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Forums - Gaming - FFXV's Sales In Japan: It Is Time For Japanese Devs To Support Switch?

Boutros on 07 December 2016
Soundwave said:
Boutros said:

The PS4 version could still sell 1m in Japan which might be enough to cover the cost depending on what it is. But the PS4 version is Square Enix's attempt at making the franchise more popular outside of Japan. Also that's simply what Horii wanted and what Horii wants Horii gets lol

When you think about it, there's a pretty good chance Final Fantasy XV is the most expensive Japanese made game ever. 

These sales are a really bad omen for Japanese AAA development.

I think Japanese developers have miscalculated the success of the PS4 as well thinking it was basically PS2-all-over-again. It's not. It's very popular in the West with WESTERN games. Final Fantasy XV underperforming and Street Fighter V flopping should be sobering wake up calls. In Japan the PS4 is selling relatively poorly, it is no second coming of the PS2 in Japan. Traditional gaming is under serious threat. 

How is FFXV's performance in Japan at all meaningful of its success in the West? FFXV doesn't need Japan to be profitable you know.



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Jranation on 07 December 2016

Yep! And they will!

PsVita is slolwy dying..... theres no sign of a new successor of it......... and the Switch seems like a very powerful handheld.....



Pocky Lover Boy! 

Jranation on 07 December 2016
Alkibiádēs said:

People don't seem to be able to accept the truth here. Yes, Final Fantasy XV bombed hard in Japan. The game had a very long development cycle and must have cost a lot of money to make.

If Japanese developers had any sense of self-preservation they would switch to Nintendo. The best selling Dragon Quest game came out on the DS and not the more powerful PSP or PS3. A game doesn't need to be on a powerful console for it to sell a lot or be good. Pokémon Red and Blue and Pokémon Gold and Silver offer more content than 99% of the modern games. Pokémon Sun and Moon only took around 3 years to develop (with part of the team making a remake of Ruby and Sapphire as well) and it absolutely destroyed Final Fantasy XV in sales. The budget of Pokémon Sun and Moon will have been only a fraction of Final Fantasy XV.

Square Enix is only hurting themselves by releasing games exclusively on the PS4 (and the XBONE). Kingdom Hearts 3 is another game that is taking forever to develop and I'm pretty sure Dragon Quest XI will see many delays as well because of the PS4 version. I can say the same for Capcom. Street Fighter V was a total flop. Bandai Namco meanwhile worked together with Nintendo and made Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS (best selling in the franchise) and Pokken Tournament (surprisingly outsold Street Fighter V on the PS4). Koei Tecmo made Hyrule Warriors which was one of the most successful Dynasty Warrior games in years.

The 3DS should have gotten a mainline Final Fantasy game, but it didn't and only game companies can be that stupid to ignore such a large market segment.

(Japanese) developers have always put blind faith in Playstation consoles, it's time they do the same for the Switch.
And why on earth is Square Enix supporting Microsoft more than Nintendo? Their anti-Nintendo bias will hit them hard in the future if they don't watch out. We get it Square, you don't like cartridges, get over it because your most famous franchise is getting trashed by "the guys who still make cartridge games". Oh the irony.

The advantages are all there:

- Less competition due to absence of games made by Western developers.

- Huge market share in Japan, their home country and the main demographic of most of their games (relative to the country size).

- Weaker hardware and thus cheaper development costs and faster development cycles.

- Both mobile and home console combined.

And that is why we are getting a Mario X Rabbids game XD 



Pocky Lover Boy! 

badgenome on 07 December 2016
Soundwave said:

When you think about it, there's a pretty good chance Final Fantasy XV is the most expensive Japanese made game ever. 

These sales are a really bad omen for Japanese AAA development.

I think Japanese developers have miscalculated the success of the PS4 as well thinking it was basically PS2-all-over-again. It's not. It's very popular in the West with WESTERN games. Final Fantasy XV underperforming and Street Fighter V flopping should be sobering wake up calls. In Japan the PS4 is selling relatively poorly, it is no second coming of the PS2 in Japan. Traditional gaming is under serious threat. 

It's an omen that they need to re-learn how to engage a worldwide audience after falling on their asses last generation. It's not an omen that they should refocus on the most rapidly aging country in the world by banking everything on the success of an unreleased and therefore unproven system in a desperate attempt to lure smart phone gamers back to home consoles.



Soundwave on 07 December 2016
twintail said:
Soundwave said:

 

I think Square-Enix hitching their wagon to Sony has caught up to them. Why has Nintendo never been given a main line Final Fantasy game despite having the best selling system in Japan for each of the last two generations by a large margin? Bet they are counting their lucky stars Dragon Quest XI will be on 3DS and Switch too, otherwise they would be in big, big trouble with Dragon Quest as well. 

