Well, we're looking at a game that will probably have the lowest LTD for a numbered FF game since FF2 on the Famicom.
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Well, we're looking at a game that will probably have the lowest LTD for a numbered FF game since FF2 on the Famicom.
Sammy Samusu
Member
That won't even cover the marketing expenses. Let alone a decade of development.
Y'all best be prepared for XV-1, 2, 3.
Y'all best be prepared for XV-1, 2, 3.
After turning Tomb Raider from an 8.5 million selling series into around a 3 million selling series, Square Enix appears to have started making two Tomb Raiders at once, while awarding Crystal Dynamics a new IP to boot, so presumably Tabata will be promoted to COO of Square Enix.
Jawbreaker
Member
I mean, at this point, they're hoping those sales are made up elsewhere, so we'll have to see how it performs.
True, true, presumably FF16 will debut at FF1 numbers to complete the process.In Japan wouldn't it be FFVIII?
Final Fantasy VII Remake will save console gaming in Japan!
Graphics Horse
Member
It'll be all on the shoulders of the Cloud Amiibo soon
Welp, sucks for FF. I don't know what they could've done to stop the rapid decline, but at least Square has mobile!
Edit: Now that we have some numbers (albeit estimates) what do you guys think Square's plan should be to stop the hemorrhaging? I personally think they need to port this game to Switch and hope it does well enough to get some fans back.
Edit: Now that we have some numbers (albeit estimates) what do you guys think Square's plan should be to stop the hemorrhaging? I personally think they need to port this game to Switch and hope it does well enough to get some fans back.
Edge_Maverick
Member
C'mon guys, half of XV's sales will be digital in Japan. Crisis averted.
I wish
Quadruple down on the West with future console entries in the series and serve Japan with mobile games, since they have at least two mobile Final Fantasy games there making $100+ million a year, and Exvius even does pretty well overseas.
Perfo
Thirteen flew over the cuckoo's nest
Yeah. It's pretty obvious that the present and future of the franchise rest on west's shoulders. FFXV's presence was also double in the west compared to Japan during the marketing campaign. I'm sure S-E is not expecting more than those predictions of sales in their country. I really hope overall the game can sell 7/9 millions ww during 2016/17
[FC] Final Fantasy - ? / 520.000
[FC] Final Fantasy II - 9.566pts (two week period) / 760.000
[FC] Final Fantasy III - 12.631pts / 1.400.000
[SFC] Final Fantasy IV - ? / 1.440.000
[SFC] Final Fantasy V - ? / 2.450.000
[SFC] Final Fantasy VI - 278.159pts / 2.550.000
[PS1] Final Fantasy VII - 2.034.879 / 3.277.776
[PS1] Final Fantasy VIII - 2.504.044 / 3.501.588
[PS1] Final Fantasy IX - 1.954.421 / 2.707.301
[PS2] Final Fantasy X - 1.749.737 / 2.325.215
[PS2] Final Fantasy XII - 1.840.397 / 2.322.541
[PS3] Final Fantasy XIII - 1.516.532 / 1.905.979
[PS4] Final Fantasy XV - 600.000 (YSO's average) / ?
[FC] Final Fantasy II - 9.566pts (two week period) / 760.000
[FC] Final Fantasy III - 12.631pts / 1.400.000
[SFC] Final Fantasy IV - ? / 1.440.000
[SFC] Final Fantasy V - ? / 2.450.000
[SFC] Final Fantasy VI - 278.159pts / 2.550.000
[PS1] Final Fantasy VII - 2.034.879 / 3.277.776
[PS1] Final Fantasy VIII - 2.504.044 / 3.501.588
[PS1] Final Fantasy IX - 1.954.421 / 2.707.301
[PS2] Final Fantasy X - 1.749.737 / 2.325.215
[PS2] Final Fantasy XII - 1.840.397 / 2.322.541
[PS3] Final Fantasy XIII - 1.516.532 / 1.905.979
[PS4] Final Fantasy XV - 600.000 (YSO's average) / ?
DarkLordMalik
Member
They will make it up with Asia and China somehow. FFX was really popular in China and one of the best selling PS4 gane there.
Update at predictions
YSO predictions
01. [PS4] Final Fantasy XV < 700k (average 600k)
02. [3DS] Pokemon Sun / Moon < 220k (average 200k)
03. [3DS] Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS < 90k (average 75k)
04. [PS4] Watch Dogs 2 < 75k (average 60k)
00. [PS4] Hardware < 100k (average 85k)
YSO predictions
01. [PS4] Final Fantasy XV < 700k (average 600k)
02. [3DS] Pokemon Sun / Moon < 220k (average 200k)
03. [3DS] Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS < 90k (average 75k)
04. [PS4] Watch Dogs 2 < 75k (average 60k)
00. [PS4] Hardware < 100k (average 85k)
RIP FF, even worse than the worst prediction here, isn't it?
Nope pretty sure some people were pretty close to the YSO prediction and lower.
Sammy Samusu
Member
They are in tough spot for sure.
The first and most obvious answer would be FFXV for both PS4 and 3DS in Japan (like DQXI, so it's not that far fetched).
But then again, how many copies would FFXV sell on the 3DS in Japan? I'm going to guess not much, and that's because Square Enix has been nurturing the FF fanbase solely on PS platforms, leaving Microsoft and Nintendo fans left to rot. Why are they skipping Xbox One - and likely Switch - for all the FF remasters? It's clear now that PS fans alone can't pay for all the FF expenses.
Going in on the West doesn't preclude your game from doing well in mainland Asia.
Overwatch has 50% of its playerbase there. Diablo 3 is huge there. Guild Wars 2 did around 3 million there. I haven't even covered things like Dota, League, or WoW yet.
