Wired: Final Fantasy Isn’t Dying. It’s Already Dead

Meccanical said:
Bullshit.

Turn based has been done to death.
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That is like saying FPSs, RTSs, or 2D-fighting games have been done to death. Turn-based RPG is a very broad category that encompasses all sorts of implementations and game mechanics. Games like Wild ARMS 5 or Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter play completely different from Dragon Quest, despite being turn based RPGs. New RPGs come out all the time to introduce new and interesting mechanics into the genre. I would say there is still a wealth of untapped potential to be found in turn-based systems.
 
IdreamofHIME said:
I like how he said the series has declining sales, but then doesn't give any numbers at all.

FF13 sold 7 million
FF12 sold 5 million
FFX sold 6 million
FFIX sold 4million

I mean...that's a decade of FF, it only declines when you go backwards :/

Yes, yes FF7 sold 10 million copies, but that was a watershed moment in gaming. A real phenomenon of the medium.
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Final Fantasy XIII shipped 7 million, it didn't sell that much. Also, Final Fantasy X sold over 6.6 million copies as of January 2004 and Final Fantasy IX sold 5.3 million copies as of March 2003. I don't agree that FF is "dead", but for the love of god get the sales right if you are going to talk about them.
 
There hasn't been a turned based Final Fantasy since before the Ivalice Alliance.

Games like The Last Remnant show you can do some interesting things with turn-based even in a JRPG context. Now, if you are saying turn-based in general is done... lol.

EDIT: At least you are not drive-by posting in this thread, I guess.
 
Aizu_Itsuko said:
I would not say it is dead, since the franchise still has sales potential, but I will say this:

There was a time when FF was filled with the innocence of a kids movie from the 80s.

Nowdays, FF is a J-Idol simulator.


Until SE realizes this, FF will keep becoming more and more irrelevant.
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Exactly. Final Fantasy was D&D, Laputa, Nausicaa, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and prog rock, all mashed up in a wonderful combination back in its vital days.
 
IdreamofHIME said:
I like how he said the series has declining sales, but then doesn't give any numbers at all.

FF13 sold 7 million
FF12 sold 5 million
FFX sold 6 million
FFIX sold 4million

I mean...that's a decade of FF, it only declines when you go backwards :/
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It'd be great if you could get your numbers right. Especially since shipment numbers have been posted all over this thread in the last hundred posts or so. It'll be even better if you can provide accurate NA/EU numbers! Because there are Japanese sales numbers (not shipment numbers!) available that show a decline from FF8 onwards, and all you will have to show is how FF13 sold more than its predecessors in the west to compensate for those declining sales in Japan.

Also, FF13 didn't ship 7 million. It shipped 6.6. It sold about a million less than that.
 
Tabris said:
Isn't FF8 the best selling FF in Japan and FF7 the best worldwide?
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Maybe, I was just using WW numbers.
I mean like 70% of FF9's sales were Japanese, but that can be blamed on releasing the damn thing in the West after the PS2 was out and people were going nuts over that machine and ignoring the treasures the PS1 was still spitting out.

...which could be a good lesson to how Lighting Returns will do if they don't release a PS4/XBONE version.
 
Does Final Fantasy still do the turned based thing? If so, can't say I'd be very interested. This gen Western RPG's overtook JRPG's imo.
 
Ferrio said:
The Aesthetics of the recent FF's are the least of my concerns. In the end i don't really give a damn if they look like boybands, and has nothing to do with the enjoyment/hate of a FF.
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I think I understand your extremely jaded look at Final Fantasy now, Ferrio. The last FF that was up your alley was X, correct? Since then, we got an MMO, a game that played like an offline MMO, a return to what should have been a standard turn-base game (which was underwhelming in the end), ANOTHER MMO (which failed), and spin offs of said titles. It's been almost 2 entire console generations for you, I guess. And now FFXV is revealed to be an ARPG, which is not the game style you like. =/
 
Inorigo said:
Absolutely not. SE was saying they were hoping to sell 6 million copies in Japan alone and that ended up being the global number.
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That makes no sense. No FF game has ever sold that many in Japan and XIII was on a single system no where near as popular than the PS2. Do you have a source on this?
 
jaxword said:
And you want it to keep on doing the same thing for 30 years?
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Doing the same thing? Every Final Fantasy game has been vastly different in theme, setting and story especially from FF4 forward. Thats what made FF games great each one was something new.

But what FF13 did was throw out everything people wanted in a FF game: towns, world to explore, story etc for Toriyama bullshit.
 