Ah so this is a Nintendo fan scraping for Switch ports thread, and not really about FF15's performance (which doesnt even take into account the potential 50-100k digital sales which would be good enough to help the game hit a million over time)

 

gotcha!

It's about the Japanese market in general and the future of actual A-AAA traditional game experiences. At this rate there won't be a future for those games. 

There's only one platform that has a reasonable shot of having a mass userbase in Japan as a traditional gaming device ... and that's the Switch. Sorry if that upsets some people, but it's the truth, and it's about time Japanese developers also realized this, for their *own* sake, not just Nintendo's. 

Nintendo's going to do just fine on Switch themselves and sell their usual boat load of Mario/Pokemon/Animal Crossing. Nintendo's going to be alright. But the Japanese development community in general? They need to smarten up or they are going to find themselves working on smartphone games as the future of Japanese game development. Which would be a damn shame, but that's the path they've put themselves on. 



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Alkibiádēs on 07 December 2016
twintail said:
Soundwave said:

 

I think Square-Enix hitching their wagon to Sony has caught up to them. Why has Nintendo never been given a main line Final Fantasy game despite having the best selling system in Japan for each of the last two generations by a large margin? Bet they are counting their lucky stars Dragon Quest XI will be on 3DS and Switch too, otherwise they would be in big, big trouble with Dragon Quest as well. 

Ah so this is a Nintendo fan scraping for Switch ports thread, and not really about FF15's performance (which doesnt even take into account the potential 50-100k digital sales which would be good enough to help the game hit a million over time)

 

gotcha!

How on earth can you spin selling 690k FW in Japan as something good?

Final Fantasy XV will sell less than Splatoon in Japan. Think about that for a minute.



"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must" - Thoukydides

Soundwave on 07 December 2016
Alkibiádēs said:
twintail said:

Ah so this is a Nintendo fan scraping for Switch ports thread, and not really about FF15's performance (which doesnt even take into account the potential 50-100k digital sales which would be good enough to help the game hit a million over time)

 

gotcha!

How on earth can you spin selling 690k FW in Japan as something good?

Final Fantasy XV will sell less than Splatoon in Japan. Think about that for a minute.

Final Fantasy declining, Street Fighter bombing, Metal Gear uh .... well .... Monster Hunter is doing well but that's because it's on 3DS. 

Pretty soon the only Japanese games that sell at all are going to be Nintendo's own IP (Mario, Mario Kart, Pokemon, Splatoon, Animal Crossing, Donkey Kong). 

Whether they like each other or not, Japanese developers need to realize they need Nintendo, and Nintendo needs them. 

Switch must sell 20 million in Japan to create a healthy ecosystem for Japanese games to sell to, PS4 has like 3-4 million after almost 3 years? That's just not cutting the mustard. You can't have healthy sales if this is the size of your ecosystem. 



invetedlotus123 on 07 December 2016
Alkibiádēs said:
twintail said:

Ah so this is a Nintendo fan scraping for Switch ports thread, and not really about FF15's performance (which doesnt even take into account the potential 50-100k digital sales which would be good enough to help the game hit a million over time)

 

gotcha!

How on earth can you spin selling 690k FW in Japan as something good?

Final Fantasy XV will sell less than Splatoon in Japan. Think about that for a minute.

But this is not a "home console in Japan is dying" problem, it's a Final Fantasy series problem. XIII and it`s sequels damaged the franchise pretty badly. Remember Final Fantasy name is kinda screwed all over the place, mainly in Japan, remember the massive amounts of shitty games using Final Fantasy name just to sell some easy copies, and this comes since DS era, and FF XIII that was supposed to help the game gain some credibility back was, that, thing, with two sequels... Just looks at the XIII sequels ( they are main series, just like X-2 is) sales and you`ll see it`s a disaster. 

With time the franchise can go back on track and once the fans start to here this game is good they might actually start buying it again. Just remember FF always was a system seller, and it means the userbase isn`t a factor at all of how much it will sell since the fans are going to get a console for it. The main concern here is SE finding a way to make the buyers keep their copies and don`t sell it to used market, since this what kills legs for any game in Japan, people buying the game, finishing it in a week or two and selling it again. I would be more eager to see how successful it is after one monther or two.

P.S.: Consider also that games in Japan, mainly AAA games, are much more expensive than in West where USA prices fixed at 59 USD and some European countries for 69 to 79 EUR. In Japan a main FF can get to cost 100.000 Yen, roughly 100 USD, much more revenue per copy.



jonager on 07 December 2016

this is sad, i remember the days when you could buy a ff game and expect quality (7,8,9 in my case). To see this great franchise turned into this, really sad indeed.



Boutros on 07 December 2016
Alkibiádēs said:

Final Fantasy XV will sell less than Splatoon in Japan. Think about that for a minute.

Everything that was released on console and will be released on console this generation is going to sell less than Splatoon in Japan lol

Splatoon isn't the metric for success. It will be the best selling console game this gen.