You are being selective because you are ignoring release output and main games, and comparing titles that are misalligned with each other.
Again, this is you being selective, not I. I simply compared the last games released by both publishers. You're the one who puts up arbitrary restrictions on what can and cannot be compared. That
is being selective.
Them both being MMO's doesn't mean anything, they are not the same type of MMO, the FF14 method allows for a higher player base even if they aren't long term, it's like comparing WOW to Runescape. Just because they are both MMORPGS doesn't mean they use the same model which does impact player count, there's a reason why FF14 has such a high player count. It's not exclusion, even Square said what games they were influenced by with their model, and certain MMORPGS compete with others usually using a similar a similar format. You can't dismiss thisbecause you want to make warped comparisons. FF14 wouldn't have any indication on the popularity of 16 anyway anymore than 11 did.
I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to argue here, but it appears that you're trying to argue that FF14's player base is as big as it is because of the free trial? The free trial has, at best, a month - two months worth of content to do before you're required to purchase the full game and a subscription. To argue that
that is the reason for its popularity, which has been only increasing for 10 years, is simply ignorant. ESO only requires you to pay for its base game which is frequently on sale for like 5$.
The reason comparisons between RS and WoW don't work is because it would be unfair to WoW: RS is a free game, WoW is not. ESO is significantly cheaper than FFXIV and yet FFXIV is still significantly more popular.
You need to put FFXI and FFXIV into context. FFXI was a moderately successful MMORPG that was released during, or shortly after, the franchise's peak period both in terms of quality and popularity, relatively speaking. The amount of players never approached that of the singleplayer games. The situation with FFXIV is different. FFXIV was released after what many consider to be a slump for the franchise that started with either FFXII or FFXIII, depending on who you ask. FFXIV put the franchise back on the map. No MMORPG has accomplished what FFXIV has accomplished since the release of World of Warcraft. Of course, it's not going to be a 1 : 1 transfer from FFXIV to FFXVI, but it is the same studio working on it and it certainly is an indication that the brand has renewed interest in it.
They have frequently announced sales and only in recent times have them been getting worse and worse with their reporting and it's because of sales not meeting expectations, this has been going on and getting worse since 2013.
Honestly, the reason for not announcing sales is an assumption on your part. Sales announcements in general have become less frequent. Sales for Bethesda games are also somewhat hard to come by.
Many people say that about the older Final Fantasies, that's not really much of an argument and can work both ways. Although, it seems more new players go back to play and compare older ES games than FF games, and it's usually old fans who were around when those FF games were knew who goes back and plays them, sure there are new players too, but nostalgia has a stronger pull with FF than new players, and this makes sense given how limited PC distribution was and access was to hardware powerful enough to run earlier ES games, but people would play demos or hear won't about them so now they can actually go and play them now with a Walmart laptop now, or games consoles. Same with other Bethesda rpgs.
It's apparent that there is far more interest in older Final Fantasy games than there is in older Elder Scrolls games. There would have been attempts to monetize old ES games if there was a large interest in older titles. Yet Bethesda/Zenimax have made almost no attempt at making the games more easily available. It's telling that they release 5 different Skyrim versions on every platform imaginable, but won't bother to port, enhance (Outside of Xbox Series system level enhancements) or remake any of their older titles. Meanwhile, Final Fantasy constantly makes its older titles available on every single platform, enhances them or straight up remakes them.
You could reasonably argue that they are less ambitious and smaller in scope, but turn based story driven RPGs simply age a lot better than games like ES do. It would take a lot of work and effort to make older ES games even remotely approachable for people used to modern games. Anyone who is still playing it now is probably doing so on PC, heavily modded.
Final Fantasy's whole gig was it was the first RPG that broke out on consoles with a massive lead, production, and sales performance. But once consoles got powerful enough it ended up being a follower or reactor instead of a leader because games from outside the console space, normally dominated by Jrpgs, came in, and not just Bethesda. In fact, Bethesda came in late, SSI and Blizzard got there first, Bethesda didn't touch consoles until Morrowind. Once PC and Console access eased up it was a one deal. FF hasn't been a best selling RPG since X.
I don't disagree with any of that. Bethesda games do tend to be more popular and outsell FF by a fairly wide margin. However, they
do actually have to make a good game in order for that to happen and that clearly wasn't the case with Fallout 76. Your statement that a Final Fantasy game hasn't outsold a Bethesda game is, with currently available sales numbers, simply inaccurate.
