Why does everyone keep saying it is frontloaded? It is frontloaded in Japan.

Last game in the series, FFXII sold 572k in Americas first week and went on to sell 1.87M and first week of 423k in Others and 1.40M. I don't think FW sales equaling around 30% of that territories LTD is considered as heavily frontloaded.

Unfortunately we don't have breakdowns for FFVII-FFX but I am sure they weren't all 70-80% FW frontloaded beasts. These titles were only that way in Japan. They have legs outside Japan.

Check the database.

Good sales... But not so good.
It's a five years in the making game!

My god People, in JAPAN, yes it's front loaded because everyone comes out to get it, but it's different outside of Japan.

This is excellent sales since so many have bitch about a 83 Meta game, goes to show you the internet means shit when it comes to selling games.

5 million includes the 2 million in JAPAN you know.

It wont be that hard to sell 3 million copies out of both consoles in NA and Others.

amazing, really its gonna be some month for the PS3! And such a sad month for my wallet :(

Here is another thing, where is the whole 5 year thing coming from? FFXII came out Oct 31st, 2006 in the US.

FFXIII was first announced at E3 2006.

FFXIII did not take 5 years. I think S-E said recently that FFXIII took 3 1/2 years. They mentioned this when they said that a FFVII remake would take 3 times as long. This is where the "10 years to remake FFVII" came from.

Never knew 3.5 rounds up to 5.

Final Fantasy always had the best legs

hmm, because at E3 2006 they already had the characters - and thus probably the preliminary story - the music, the setting... and a freaking amazing CGI movie.

Therefore, I assume all this takes at least year to make - if not more.

Don't you agree?

This one will be more frontloaded than FFXII. Sales patterns are more complicated than just 'this series has legs, this series does not'. It's about selling on hype, selling on brand power, selling on word of mouth etc. Games that sell on hype tend to be more frontloaded, and FFXIII was a very hyped game. If it gets good word of mouth, it won't be so frontloaded, etc.

Nope.

Just because they had a CGI video does not mean that any of the other stuff you just mentioned was done.

For example, they finished the voice acting in July of last year and I doubt the preliminary story took almost 3 years to finish and then dub.

I am sure S-E doesn't make just one story at a time. They have guys who write these for a living, they aren't just hanging out doing nothing alot of the time. I bet they have a whole collection of storylines they can pry from.

Who knows, I could be wrong, but I think S-E knows more than we do.