not want to get it. Reminds me of ubislop

 

[Entropi]

Square is its own worst enemy.

 

[Vertigo]

Well, Final Fantasy as an MMO has been a winning formula.

Final fantasy as a single player rpg sorta needs to find an identity. What they started with 16 has shown to perform better than rebirth (clearly the more expensive game too) with younger generations so that’s likely the direction.

With that said, Dragon Quest is likely to stay the more traditional.

Square and its fan’s expectations are outta whack tho. They are not Fromsoft; the true jrpg king.

 

[ethomaz]

That was obvious since they shared the initial shipment + digital plus with the tracking across the world showing it was below previous FFs games.
But people keep saying I was wrong and just saying it because I hated FFXVI when I don't even hate the game at all.

Anyway about the games itself and the franchise.

- FF franchise lacks lack of identification... they have a clear mind of what FF was in the past but after they rise the flag of "modernization" they started to lose themselves... imo FF doesn't need to try to follow games like The Witcher or anything like... it should be Final Fantasy.
- FFXVI has some good highs but have some big lows too... it was not a true RPG (the RPGs elements are very light, the action combat is repetitive and lack deep like elemental differences, the story is good until half of the game when it lose itself, the whole Ultima plot come from nowhere just to say the game has a big ending boss? I mean making the Odin being the big end boss should be better because Ultima lack everything including story development... seems like Square Enix forgot what made Kefka and Seph great villains.
- Rebirth is fine in most of the cases... it is really a great game and a better FF than the last 3 mainlines ones. But it is a sequel of a trilogy... maybe Square Enix thought the scope of FFVII was too big, maybe they wanted to get more money from 3 games instead one... the fact is not everybody that brought Remake will end buying Rebirth... so if you didn't like the first one even the second one being way different it will still not be enough to you jump to the second game... not sure what to say here but being a Trilogy is playing against the game... maybe it should be better if it was a new story/IP but it is one of the most know history and characters in the JRPG genre... from what I can see the last game will sell even lower.

 

[On Demand]

The original game is extremely dated and doesn't age well.

The fact that this isn't selling to expectations helps prove my point.

I'm someone who bought Remake but didn't buy Rebirth, that's the result of alienation.

Look at RE2. Obviously there are some liberties, but this is too far.

Not selling as much as Remake could be many reasons that has nothing to do with the story or the way they remade the game.

It being a trilogy could have caused many people to wait until the story is complete and all games are available.

Rebirth launching only months later after FF16 probably affected sales. Playing FF16 for over 80 hours then another 100 hour JRPG would be too much for some people.

No more Remake hype? The announcement of the game caused so much frenzy with the fanbase. We’ve been asking for remaster/remake for years. A remastered Midgar was enough to market and sell the game by itself. All that new hype is sort of gone with Rebirth. Which again would translate to lower sales.

The last part of the trilogy might be able to renew all that hype of Remake with it being the grand finale of the FF7 series. Tetsuya Nomura said he wants to get the games over and done with, so part 3 will be the last we see of anything FF7 related for a long while.

 

[Johnic]

I've been watching someone stream Rebirth on twitch and I've said a number of times that it's way too big for its own good. I picked up Remake in 2020, but the size of Rebirth makes me not want to get it. Reminds me of ubislop

You're not forced to do any of it. But the game does have some dumb mini games for certain story related actions. But I can't say I'm a fan of all the Ubisoft crap. They even have damn towers you need to activate. Square is 10 years late to that party.

 

[Summer Nightmares]

Of course resetera is having a field day with this misinformation.

I never seen a group of people so happy to want a game to fail. It’s always with PS games.

Well let's not be hypocrites and admit that is pretty similar to people here being happy when a game on PC bombs.

 

[ethomaz]

Nintendo fanboys on Resetera saying that these 2 games should release on the Switch day 1. lmao. Performance mode of these 2 games on the PS5 aren't looking good yet they think they'll be able to run on the Switch. It's gonna be 144p and 10 fps. Maybe 480p and 20 fps on the Switch 2.

If it was Turn-based then I should agree that the sales from there should be good.
But as action adventure game it should fail on Switch.

 

[Evilnemesis8]

What AA or AAA game ever met the sale expectations for Square Enix?


2023: Final Fantasy 16 sales did not meet high expectations, says Square Enix president
2022: Guardians Of The Galaxy didn't meet Square Enix's sales expectations
2021: NEO: The World Ends With You Sales Lower Than Expected
2020: Marvel's Avengers hasn't met Square Enix's expectations
2019: Just Cause 4 performed below expectations; “we sold fewer units on launch than we had anticipated”


Square Enix's leadership are pretty much a meme at this point. 6 years in a row where your projects fail to reach expectations just means you're incompetent at managing expectations, not that the output of your teams is sub-par.

I mean, not really? Marvel's Avengers actually lost money to SE and not just "underperformed."
GotG probably made a profit, but a very marginal one, especially with that Marvel cut. You dont' spend like 150M+ to make just a little bit of money.
NEO was another flop.
Just Cause 4 was/is a mess and sold a fraction of Just Cause 3, that's objectively bad for long running franchise.

FFXVI and FFVIIR are trending towards for launch numbers compared to previous entries, and the general "pull" of FF is lesser among casuals leading to weak sales legs(although that's a problem for like 95% of JRPG titles).

I do think early 2010s Square Enix were a meme with how Tomb Raiders "underperformed" even though they sold a metric ton, but in recent times they're been more realistic about sales. Their financials YoY clearly show that it's not enough.

That was obvious since they shared the initial shipment + digital plus with the tracking across the world showing it was below previous FFs games.

But people keep saying I was wrong and just saying it because I hated FFXVI when I don't even hate the game at all.

People are just fans and don't really grasp that selling less when your projects are increasing in costs(inflation is forever, even in Japan) is not how a marquee franchise should perform. That's not like "oh, what a shame" it's really concerning for your biggest IP especially when you don't have a strategy to boost those sales like a viable path to releasing on Switch/Switch 2 very easily because of how graphically heavy your games are.

 

[SLB1904]

How many times

 

[Dabaus]

I wonder how much of this is these 2 games “dying for the sins” of forspoken? Like both Final Fantasy games and of them selves could’ve done better but forspoken was such a black hole that they were getting dragged into the crossfire?

 

[Gediminas]

Nintendo fanboys on Resetera saying that these 2 games should release on the Switch day 1. lmao. Performance mode of these 2 games on the PS5 aren't looking good yet they think they'll be able to run on the Switch. It's gonna be 144p and 10 fps. Maybe 480p and 20 fps on the Switch 2.

They are complete and utter idiots.

 

[Evilnemesis8]

I wonder how much of this is these 2 games “dying for the sins” of forspoken? Like both Final Fantasy games and of them selves could’ve done better but forspoken was such a black hole that they were getting dragged into the crossfire?

They did not release in the same Fiscal Year, so none at all.
Each game has its own budget and revenue generation expectation.