FF Rebirth sold less than FFXVI in Japan at launch (336,027 vs 262,656) Retail

Oh.. Physical sales? Yeah, not surprising. Physical sucks. Who wants that?

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FFXVI was a completely fresh mainline entry in over a decade. The FFVII remakes have nostalgia to their advantage, but as a life long Final Fantasy fan, I think there's just something very exciting about not knowing at all what to expect with a new world, story, and cast of characters.

I was personally more excited for XVI than I was for Rebirth because of that, even though I enjoyed playing both to varying degrees.
 
Looking at those FF 13 numbers Square would probably do better with a longer marketing cycle. There was a solid 4 years of being edged and teased so of course the fanbase shot a huge load in the first week.
I don't think you could buy FFXIII in digital format, at least not at launch and I don't think it was ever listed in the PS3 store.

It was also quite hyped considering it was the first HD FF game.

I remember riding the train in Singapore on the Japanese launch date and so many people had copies in their hands, myself included. Little did we know that the game would be near impossible to play once the paradigm system started to open up. I love having the Japanese box art though 🙌
 
FF13 came out when the PS3 install base was much lower.

Same goes for FF15.

Maybe the series simply isnt as popular in japan as it used to be. Halo has seen similar declines.
4,276,480 PS3s at launch of 13. It's hard to say without digital on this (PS5 has a digital only console and PS3 digital share was probably tiny), but physical sales have declined since 16 last year. Not sure how comparable they (16/7R) are though.
 
So about 80% of games are now bought digitally on PS..... umm how many discs was rebirth again? Can we got some digital numbers?

These narrative derived numbers are getting tiring, lol.
 
So about 80% of games are now bought digitally on PS..... umm how many discs was rebirth again? Can we got some digital numbers?

These narrative derived numbers are getting tiring, lol.
Japan is supposed to lean more physical.

But yeah digital is really needed to understand where it really stands.

These charts will become more useless as time goes by.
 
FFXVI and Rebirth are the best selling launch games on a dead console in Japan.

If both these games hypothetically launched for the Switch, we'd be having a very different conversation right now.
 
If square somehow gets the idea from this to move forward with the FF16 template over the FF7Rebirth one, then we've all failed them as gamers.
 
Boomers didn't play Final Fantasy 7. It's X gen and Millennials. But it's a bit too much precisions for what you try bring to the discussion.
Boomer is synonymous with old people on the internet. It wasn't meant to be taken literally and you know that.

These numbers show FF is on the decline in Japan. Unless Square rethinks their strategy it won't get better.
 
Everyone I know that bought physical ps4 Remake all picked up the digital version. Any anyone who bought a physical version actually double dipped only because they wanted the collectors editions (like me). Two of the half-dozen of my friends picked up digital specifically to use on their PS Portal so I'm not sure how much we can read into this.

PS Portal is secretly a smart way for Sony to drive people to buy digital games. Never thought of that.
 
I was totally conflicted with this thread until I saw the word "retail". Well of course a ps3 game is gonna sell spades more in retail than an almost fully digital console.

Interesting news anyway
 
Boomer is synonymous with old people on the internet. It wasn't meant to be taken literally and you know that.

These numbers show FF is on the decline in Japan. Unless Square rethinks their strategy it won't get better.
The numbers don't include digital though. 🤷
 

Playstation is fucked in Japan.

But Japanese games which release on Playstation can still do great numbers, just outside of Japan.

I remember when Yakuza would release on PS3 with like 300-400k units sold week 1. Everything is in decline except for Nintendo games.

Something like RE4 Remake under 100k is also bonkers.
 
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FFXVI was a completely fresh mainline entry in over a decade. The FFVII remakes have nostalgia to their advantage, but as a life long Final Fantasy fan, I think there's just something very exciting about not knowing at all what to expect with a new world, story, and cast of characters.

I was personally more excited for XVI than I was for Rebirth because of that, even though I enjoyed playing both to varying degrees.
XVI is really solid, but gutting a lot of the RPG elements was such a bad move. I can deal with a lot of the rest. I'd love to see XVII just as retooled with XVI but with elemental affinity and a lot of the missing RPG elements.
 
