| The Fury said: I honestly do not believe the naming convention is an issue and numbering isn't either, well I have my own issue with numbers and will explain in a mo. In a day and age when we get umpteen amount of yearly sequels of CoD or Assassin's Creed, all for intents and purposes "sequels" that do not follow on from the last game but are set in a world of the same mechanics. Also, Persona 5 is the best selling Persona game ever by a long way. Did people get confused there too? Expecting to have to play the first 4 games first to understand 5? I do not think the mass of gaming audience are so stupid to think they need to play 15 sequels to understand FF16. Obviously times change and gaming habits change. The millennials who grew up with certain genres and games are still here wanting to buy and play those games but a younger audience need to be appealed to as well right? But they aren't buying games like Final Fantasy or the Witcher and their parents aren't buying them for Christmas, they are playing (F2P) Fortnite and taking the mick out of each other for having default skins. :P The number thing I think is different, a numbered sequel thing is fine but I do think they should have called FF11 and 14 "Online" or some appropriate things and not had them as mainline numbered entries because people like me, geeks, don't count them as 'mainline' titles. And let's not stick with the ATB from FF7R. "ATB" in that is bad when you don't control an character and has practically zero use for MP. The sooner this franchise gets rid of "stagger" the better, easily one of the worst mechanics in video games in decades and it's still around. In the end, what can help FF, I don't know. I know what I want from the series but it's never going to happen again. I don't think a number is the issue, I think it's regular main line titles not releasing enough. |
You'd be surprised to learn that yes, they are. Anecdotal evidence, but I've seen people refusing to play FF16 not because they think it's a sort of Marvel shared universe and they need to play the others to get the full experience, and others being confused by FF7 Remake flashbacks and thinking it's stuff from FF6.
(Not to mention just having a 16 in the name screams "boomer game" and the market demographics are there to prove.)
Except for KoF - which is a fighting game and even then doesn't consist entirely of numbered titles - no one else in the market has been doing that as long as SE and most series let go of numbered entries after 3-6 of them (Mario, Sonic, Halo, Resident Evil, Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, etc.) which suggests this sort of naming practice doesn't fare well in marketing tests.