KoopaTheCasual said:
I think I understand your extremely jaded look at Final Fantasy now, Ferrio. The last FF that was up your alley was X, correct? Since then, we got an MMO, a game that played like an offline MMO, a return to what should have been a standard turn-base game (which was underwhelming in the end), ANOTHER MMO (which failed), and spin offs of said titles. It's been almost 2 entire console generations for you, I guess. And now FFXV is revealed to be an ARPG, which is not the game style you like. =/
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Bingo.
 
dramatis said:
It'd be great if you could get your numbers right. Especially since shipment numbers have been posted all over this thread in the last hundred posts or so. It'll be even better if you can provide accurate NA/EU numbers! Because there are Japanese sales numbers (not shipment numbers!) available that show a decline from FF8 onwards, and all you will have to show is how FF13 sold more than its predecessors in the west to compensate for those declining sales in Japan.

Also, FF13 didn't ship 7 million. It shipped 6.6. It sold about a million less than that.
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Source? Everything I've seen says 6.6 in sales.
 
BocoDragon said:
Sounds like you were hanging out at GameFAQs or something.

I remember those days online. Many loved VIII. It had detractors, but at least where I hung out, they were not the dominant voice.
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Compared to VII in particular their was a much larger sect of detractors for the game when it came out. To say the game isn't one of the more polarizing of the series is a little blind to the truth. I would say a decline in 9's sales were definitely in part to 8, but likely not as large a number as some would imagine. I know there is a large community of the gaming public that adores 8 for reasons I will never understand or fathom. However I've also never understood how final fantasy 7 has seemingly stayed as popular as it has. The sheer amount of rabid fanboys it has are baffling as well. Note Im not throwing the people who love 7 in with rabid fan boys. Unlike 8 I do understand why people love 7.
 
dramatis said:
Did you play vanilla version or International Zodiac? Because vanilla version literally gave you all the freedom to build your characters the way you wanted. And people complained about this!
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No it didn't since it wouldn't give you access to certain skills without picking an adjacent first and it didn't give you any indication of what skills were connected to what. Even with an faq you would still have to spend points on unwanted skills to get to stuff you actually wanted.
 
kurbaan said:
Doing the same thing? Every Final Fantasy game has been vastly different in theme, setting and story especially from FF4 forward. Thats what made FF games great each one was something new.

But what FF13 did was throw out everything people wanted in a FF game: towns, world to explore, story etc for Toriyama bullshit.
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Did you read what Pyrrhus said?
 
It was all downhill from X-2.

Well, except XII being the best game in the series. But yeah, other than that.
 
ubercheez said:
Source? Everything I've seen says 6.6 in sales.
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Check out this post by Road.
Road said:
Speaking of Final Fantasy, I just found this Mainichi Shinbun article about the series 25 years that has the following worldwide shipments for the games:

Code: 
I        2.5    (FC, WSC, PS, PSP)
II       1.6    (FC, WSC, PS, PSP)
III      3.7    (FC, NDS)
IV       4.3    (SFC, PS, WSC, GBA, NDS, PSP)
V        3.1    (SFC, PS, GBA)
VI       3.9    (SFC, PS, GBA)
VII      9.9    (PS, PC)
VIII     8.6    (PS, PC)
IX       5.4    (PS)
X        8.5    (PS2)
XII      6.1    (PS2)
XIII     6.6    (PS3, X360)

XI       0.6    (PS2, PC, X360)
XIII-2   3.0    (PS3, X360)

million units.

(It doesn't have 10-2, but the last number I saw for it was 5.2 million.)
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Would you look at that, worldwide SHIPMENTS.
 
I don't get why people are saying that the gameplay of XV was Target Render, some gameplay parts of the announcement trailer had a really shitty framerate.
 
dramatis said:
It'd be great if you could get your numbers right. Especially since shipment numbers have been posted all over this thread in the last hundred posts or so. It'll be even better if you can provide accurate NA/EU numbers! Because there are Japanese sales numbers (not shipment numbers!) available that show a decline from FF8 onwards, and all you will have to show is how FF13 sold more than its predecessors in the west to compensate for those declining sales in Japan.

Also, FF13 didn't ship 7 million. It shipped 6.6. It sold about a million less than that.
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To be fair, Japanese home console software sales have been going down across the board as they continue their shift over to handheld gaming, so a decline in FF sales over there likely doesn't mean much.


On another note, regardless of possibly declining sales, FF games still sell significantly more than most other RPGs on the market (East or West). I would hardly call that dead.
 
People who call Final Fantasy a "J-Idol sim" put the same level of thought into this as the people who were calling the same series "emo" and "gay" in the late 90s and early 00s or make YouTube comments like "thumps up if you want Justin Bieber to get hit by a car".

It is funny to see how 1 to 1 FFI is to D&D. Many elements which are iconic now were actually highly generic ones blatantly taken from it and masked by an awkward adaptation.
 
