Looking at today's famitsu numbers, it seems that Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles already lost its steam. That means it'll probably wind up at a dissapointing spot comparing it to its predecessor on the Cube (and taking the userbases into account, of course).

 I wondered what could be the reason, and one thing that comes to mind is that SE put out quite an amount of games like FF:CC recently. Therefore, I compiled the numbers of those games to compare them to each other.

Release date:           Name:                                        First week sales:          LTD sales:

27. 8. 2006               Final Fantasy III DS                    513'433                        1'062'626

31. 12. 2006             Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker   627'022                        1'476'290

29. 4. 2007               Final Fantasy XII: RW                 287'795                           531'420

(15. 7. 20007            Dragon Quest Swords                310'356                           467'273)

26. 8. 2007               FF:Crystal Chronicles:RoF           196'120                           310'881

I included Dragon Quest Swords because it fits the pattern, but considering the Wii userbase and its reported bad quality, it shoudn't be taken into account too much..

 Of course, DQS and FF:CC are still counting but looking at the legs of the other games they will have a hard time breaking 500k/400k respectively. So it looks pretty clear that after the two huge successes, the sales numbers for the new games started to drop.

Of course the games can't be compared directly, one is a remake, two are spinoffs that became series of their own and FF XII is more a strategy game than an RPG afaik. But still, the pattern seems to show that it doesn't matter what kind of game it is.

Also, hype and quality doesn't seem to go into account too much. I felt that there was way more hype about FF:CC than about FF XII:RW, but the numbers show the opposite.

After telling you all this, my question is, what do you think? Is there a connection between those sales numbers or should they all be looked at individually? And how do you think upcoming games out of the same category are going to sell? (I'm thinking about the DQ remakes, FF:CC on the Wii and FF Tactics A2)

And last but not least, do you think SE is seriously damaging the reputation of its two Hyper-franchises?

no.... not really, those sales are still pretty good reading for Square enix...

800th post =)

No, that's still pretty high in most cases.

FF3DS and DQM:Joker both pulling 1mil is a pretty powerful number, actually.

Crisis Core is doing well -- just maybe not as well as some people expected, what with the FFVII tie-in.

I actually think the sales drop has less to do with DS/PSP owners than an overall trend with Square-Enix games. Their last few titles in the FF series have all been selling at a steadily declining rate compared to their glory years. But the sales are still fantastic -- just not quite the godly numbers they used to be. Which is unfortunate, because, personally, I felt that FF12 was the best version in a long while.

I really think that Square needs to pace their releases. It seems that they're almost over saturating the market with their games.

We'll have to wait what happens when DQIV and FFIV show up; if they don't break 1m in Japan, then true, SE is over-saturating the market.

I don't think Square has anything to worry about with the Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest series. They may have expected more sales for Reverent Wings or Rings of Fate, but those games combined cost a fractions of what FFXII did to make and I guarantee they're making a nice profit on both games. Now I kind of do think they're making too many remakes and spin-offs of both series, but hell it seems to be working out well for them.

FF TA2, DQIV, and FFIV are going to be interesting. If we see continued decline than maybe there is something to this post. I doubt we will though. I expect all three to sell in the 500k to a million range.

DQS is really bad IMO and check Amazon Japan and you'll read a whole bunch of complaints, even one Japanese said literally: If the WII will get nothing but these kind of games, I think it will be over with the WII.

I might be buying DQIV, but absolutely NO FFIV. I'm still convinced they should drop the Super Famicom version of Dragon Quest on the Virtual Console, but no... they rather save up their own money than those of the buyers.

Therefore I don't care if their remakes will sell less. I'm surprised they even sell that much, comparing to the US FF PSP was a complete flop in the US.

remember in the PS1 days when they actually were making new IPs and experiementing with new ideas. Einhander and busido blade were awesome.