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.
- Only Final Fantasy fans are going to play the game
- It's largely limited to people who played the first chapter
I also think that there's a massive overestimation of FF7's brand power. Over most of 30 years, the game has sold 15 million copies. FF15 hit two thirds of that in less than 6 years.
Market conditions were obviously different back then, and of course you would bring in new players with a Re-Imagining such as this trilogy is... but there's just not enough mystique or future prospect around FF7 for that number to be huge.
If you even know what FF is, you've seen the characters and world more times than can be counted. You've been spoiled on all the key aspects; you might even know of the endless stream of spinoffs and multimedia that make up the FF7 Compilation. And if you still buy into these games, rounding out at 8 years worth of investment when Regenisis releases - what then?
I'm continuously surprised by how difficult it is to have reasoned discussions on things that are pretty apparent here.
You're trying to have reasoned discussion about FF. Hell, about JRPGs in general. That became a lost cause a while back.
It looks like the japanese only like the turn based RPGs while the western gamers like realtime combat.
How are the sales figures of all those turn based games (FE, SMT, Persona, Nu-Yakuza) doing in Japan though? Internationally, they get dwarfed by modern FF's performance.
For all we know it could be a Game Pass-like situation with FF to those outside of the core enthusiast circles, where maybe the games don't have a certain appeal to younger audiences. Maybe the next mainline FF should have be part-dating sim, or take inspiration from Persona with the Social Links.
The highest selling Persona is 5 at around 7.2 million. Coming up to 8 years (Christ) since the Japanese launch and 7 since the international. Including double dipping on Royal on PS4 - triple dipping on PS5, and then dripfeeding Royal to other platforms across that time span.
Fire Emblem is another series that was elevated by its dating sim/social link aspect, and Three Houses is the highest selling at just 4.1 million across 3.5 years, peak Switchmania and a lack of other games competing on the platform.
JRPGs just aren't as high-appeal as people think they are. The closer they approach contemporary levels of "major" IP, they more westernized the tend to be. See FF15.
But FF still has a foot in the 2000s Japanese game mentality. Not quite as steeped in animu as Tales or something (which has been left in the dust by Persona), but what you should really be comparing it to is The Witcher or Baldur's Gate. Not saying it should take up those aesthetics or gameplay systems, but there's something there FF is missing.