Let's imagine two franchises. Let's get away from talk about FF or ME or anything specific. Let's imagine both of these franchises have a sequel coming out.

Franchise A: The last game sold 1 million. The sequel sold 2 million.
Franchise B: The last game sold 6 million. The sequel sold 5 million.

Which game did better? On an absolute scale, obviously Franchise B did. On a relative scale, Franchise A doubled its audience while Franchise B's audience is shrinking. There is no correct answer here. Neither is an umitigated hit or flop. Both have strengths and weaknesses.

As I said, there are only a few games that are genuine, unmitigated flops or successes. Games that sell huge amounts on an absolute scale (say, 5 or 6M or more), while also growing the franchise (that is, the new iteration sold more than the last), while also keeping development costs down (selling very slightly more but tripling your expenses would be a bad thing, for instance) are extremely rare. Perhaps a dozen or so this generation.

But no one likes this explanation, because we want clear winners and losers, and obvious answers.

A flop is typically judged by Revenue - Development Cost - Marketing cost, and I highly doubt that selling near to 2 million in Japan resulted in a flop. Is it the worse selling mainline Final Fantasy in Japan (maybe so), however it did not flop....

ff went from 2.4 Million (FF12) to 1.8 Million (FF13)

so tht cud be seen as flopping rite? (only in japan)

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In Europe ff went:

hes r EU sales for past FF titls:

FF7 -- 2.70 Million

FF8 -- 1.88 Million

FF9 -- 0.84 Million

FF10 -- 2.19 Million

FF12 -- 1.40 Million

And FF13 has done this much in 10 weeks:

1.75 Million (last week it did 62K in EU/Others)

so is ee ff13 as a big big hit in others

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in america i dnt knw, its almst crossed ff12 and will sell until gen ends.

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so do u think im rite in saying it flopped in jpn compared to eu/na?

ff13 cudnt hve made bck dev & marketng costs from 1.8 million sold in jpn so we cn call it a flop there.

Plus, he isn't taking into account the userbase for the console in Japan at the time of the other games released vs current PS3 userbase in Japan.

At the very least, XIII sold well. People who don't like the game apparently still bought the game because it sold strongly and there will be more games like it, due to those sales. It did expand the FF market over XII, and it did expand the Final Fantasy influence in the west. Overall a hit for Square-Enix, brand name or not.

Killzone 3 couldn't have made back development costs from the units it sold in Zimbabwe either, but that doesn't make it a flop in Zimbabwe. You are ignoring the facts that don't suit your argument.

Particularly, the fact that XIII isn't finished selling in Japan, and also the fact that the userbase for the PS3 couldn't support many more sales of the game than it actually did. There was really no physical way for it to sell many more copies than it actually sold considering that userbase. When XII was on sale in Japan, how many millions of consoles were in the hands of the Japanese, vs the PS3?

No matter how big your game is, you can only sell as many copies as your userbase can support. YOU need to accept the fact that the economy, userbase, and time on the market might be greater factors to the FFXIII Japanese sales figure than the quality of the game or its marketing.

"The game sold on brand," the point people keep repeating is wrong becasue it is irrelevent to Final Fantasy (one of the few special cases out there).  When bad games sell on brand they usually die, games that sell on brand have less "sequals." You could say FF 2-5 sold on brand but past that, a franshise is established as good, bad, or dead (poor sales, decline).

Most importantly, the average total sales of each FF is 5mil. The fact that a game with this many "sequals" can constantly sell this amount proves that this game does not sell more becasue it is of that brand, but that the same people are willing to try the next installment.

FF7, 8, and 10 sold over the average because of overhyped fanboys and the usual.

I also disagree that FF13 failed in Japan, every 2 out of 5 owners of PS3 is Japan bought a copy. I believe the people who imported was a very small % of that. Now what really needs to be asked here is how the PS3 HW sales affected the game. FF13 is the best selling PS3 game in Japan and unless v13 can top it, I don't see any other game that can besides GT5.

As for the 360 hurting the overall sales of FF13, I disagree. Most or half of the people who bought it on 360 own a PS3 or would have bought a PS3 to play it (amoung other factors to convice that person to buy in). These sales + the PS3 fanboys who would have bought it because its a PS3 exclusive, or because of the "quality is better as exclusive" + those who own both system = about the same in total across both platforms.

Cheaper + International Editions of Final Fantasy games are good for at least 200k+ in Japan. If they include all the lost content and towns that were supposed to be in the game, basically making it FFXIII 1.5, I can see it doing even better than that.

Who the F cares if it makes the money back just in Japan or not?  That's why the game is released WORLDWIDE.  The idea is to make a profit from the TOTAL sales, not sales from one region.

ppl misundertood my jpn sales of ff13 statement.

s-e is bck to square 1 with ff13 as its worst selling since ff6, do u knw hw bad tht is? they lost all gains the frnchise made over last 18 years. and re-releses still wnt get it past ff6 sales.