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Kyuu on 19 September 2024
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IcaroRibeiro said:
Kyuu said:

On the bright side, they both apparently made profit, against silly claims that they'd need to sell 5 million copies to break even.

What FF needs:

1. No more AAA Remakes after Part 3. Especially not segmented remakes.

2. No more Devil May Cry bullshit with minimal RPG elements (FF16).

3. Switch 2 ports. And maybe simultaneous multiplatform launch.

4. Consistent high quality (90+ with a strong user reception).

5. This is controversial, but I think they need to stay away from anime style and tropes which are embarrassing or cringe or weird to a lot of gamers. Anime-esque games that aren't Pokemon or waifu gachas do not have huge audiences. Modern Zeldas have cartoon aesthetics, but not the anime tropes or vibes.

If there are people around me, I know I would feel a lot more comfortable playing Tears of the Kingdom than FF7 Rebirth lol.

5) is wrong, in truth is the lack of anime-esque elements that are making FF declining in Japan, while also failling to be a fan-favourite among western anime crowd

Final Fantasy have already distance itself of many of its "Japanese" aesthetics and narrative for decades now. It somehow worked until XII but it's clearly not working anymore 

XVI is a esthetically indistinguishable from western RPGs. Even the narrative is closer to Game of Thrones than any JRPG lol 

Culturally speaking Japan entertainment became way more homogenous and nationalist in their tropes and cliches during the 2000s. Anime and manga diversity decreased to an unfathomable degree, probably related with the fact anime development become expensive so you need to cater a specific demography of buyers. Games simply follow suit of an overall media tendency

Long gone were the pieces of entertainment in Japan that tried to incorporate more western values, aesthetics and narratives. Just look at how Fire Emblem looked in the 90s vs now. Or even OG Xenoblade vs Xenoblade 3

I know it sound strange, but if Final Fantasy looked more like Sword Art Online it would sell better not worse 

Japan represents a small fraction of total game sales for big franchises not made by Nintendo. But even there, the biggest games aren't really anime in vibe, they just have cartoon-ish aesthetics. On a surface level BotW/TotK are more "anime" than FF7 Remake/Rebirth, but delve a little deeper and you'll see that the latter are much more anime. I'm talking about cinematics, direction, character mannerism, dynamics, eye-candy, camera angles, comedy, tropes. You get fairly similar vibes to an anime aimed at 16-18 year olds.

Splatoon, Monster Hunter, Mario, Zelda, Minecraft, Animal Crossing, I don't consider these "anime-games", or at least not in the sense that I meant. Granblue, Tales, Fire Emblem, Xenoblade, and Persona on the other hand are indeed anime-games, hence their popularity is extremely limited, and it takes a miracle for them to reach 5 million sales globally no matter how good or consistent they are.

NieR Automata broke through, but it wasn't an anime-game neither aesthetically nor by content. Devil May Cry 5, Resident Evil, Soulsborne/Sekiro, Monster Hunter, none of them are anime-games, all of them grew significantly and will sell over 10 million minimum per game with very little reliance on Japan.

Granted "Anime" is a very broad umbrella. I'm referring primarily to the average popular shounen anime, and not the likes of Berserk or Monster lol.

And to be clear, I'm not saying it's inherently "wrong" to target this demographic. It's entirely possible that targeting a specific demographic will popularize your game. A mature game that only appeals to 2% of gamers is less successful than a game that appeals to 20% of its limited demographic. I just don't feel that it's a beneficial direction for Final Fantasy if the aim is to grow in sales and keep up with Capcom's or FromSoftware's games. Even Devil May Cry is bigger than Final Fantasy nowadays, it hurts man.