Famitsu Sales: Week 27, 2023 (Jun 26 - Jul 02)

[PAOerfulone]

If graphics and tech are really THAT important to people: They should just save up and build up more money for a gaming PC instead. Those will provide much more of what they're looking for than PlayStation or Xbox ever could, let alone Nintendo.
The fact of the matter is: the majority of people that buy consoles don't really care that much about graphics, certainly not enough to spend the extra $200, $300, or even $500 over the standard PS5 SKU's retail price to get a respectably powerful gaming PC set-up. The graphics/tech crowd is still to this day a very niche section of the overall gaming audience. Unless it's one of the BIG boys like GTA, Red Dead, or Elder Scrolls, trying to sell or appeal entirely to them along by making these high-end, upper-echelon graphics/tech titles is not going to yield the results that those companies are looking for and might actually result in a loss.

Like @Soundwave said, games like FF are going to hit a roof of how much budget are going to be put into them if the games aren't selling enough to yield the returns the publishers are expecting/hoping for. And w/ Final Fantasy in particular, don't be surprised if there's increased pressure on Square Enix from their investors to ditch this "exclusively for PlayStation" nonsense and do more muliplatform releases, including the Switch. You don't think they're looking at those Switch sales? Especially in Japan? A region they could reliably count on to make big bank on their bigger franchises like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest? And then they look at how Square Enix has stubbornly stuck to PS w/ the franchise while watch PlayStation's console sales in Japan drop and drop and drop w/ each new mainline entry while those very same entries drop and drop in Japan as well? You think they can't put two and two together and say? "This is absurd! Why aren't we working w/ Nintendo to get these games released on their platform that has over 30 million units out there and still going strong? And why are we just sticking w/ Sony who can't even sell 10 million? Why settle for just 10 when we could have access to 40?!?"

And before someone can bring up the Western sales argument, Nintendo is selling just as well, if not better, than PlayStation in the West too! By the end of the year, the Switch will be the 3rd best-selling platform of all time in North America. It'll more than likely be #2 when it's finished, but it has a shot at being #1 as well. And it does extremely well in Europe too, certainly better than Xbox.
Look at it this way: which do you think sounds better for investors? Sticking to just ~70 million PlayStation and Xbox systems in the US or going to 120-130 million total units when you include Nintendo as well?
Sticking to ~60 million PlayStation and Xbox systems in Europe or going to 100-110 million total units when you include Nintendo as well?
That almost doubles their potential userbase in the Western regions, ON TOP of QUADRUPLING it in Japan!
And if you look at the whole picture/Worldwide, you go from 170 million PlayStation and Xbox units, to 320-330 million PlayStation, Xbox, AND Nintendo units.

It's basic math.

And the deeper we go into these generations and the further these sales and returns decline for Final Fantasty, the more and more pressure Square Enix is going to feel from their investors and nearest financial experts to make that move.