FF7 Rebirth has reportedly sold half what Remake did in the same timeframe

[zeldaring]

Soundwave said:

IcaroRibeiro said:

I will make the devils advocate and says everyone (Square included) is looking for the wrong reasons for why Final Fantasy keeps failling and say their multiplatform strategy will backfire hard if they can't get their shit right 

Warning this is a VERY long post

Square is wrong sacrificing Sony's money for a insubstantial amount of copies to be sold in PC/XBOX/Switch

Unless of course it's Sony just saying they are no longer interested in financing Final Fantasy, which can be the case but alas let's just say if was Square decision for the sake of the argument 

Final Fantasy ports will sell poorly on Switch 2 whatever is called  

They sell poorly on PC as well 

Single player Final Fantasy audience is on Playstation. If it can't sell well there it won't sell well anywhere else

People who are expecting some kind of Monster Hunter moment because or cross platform release will be disappointed to discover both IPs don't share the same marketability. Monster Hunter is an action game with huge multi-player factor. Multi-player FF is also extremely popular, and it's doing just fine being mostly a PC-based game 

Single player FF is a different beast. It's a franchise that used to be popular even belonging the very niche JRPG crowd because the games were knew for:

- Having good and elegant thought provoking storys during moment most of games used to have crappy storys

- Used to push hardware capabilities. technically speaking they were among the most advanced and impressive looking game during their generation 

- JRPGs were very poorly designed and programmed in the 80s and 90s, and the ones who were okay-ish (like Dragon quest)  were not widely released outside Japan, when they were they had poor marketing and distribution. In this sense the lack of major options pushed JRPGs fans to buy Final Fantasy 

Points 1 and 2 are no longer selling points. We have many story driven games which much better stories than any FF since XII... well except for XVI which indeed have great story but I guess even di you like those characters and world is harder to create a connection to them knowing they will never make a comeback in any game in the future unlike God of War or The Last of US. Hence I won't get XVII only to see what is the story of Clive, unlike people who will get Horizon 3 to keep seeing Aloys story

Point 2 stopped being real as early as PS3 era when big AAA western developers entered in console market with full force. Games like GTA and Skyrim simply destroyed any chance of Final Fantasy XIII to be considered ground breaking no matter how pretty its graphics are, people wanted to see hardware advancing to a point that let they play games were not possible before and FF XIII trilogy was basically a Final Fasntasy XII game with prettier graphics 

They tried to solve this issue in FF XV creating a huge open world games but guess what. It was a development hell, the game was delayed for years and the budget exploded. They couldn't get the gameplay and the world right (the game is just half open world). Still the best selling FF game despite being called one of the worst FF games just because it's open world game released during the open world craze. This further proves why point 2 was so fundamental for FF 

And third point: JRPGs are thriving. There are plenty for them to play. Some arguably more fun than FF, granted not as impressive technically but who cares? I love my Persona, Octopath Travaler and Nier even if they are nowhere as good looking as Final Fantasy. The consumer now has options. We no longer have to wait 5 years to have a decent JRPG

Needless to say, point 1 and 3 are impossible for Square to address lol

Releasing on Switch 2 is going against point 2, historically the IP biggest selling point. But they also can't keep the budget of their games going on forever with mediocre sales they got from Rebirth and XVI

The worst thing is I believe Square are very much aware of all these issues. They tried changes in gameplay in hope they could break the JRPG niche and got action game players. XVI looks like any generic western RPG, the story is very Game of Thrones-ish. The problem is the game is simply not fun or addictive enough. It was a great game really but when I finished it I knew I was never going to play it again, even the flawed FF XV left me a stronger (and lasting) impression 

I don't know what they can do to save the IP and its clearly as a day that story driven Single player action games are not cutting it. IMO they have two routes here:

- Decreasing budgets and scope. Accepting FF is no longer a AAA IP and treat it like just a simple JRPG game that will sell in the 6-8 million range with budgets well bellow anything they have done since XIII. Change their strategy to release more derivatives, like Atlus does with Persona. This will strengthen the game impression in gamers consciousness and will help the game to keep selling for years

- Change the core of the IP, including elements of multi-player and social features. Those things thrive on PC platforms and can be the breaktrogh they are expecting for renew its boomer fanbase

Well, the good thing is they can do both. Releasing single player experiences will keep the older fandom engaged, in a safe environment (because they know how to make those smaller single player games), while keep working in a FF that allow co-op and social features

Let's just hope they won't release a new FF XVI and think multiplatform release will do anything because oh boy, if they do this they need to be ready for another failure 

I don't think they have to decrease graphics and scope from where they are now. They just are going to probably have to accept a cold, hard reality that they can't go any higher. They've reached a dead end with graphics as better graphics are not translating to better sales. They're probably spending as is $150-$200 million just to get to FF16/FF7 Rebirth tier visuals. The game's already look quite good as is, so there's not much to cry about there. You're just not going to have a GTAVI tier Final Fantasy game any time soon, and that's OK because I don't think Square's business division is willing to finance a $500 million+ game any way. 

They need to get Rebirth to run on the Switch 2 probably, which is likely possible with a little work. That should be about what they can use going forward, and they just need to make realistic choices from there on, roughly 4K for PS5 like FF7 Rebirth is on 30 fps mode, 540-1080p DLSS undocked for Switch 2 (720p docked DLSS) should then translate without too much of a fuss.

Monster Hunter World sold a shit ton more than the recent Final Fantasy games but Capcom still didn't go all out for MH6 (Wilds) graphics, so that can be a lesson to Square-Enix in being pragmatic. There is no point in spending big on graphics when the extra spend you make is not resulting in extra sales. 

The "graphics high water mark" games are going to be restricted to like a few Western studios going forward who can afford $500 million-$1 billion budgets and 7+ year dev cycles and/or have an expensive movie/IP license attached to them (ie: Marvel/Spider-Man, Harry Potter, Avatar, etc.). Japanese companies like Square-Enix and Capcom were never going to be able to keep pace when the budgets got into that level of spend anyway, Capcom I think already knew this, it may be a bitter pill for Square to swallow (FF no longer being graphics  showcases) but it's one they are just going to have to live with. 

They need to be initially realistic about sales on other platforms, they have done a piss poor job of building fan bases in those communities so it will take some time for people to come around. But the goal I think should be maybe to sell somewhere between 1.5-2 million copies between PC, Switch 2, and XBox platforms to start with. Keep those expectations realistic, I would want FF7 Remake/Rebirth if possible very early (launch?) for the Switch 2 and try to capitalize on Switch 2's launch momentum. I'm not sure as well how they handle Remake + Rebirth for Switch 2 and XBox, do you release them as two separate games or one combined game (may have to do that to get free of the Sony contract as it would technically be a different game). 

Eventually I think what you want is several million extra sales from being multiplat obviously, I think in Japan specifically you would want to claw your way back to selling 1.5 million in Japan at least, FF used to be one of the top franchises in Japan selling almost 4 million in some cases there, to have it collapse to only doing like 400k is embarrassing when IP like Monster Hunter, Dragon Quest, and Pokemon still sell tons there. You need the Switch 2 to do that though, hanging onto Sony exclusivity basically killed their entire Japanese market. 

Naw they just need to focus on the PC market and make ports great. Switch 2 has a user base is 0 and no big third party really wants to make software tailored for the Switch cause  as you can imagine it's not fun working on something so old and not able to achieve there vision.

Last edited by zeldaring - on 20 May 2024