F13 is having problems, but most Japanese are getting tired of the same formula. FF13 is pretty much seen as the same Formula. It's not going to work turning FF15 old school. FF just needs to reinvent itself by cutting the fat and be a good RPG again.

Are you forgetting about Dragon Quest, Pokemon, Mario, ETC?

Anyway, yes it flopped big. It seems like it doesn't have enough legs in Japan (500 sales every week?). I guess people have moved on from Final Fantasy because it's a lot different now than from the SNES/PS1 days.

No, a Final Fantasy 7 remake would not sell well either. If you look at the sales of Crisis Core, it's higly doubted that a remake of 7 will sell 10 million copies like the original.

I don't know, were they?

It didn't flop?

Now if it was under a 1 million then I'd be worried, it's still impressive sales. Not to mention that 1.9 million could easily turn into 2.3 after re-releases, greatest hits etc. It's to early to make these assumptions.

How some can get behind certain things that don't need that much energy is passion but all I'm elaborating on is the microeconomics of what's represented in the OP. It seems like talking about the obvious (something right out of a Michael Parkin book on economics) gets people tense, so I'll help those who may be a little ignorant to the issue.

It's called a downward demand slope, it tends to happen when interest isn't there anymore. This is the only reason short of a cataclysmic disaster that could augment to the demand. It happens when the values aren't changing, the consumer has no reason to buy something they already own, in gaming it's about experiences because it's entertainment. So to reiterate the consumer has no reason to buy something they have already experienced.

I have nothing against FF7 or 6 or whatever, I unlike some people don't care to waste energies in that direction. Just a friendly comment is all I was making a note of information that isn't even my own but can be cited from any Macroeconomic text. LITERALLY ANY text you read on Macroeconomics elaborates on what the numbers in the OP represent. They even have pictures usually. =)

Simple. Going portable. Better sales and less cost.

Source please? I have never read anything out of Japan that has stated anything like this.

FFXIII is alot of missed opportunity. Several characters that could have been major antagonists barely have a few lines of dialog before getting snuffed out or never seen again. There is a complete lack of detail on the atagonist (Cocoon collectively) front which makes the ultimate goal of this game less compelling. At least two characters on that side would have made interesting characters.

Considering that Silver/Gold sold 3 million units less than Red/Blue/Green, they were, according to your formula, of course.

And if you insist that, since RBG are three games while SG are two, i'll just bring Ruby/Sapphire into the equation.

omg...1.5 mill sold on week 1...FLOP...

First of all, FFXIII didn't flop. It just was on both a system Japan wasn't interested in and not properly handled. As well, they expected the game to be the next Final Fantasy VII, when the public was just looking for the next 'main' Final Fantasy game. SquareEnix needs to get it through their heads that they no longer can keep making 'bigger and better looking' Final Fantasy games with the hope that it'll sell like FFX or FFVII did. There's too much competition now adays.

The real thing they would have to do if they expect to sell more copies for the next title is put it on a system people want to buy. Look at Dragon Quest. Its no secret what's been helping that series all these years. They didn't give people extra items with their games or have something unique Final Fantasy didn't have in terms of storyline. They just put the games on the most popular console every generation. And this gen, Final Fantasy bucked that trend instead focusing on 'Graphics' and 'the western market'. And it lost some sales for that, mostly in its Japanese market.

There's so many flaws with your point, I don't know where to begin.  I guess I'll just point out the most obvious one.  The reason sales tapered off from FF7 on is not because FF7 was a 'failure', but because its nearly impossible to sustain ever increasing sales to a major breakout title.  The only way they would have been able to surpass the sales of FF7 would have been to spend proportionally 2-3x more money and time advertising FF8, so that 2-3x more NEW people would have known about it and bought copies to cover the people who decided to skip FF8 after playing FF7.  But since FF7 already had one of the biggest and most costly ad campaigns up to that time, they didn't want to double or triple that just for FF8.  That's why you didn't see the sales for FF8 match FF7.  But the fact that it still got close shows you that a resonable size of its fanbase still bought FF8.

Rinse and repeat on down the 'slope'.

However, some amount of repetition and series stagnation could have affected sales later on come the PS2/DS era.  When the FF lineup jumped from 2-3 games a year to 10+ a year.  That's a bigger factor to the negative impact of the series.