Hitokiri03 said:
I don't get why people are saying that the gameplay of XV was Target Render, some gameplay parts of the announcement trailer had a really shitty framerate.
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Either way. Gameplay mechanics looked rather scripted and just weird.

The Iron Giant for example. The dude taking it's sword just didn't feel real at all.
 
Xero said:
Compared to VII in particular their was a much larger sect of detractors for the game when it came out. To say the game isn't one of the more polarizing of the series is a little blind to the truth. I would say a decline in 9's sales were definitely in part to 8, but likely not as large a number as some would imagine. I know there is a large community of the gaming public that adores 8 for reasons I will never understand or fathom. However I've also never understood how final fantasy 7 has seemingly stayed as popular as it has. The sheer amount of rabid fanboys it has are baffling as well. Note Im not throwing the people who love 7 in with rabid fan boys. Unlike 8 I do understand why people love 7.
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When you put it like that.. Yes, of course I agree. It was a very divisive entry.

But to paint it like "everyone hated it" or "most people hated it". Nope. That game has a sizable fanbase, and that was true upon release and it's true today.

I'd call it the Titanic (film) of videogaming, in more ways then one. Is it one of the most beloved properties of the 90s?... or one of the most backlashed? Both.
 
FFXII was amazing. Play the IZJS version. Everything else is meh from FFX-2 onward but like many (including myself) it's just the rose colored filter of nostalgia that's doing most of the criticism.
 
Monsieur said:
I was a freshmen in high school when FFvs13 was announced, and ill probably be done with college when it's released. That in itself is pretty pathetic.
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The blame of that can be put on $599 + Wii success. If you had a dominant PS3, their revenue would be more secured and they wouldn't have had to start looking at multi-console development (something most japanese development studios are just getting used to) and diverting resources to other games.
 
jaxword said:
Did you read what Pyrrhus said?
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I did I think he just meant the overall feel / theme of Final Fantasy and I agree it was similar to all those elements blended together. I dont see how using those elements but creating brand new worlds, stories is doing the same thing?

FF7, FF8 and FF9 are vastly different if you just look at the world and story.
 
How can something, even at its worst, that still sells millions, be dead? It's okay if you don't like it, but calling it dead is asinine at best.
 
Hating on Final Fantasy is all the rage nowadays. Dead games don't get 250 new topics and 500 twitter mentions a day worldwide.
 
Kintaro said:
How can something, even at its worst, that still sells millions, be dead? It's okay if you don't like it, but calling it dead is asinine at best.
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If I don't like it anymore, it is dead. This applies even if I spend a sizable amount of my time with people looking forward to ongoing developments of it.


EDIT: The big thing about watching videogame trailers to me is that I need to get a sense of what buttons are being pushed when things are happening. No idea what was going on for FFXV. The UI just made it look more fake.
 
MagiusNecros said:
Either way. Gameplay mechanics looked rather scripted and just weird.

The Iron Giant for example. The dude taking it's sword just didn't feel real at all.
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I think the parrying sequence with the iron giant is clearly similar to the reaction command in Kingdom Hearts 2, where you have a small QTE window to counter an attack in a specific situation and trigger a short simulated combo.
 
kunonabi said:
No it didn't since it wouldn't give you access to certain skills without picking an adjacent first and it didn't give you any indication of what skills were connected to what. Even with an faq you would still have to spend points on unwanted skills to get to stuff you actually wanted.
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Did you want to skip all the lower level spells and get Holy first? How is this any different from going along a skill tree or not being able to buy the materia with the strongest stuff until you reach a higher level area? You literally just follow in the direction of the abilities/armor/weapons you want to get to the higher level abilities/armor/weapons of the same type. It's a bloody straight line if you read the unlocked tile, learn it, and see the next unlocked tiles!
 
Dvide said:
Hating on Final Fantasy is all the rage nowadays. Dead games don't get 250 new topics and 500 twitter mentions a day worldwide.
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Also seeing the FFXV trailer blow up on my facebook amongst people who are not really gamers, nerds, industry watchers (or male, for that matter).
 
Riposte said:
People who call Final Fantasy a "J-Idol sim" put the same level of thought into this as the people who were calling the same series "emo" and "gay" in the late 90s and early 00s or make YouTube comments like "thumps up if you want Justin Bieber to get hit by a car".

It is funny to see how 1 to 1 FFI is to D&D. Many elements which are iconic now were actually highly generic ones blatantly taken from it and masked by an awkward adaptation.
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Two reducto ad absurdum don't make a right
 
IdreamofHIME said:
Did you know shipments is money in the bank for Square? They base their calculations and projections from shipments.
Please calm down in future, thanks.
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Unless you know... they overshipped and had to buy back copies. Can you please know the info you're dealing out before you actually posting them?
 
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