So who's going to buy Final Fantasy Versus XIII on the 360 if it's announced as multiplat?

[Michael-5]

WereKitten said:

Michael-5 said:

First of all. FFXIII was PS3 exclusive in Japan for what 2 years? I doubt going MP affected sales in Japan. So we're only talking Americas and EMEAA sales, which has the PS3 version at 2.8 million sales, and the 360 version at 1.8 million.

That doesn't change the math one bit. 75% of 1.8M + 2.8M + PS3 Japan sales = 6.05M. The only important parameter here is the 75%.

I also disagree with much of your logic. First of all, 75% of sales migrating to PS3 if this were exclusive? That's far too high. I don't have any direct axample to compare to, but look at Mass Effect 2 on PS3. The PS3 version only gained 20% of the 360 versions sales. It's a different situation, but I think the extra boom of being an exclusive is at best around the 25% margin.

You're actually giving me more evidence here. Small adoption of ME2 on PS3 is an index that many people had already played that game and weren't interested in rebuying it just for the extras. Low sales on later PS3 version indicates big overlap of the ME2 potential buyers, i.e. a big number of owners of both consoles (or PS3+PC gamers). Of course we're speaking of a different genre of RPG with ME, I expect even more overlap for JRPG lovers.

So PS3 FFXIII sales would (theoretically, IMO) be maybe 700k higher? That's still a 1.1 million unit loss, or 23%. That's still not huge, but SE has no reason to stay exclusive, and expanding their audience is essential to staying alive.

I do agree that they hoped to expand their audience. Sadly they would have had more luck by delivering a system seller ... but I'm not here to talk about the quality of the game.

Also if 360 FFXIII owners did own both a PS3 and a 360, I'm sure most would buy it on PS3, so there isn't much cross over for this.

The two versions were similar enough that the decision on which one to buy could be steered by lesser issues. Controller you're more familiar with, gamescore and achievements instead of trophies, friends list for chatting while playing, shelf uniformity etc.

If it had been an exclusive the PS3 would have had from the 360 side of sales

a) those 360-only owners who loved JRPGs last gen when PS2 ruled and were still waiting for a big exclusive to be sold to the PS3

b) those early adopters/importers who loved JRPGs last gen and expected the PS3 to deliver them this time, but that instead chose to buy the 360 version for contingent reasons.

Basically the missing 25% of 360 sales would be the sum of genuinely new customers that somehow chose to start playing FF at number XIII, but don't own a PS3. I don't think that's a low percentage, but the rest is still 75%...

...

Final Fantasy has a name, and with it SE can appeal to new gamers on the 360.

I understand, but basically to have extra sales you have to target players that don't own a PS3 or would not buy one for your biggest project. My point is that I did not see all this effort to bridge to a different/more mainstream/new audience in the west. The game was presented exactly like FFX or XII and marketed in totally analogous ways. Do you really think that they supposed that a relevant part of the audience they had for FFX to XII on the PS2 would never buy a PS3 version? When any big FF launches, HW sales go up hundreds of thousands worldwide. That alone is a nice share of what it sold on 360, and would have sold on PS3 if exclusive.

I'm pulling numbers out of the air, of course, but I think that reasonable estimates show that in the end the difference in sales was at least comparable with the increased costs. Other benefits - such as expansion of brand awareness - probably tipped the balance rather than that.

I answered in bold.

75% of 360 sales being transfered over to PS3 if the game were PS3 exclusive makes no sense! Most FF owners on 360 probably don't have a PS3 (if they did, they would buy it on PS3). What do you base this ridiculously high estimate from?

For Mass Effect, Mass Effect 3 pre-orders are 5 times higher on 360 the PS3. http://www.vgchartz.com/article/87800/americas-preorders-chart-3-september-2011-dead-island/. So despite the year delay between ME2 and the same release for ME3, both games have the same attach rate on PS3, which is about 20%. This supports my claim that most gamers don't own multiple consoles.

As for owning both consoles and getting FFXIII on 360, the CG cinematics are a lot better on PS3 then 360. The 360 version is a port, not a game built from scratch for the 360, and it shows. Any real FF fan would get in on PS3, only a small audience would prefer to get it on 360 over PS3 (me included) because of controller, achievements, and encouraging JRPG's to be MP or western localized. Trust me, I'm one of the few people who bought FFXIII on 360 despite owning a PS3 at the time as well. I'm a minority.

a) I agree there are people like that, and FFXIII would have sold systems as an exclusive, but the number of current 360 owners who would buy a second console for this game would be quite minimal. If anything it would encourage new gamers to get a PS3 over a 360, but even then, small numbers. Not enough to make up for the volume of 360 owners who are interested in FFXIII, but not willing to get a PS3 for it.

b) For the same reason FFXIII saw strong sales on 360. Because of great JRPG exclusives on 360 like Tales of Vesperia, Star Ocean (At the time), Lost Odyssey, etc, JRPG fans already had a 360, and got FFXIII for that console. There is no support that these people would buy a second HD console for 1 JRPG.

Like I said FFXIII being exclusive would likely make a bigger impact on new console buyers, not current 360 owners. So FFXIII going exclusive might have added 100k sales to PS3 because of new console buyers, but no more then that. People aren't so rich that they can buy two or three consoles.

I don't think your estimate of 75% is reasonable at all. You assume that at least half of current 360 owners would go and buy a PS3 as a secondary console for FFXIII. That would mean that nearly 1 million (or 2% now, 3/4% back then) of 360 owners would buy a PS3 as a secondary console for Final Fantasy.

Common, that's basically more sales then any other JRPG, and this 1 million sales would come from an audience outside of Japan, the biggest region for JRPG sales.

This number just makes no sense, I don't even think 1 million PS3 owners bought a 360 as a secondary console for Halo.

At very best 100k 360 owners would have bought a PS3 as a secondary console for FFXIII. Another 100k sales would be added for new console buyers, and maybe 200k more sales for the game being an exclusive. That's 400k sales, just under FFXIII.

I mean Mass Effect 3 will probably sell better or just as good as ME2 justo n the 360 alone. ME went multiplatform, and I don;t think it will hurt 360 ME sales one bit. I hardly think FFXIII going MP hurt PS3 sales significantly. 20% boost in Americas and EMEAA is what I give it, and I think that's reasonable.

I mean ifG Gears of War went MP, do you think the 360 version of the game would suffer? Not by much, althought the game wouldn't sell that well on PS3 either. I don't think FF is some rare exception.

1 million, or 1.4 million (75%) is a huge boost to PS3 sales, this is more then any other JRPG this gen. You are giving the franchise too much credit. Most people buy it for the name, and don't care if it's exclusive or not. So selling on the 360 could only gain sales. This is why XIII-2 is a single disk game on 360, SE knows that making the game optimized for 360 AND PS3 will boost sales.

Hardware sales jump when any FF releases, but most of that boost is in Japan. You don't see as much of a boost in Americas and EMEAA. Exclusive or not, the PS3 still saw a boost in hardware, and I don't see any reason to think that the extra boost the PS3 version could have gotten would be enough to offset anymore then 20% of the boost the 360 got. Remember the game is still exclusive in Japan, and even in Japan, FFXIII sales are not particularly high for the franchise.