Am I wrong in thinking Final Fantasy XIII sales are good?

[Bodhesatva]

Let's imagine two franchises. Let's get away from talk about FF or ME or anything specific. Let's imagine both of these franchises have a sequel coming out.

 

Franchise A: The last game sold 1 million. The sequel sold 2 million.
Franchise B: The last game sold 6 million. The sequel sold 5 million.

Which game did better? On an absolute scale, obviously Franchise B did. On a relative scale, Franchise A doubled its audience while Franchise B's audience is shrinking. There is no correct answer here. Neither is an umitigated hit or flop. Both have strengths and weaknesses.

As I said, there are only a few games that are genuine, unmitigated flops or successes. Games that sell huge amounts on an absolute scale (say, 5 or 6M or more), while also growing the franchise (that is, the new iteration sold more than the last), while also keeping development costs down (selling very slightly more but tripling your expenses would be a bad thing, for instance) are extremely rare. Perhaps a dozen or so this generation.

But no one likes this explanation, because we want clear winners and losers, and obvious answers.