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Kai_Mao on 12 September 2023
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Soundwave said:

Final Fantasy mainline is the main "get" I want on Switch 2.

It's about time that series comes home, and it's not growing as a franchise and they've destroyed what used to be a 2-3 million seller in Japan to something that now sells below Pikmin 4. Rising dev cost + declining sales ain't a good combo.

If you're Square-Enix you really need to think long and hard about Final Fantasy 17, do you really, really, reaaaaalllly need to squeeze every ounce of power from a PS5, or does it make a lot more sense to make something that maybe looks about as good as FF16 (which already will cost you a huge budget to make) and make it scalable so a Switch 2 version works well enough and start regrowing your audience on Nintendo platforms (especially in Japan where Final Fantasy used to be a top 3 franchise).

You should be able to make a game that is 4K/30 or 1440p/60 on a PS5, but runs comfortably at say 720p native/30 fps (using DLSS to go up to 1440p or 4K) on a Switch 2 that still looks very nice. If there's even any extra juice left on that PS5, turn on a few ray tracing reflections, and voila, you've maxed out the system totally. 

I guess Madden NFL would be nice for US gamers, I think that will happen too, though I'd prefer NHL. 

Yea I think having any of the modern Final Fantasy games come to Switch 2 will turn heads. Sure, having the original VII, VIII, IX, X and X-2, and XII on a Nintendo platform for the first time is surreal, but not really impossible due to being remasters of really old games. If you tell me that FFVII Remake is coming to Switch 2 and it performs better than the PS4 version due to being newer tech, then I can see more people really show interest if they aren’t interested already. 

At this point, Square Enix has to figure out what they want out of the Final Fantasy series. Are they ok with “solid, but not exceptional” sales of expensive mainline entries? Or should they be looking beyond Sony’s exclusivity deals with them? I’m not sure if the West is making up enough of the significant decline in Japan. If you’re big mainline game in FFXVI is merely showing solid sales while TOTK is continuing the great resurgence of the Zelda franchise, a franchise long compared to Final Fantasy despite their differences in genre, then somethings wrong. Not to mention, as you said, Pikmin 4, a relatively niche real time strategy game, is outselling XVI in Japan convincingly week by week.