How's the Pokémon third week (assuming it's the third week, if I'm not mistaken) compared to X/Y ?
Looking at the sales trends of the other FF games, it's looking like XV won't make it to a million in retail. Each game in the series generally sell less than 50% of their first week in any legs that they have. This would give XV an additional 300k in sales and an ltd of 900k. Of course it could exceed the legs of the other games, but I'm not feeling too optimistic about that based on the average impression.
Edit: Disregard that, the update to the prediction would put FFXV estimated LTD at around 1 million. It will still be close though
Edit: Disregard that, the update to the prediction would put FFXV estimated LTD at around 1 million. It will still be close though
Jawbreaker
Member
Because Japanese titles sell like shit on Microsoft's consoles, and they have PC/Steam now which more than makes up for it.
I think it's worth remembering that most of those were released in much more favorable market conditions, so the legs are likely to be a fair bit worse here.
Fair point. It is looking very unlikely that it will reach 1 million retail.
Square2015
Member
For FW figures during Famitsu's point system era
roughly:
FF6 1,210,000
FF5 340,000
FF4 ??
FF3 290,000 (2 weeks)
FF2 240,000 (weeks 2,3)
FF1 ??
LTD Ship:
FF6 2.55m
FF5 2.45m
FF4 1.44m
FF3 1.41m
FF2 0.76m
FF1 0.52m
From what I can gather from there website using crappy Google translate they are a marketing company.
Have no idea how accurate they been in the past.
The main reason we follow them is that they've been pretty close each week.
They're not always 100%, certainly, but they just nailed Pokémon this week for example.
@All the posters saying that making a Switch version would "make FF great again!" (sorry, had to): Honestly, while I think a potential Switch version of the game, assuming the console sells well from the beginning, could help its overall numbers, I'm very doubtful its contribution would help the latest game in the franchise so much to reach overall numbers far nearer to, well, FFXIII. Yes, PS4's current installed base represents an important obstacle for the game's sales potential, but PS4 is not the only problem here: the appeal of the game itself and the franchise as a whole suffering from continuous declines are bigger problems. And those can't be solved by releasing FFXV on another (possibly healthy) platform.
DriftingSpirit
Member
It was updated.
YSO predictions
01. [PS4] Final Fantasy XV < 620k (average 550k)
02. [3DS] Pokemon Sun / Moon < 220k (average 200k)
03. [PS4] Watch Dogs 2 < 75k (average 70k)
04. [3DS] Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS < 70k (average 65k)
00. [PS4] Hardware < 95k (average 85k)
People need to drop this "decade of development" regarding cost, that's not how companies look at it. They'll look at what the actual game coming out cost, not anything prior. That cost is already off their books and won't even look at it.
Not saying these sales are good, just saying.
It was 550K, and the others changed slightly too. Presumably they got a bit more data in late since IIRC this is based on retailer feedback.
Honestly, FF's decline and fall from grace isn't even just about monetary cost anymore. The biggest loss is in opportunity cost, and the "decade of development" stuff definitely contributed to that. Even with FFXIV's relative success, it was another project which had a huge chunk of that too. These are costs S-E will never ever make back, and the loss of staff over the years because of these disastrous projects are resources they will never be able to replace.
DriftingSpirit
Member
Add a healthy Japan market too. With the way things are now, growth will be very limited by default.
When I said that it may be a good idea to port the game to Switch, I didn't mean that it would help recover the franchise from this massive decline. I would expect maybe 100-200k for this version, but the point of the port would be to reengage any lapsed FF fans that they can. Going forward they need to be on both Nintendo and PlayStation platforms if they want to compete in the traditional games industry in Japan. It's either that or go all in on mobile with mainline games targeted toward the west as Nirolak stated earlier.
The FF XV chapter just has to end at this point. Starting 2017 we will likely see SE formally announce a bunch of their games hitting Switch as well (7R, Kingdom Hearts 3 etc. ) - just focus on Switch/PS4 and hope for the best, they are making a bank on the mobile market so they dont depend too much on the console market anyway.
But yeah for Japan alone the PS4 just isnt cutting it for such a production - especially if the western response is kinda lackluster as well.
The amount of Yen poured into that project is crazy - i mean FFXIV Revival was nuts but at least they were still making money with XI and knew that it would be worth it if they can safe FF XIV for its future income. Meanwhile XV.... feels like everyone is ready to move on to XVI and 7R anyway.
But yeah for Japan alone the PS4 just isnt cutting it for such a production - especially if the western response is kinda lackluster as well.
The amount of Yen poured into that project is crazy - i mean FFXIV Revival was nuts but at least they were still making money with XI and knew that it would be worth it if they can safe FF XIV for its future income. Meanwhile XV.... feels like everyone is ready to move on to XVI and 7R anyway.
Yes, the problem is the series' loss of stature.
If they sold 2 million copies Japan, even if they still lost $40+ million or whatever, it would be irrelevant since they had clearly maintained the strength of the brand, and could just work on fixing their development costs.
The human capital lost is still concerning, but even that would be mitigated if their new team was hot fire.
Yep now that I fully agree with you on.
Square needs to figure something out with FFXVI for sure, no matter what XV does a XVI will happen I'm positive, but it's clear they need to make drastic changes with XVI.
edit: if these numbers end up real and the China/West market can't make up for it.
I will say pre-orders are my store (only part time help mind you so check rarely) are higher than XIII were. The thing is, will it have legs and pick ups beyond those reserves? Final Fantasy fans are big day 1 people and pre-order people, so that's the key.
Square2015
Member
If FFXV sells less than XIII-2...
How much did XIII-3 sell?
The Last One
Member
If 7R is timed exclusive to PS4 why would they formally announce a Switch version in 2017?
Won't be anything new? FFXIII sold less than X-2.