Calm down. It's a part 2 game, meaning those who didn't play part 1 won't likely care about part 2. And some are waiting for the PC version. And digital vs physical. Etc etc etc
 
Almost 1/3rd of FF7 remake. Crazy. People must have really hated FF7 Remake.

What are the digital ratios in Japan?

Nah, FF VII remake was considering the best FF game since XII for many, tbh I was surprised it came out during the same gen XV did considering the leap in quality in just about every single thing.
FF13 came out when the PS3 install base was much lower.

Same goes for FF15.

Maybe the series simply isnt as popular in japan as it used to be. Halo has seen similar declines.
FF XIII was mostly physical if not only physically available. That and non portable consoles were still popular post ps2/into Wii era. Japan is handheld land, and the digital ratio of at 50/50 would put rebirth around 500k ish week 1 which is pretty good, but that can't be confirmed rn.
FFXVI was a completely fresh mainline entry in over a decade. The FFVII remakes have nostalgia to their advantage, but as a life long Final Fantasy fan, I think there's just something very exciting about not knowing at all what to expect with a new world, story, and cast of characters.

I was personally more excited for XVI than I was for Rebirth because of that, even though I enjoyed playing both to varying degrees.
FF VII rebirth is kind a brand new game tho
 
I took a lot of heat for saying that FF7 Rebirth wasn't going to be a major needle-mover.

It has major limitations in front of it that for some reason people wanted to ignore.
  1. Only Final Fantasy fans are going to play the game
  2. It's largely limited to people who played the first chapter
We'd already seen the sales of Remake/Integrade and the sales of FF16. So the delta here, new sales would be people who played FF7 remake on PS4 but had not upgraded to PS5 yet even for FF16.

That number was always going to be relatively low.

I'm continuously surprised by how difficult it is to have reasoned discussions on things that are pretty apparent here.
 
I thought it was well established that Japan basically only cares about handhelds now? And that regular consoles struggle in Japan.
 
Boomers didn't play Final Fantasy 7. It's X gen and Millennials. But it's a bit too much precisions for what you try bring to the discussion.

I think part of the reason Final Fantasy is "struggling" as a franchise is that Square Enix doesn't know their target audience. They want to attract Gen Z but forgo Gen X and Millennials in the process.

Square Enix should try to learn something from Pokemon, Baldur's Gate, and Persona... and lean into your fandom.
 
If we want a Part 3 which is as good and as magnificent as Rebirth, it would be better that the game performs well
It's going to perform well worldwide. People are freaking out because FF7R sold a little more shitty than FF16 in Japanese physical sales. Literally splitting hairs over tens of thousands of sales. lol
 
Anecdotally, I bought XVI physical and Rebirth digital. Others could've done the same…or they just have bad taste because Rebirth is so much better than XVI
 
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I took a lot of heat for saying that FF7 Rebirth wasn't going to be a major needle-mover.

It has major limitations in front of it that for some reason people wanted to ignore.
  1. Only Final Fantasy fans are going to play the game
  2. It's largely limited to people who played the first chapter
We'd already seen the sales of Remake/Integrade and the sales of FF16. So the delta here, new sales would be people who played FF7 remake on PS4 but had not upgraded to PS5 yet even for FF16.

That number was always going to be relatively low.

I'm continuously surprised by how difficult it is to have reasoned discussions on things that are pretty apparent here.

It isn't about reasoned discussions on GAF here. It's that some people just disagree with some of your conclusions. It doesn't make them bad people. Your conclusions can be a bit odd sometimes. Not all the time.
 
It's going to perform well worldwide. People are freaking out because FF7R sold a little more shitty than FF16 in Japanese physical sales. Literally splitting hairs over tens of thousands of sales. lol
With FF7 Remake, Square made a PR statement announcing 3.5 Million sold in 3 Days. Maybe they are waiting to surpass the 3.5 Million to do the same… But in UK Rebirth sold less than Remake and in Spain. Looks like is an WW decrease in sales compared to Remake, by a good margin.
 
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