XIII to release under 500k in US?

[darthdevidem01]

Kenryoku_Maxis said:

darthdevidem01 said:

Kenryoku_Maxis said:

darthdevidem01 said:

Kenryoku_Maxis said:

Anything under 5 million is fail to me. Cuz Wada promised me it would outsell FFVII.

All jokes aside, there's little way to guage how the numbers will turn out for this title. People tried to guage FFIX, X and XII based on previous popularity and performance of the series and were all wrong, because the consoles weren't the same as previous titles and the fanbase for the series kept getting smaller each title. A conservative estimate would put a pre-order draw for the US at around 500-700k while it could get up to 1.5m. With a series as random and front-loaded as this, its anyones guess.

I have told you this probably 10 times now, yet you still make the same false statement for like the umpteenth time

FF9 was the low point in terms of sales post FF7

FF10 outsold FF9 by around 3 million, FF12 outsold FF9 by around 600K

the series has not become smaller & smaller with each iteration.

The series seeing a surge with one title, but seeing a fall-off in sales with every other title (FFIX, FFX-2, FFXII) is called getting smaller over time.  Whatever you want to call it, go ahead.  Sure, the games are still selling in the millions and that's good, but if you put all the games data up, you'll see that after FFVII, each game goes down in sales, with only FFX seeing a rise in sales, and still not to the level of FFVII.  At best, it looks like the scenario is saying only one FF a generation can reach peak sales.  And it isn't looking good for FFXIII to reach either the level of FFX (8 Million) or FFVII (9.7 Million).

That rule isn't just for FF, its happened with GT & MGS too.

FF9 & FF12 both being released in PS2 & PS3's launch month respectively definetely didn't help their sales

I mean FF12 came out here very close to PS3's launch, I pre-ordered my PS3 when FF12 was releasing & didn't bother buying it as I was getting aPS3( ofcourse I did buy it later on)

ITs like this:

FF7 > FF10 > FF8 >FF12 > FF10-2 > FF9

so in general after FF7 the series declined with FF8

since then its not declined & the last FF of the PS2 generation ended up higher than the last FF of the PS1 generation

That's what the pure sales data shows.  However, if you look more closely, there was more hype into titles like FFXII and FFVIII.  Granted, the sales for FFVIII and X are near the same, but FFXII is a big drop off.  You can attribute it to being near the end of the PS2 if you want, but that didn't hurt other games, like Shadow of the Colossus or Dragon Quest VIII or even the Persona titles.  All games that would;ve probably never sold in the west, but saw great sales due to word of mouth and being on a late gen platform with a large userbase.

Sure, this might just be something conntected to the FF games, which would connect to what I was saying earlier.  It seems only one main FF game a generation can reach that 'max' level of sales.  Maybe FF fans only get majorly hyped for one game or maybe they, as you say, are looking for the next best thing in graphics and move on to the next system.  But whatever the reason, it just seems from the previous two generations that only one main FF game a gen gets the most attention, and the sales taper off from there.  And even in the PS2 era, the sales weren't as strong as the PSX era.  And it doesn't look like FFXIII is going to match FFX or FFVII.....

1. FFXII is the same drop off like FF9 was from FF8, so no biggie, its happened before & the drop to FF12 was smaller. In fact if we count FFX-2, the series rebounded with FF12. Persona is pretty much not relevant here as its a very niche series, FF12 is a FF, which has lots of "hardcore casual" gamers that buy it (I said ahrdcore casual, the type that only buy PES, FIFA, GTA & FF each year).

2. MGS3 saw a drop from MGS2, so did GT4, so did God OF War 2, FF isn't independant to this drop near the end of PS2's lifecycle. DQ8 was the first DQ on the console so ofcourse it sold huge + it cam bundled with the FF12 demo here, that definetely sold extra copies. SOTC, please once again don't compare small niche products to mainstream franchises.

3. I completely agree with your second para. This is what happened for GT & MGS too. The first ones of last generation were hyped to the heavens for gameplay graphics (GT3 & MGS2)....both games sold amazing (15 & 5 million respectively). FFX too (8 Million). But then GT4 (10 million), MGs3 (4 Million) & FFXII (5.7 Million) all sold less.

You will see the same this gen. FFXIII will probably sell between 8 - 10 Million, with the possibility past 8 Million as this FF can really attract wider audiences & with huge marketing we could see massive success. But then FF15 (not counting FF14 here) will once again sell in the 5 Million range.