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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Is Square Enix scared of releasing FF16, possible flopping ?

To many people the franchise has been kinda tarnished with latest entries. Each Flagship gen FF sells less than the previous. FF 15 sold less than 13 and FF 13 sold less than X. Next to that there is no official word on FF16 and SE is pushing a remake/remasters agenda of previous beloved titles, such as VII,VIII,X and XII the past 3 years.  Do you think they are really scared of the reception of FF16 that they dont consider making one in the future ? Some rumours are going around for action rpg title in the making, but still no one can tell it is attached to FF, it could be Project Athia, as seen by latest developments.



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Isn't FF16 moneyhatted by Sony to take it away from other platforms and will probably be shown next month? That would be the reason.



crissindahouse said:
Isn't FF16 moneyhatted by Sony to take it away from other platforms and will probably be shown next month? That would be the reason.

Moneyhatted like successful FFX ? SE knows where the money and the brand prestige is looking at FF7R numbers. This is called wise bussiness model. At the moment it is rumour.



JapaneseGamesLover said:

To many people the franchise has been kinda tarnished with latest entries. Each Flagship gen FF sells less than the previous. FF 15 sold less than 13 and FF 13 sold less than X. Next to that there is no official word on FF16 and SE is pushing a remake/remasters agenda of previous beloved titles, such as VII,VIII,X and XII the past 3 years.  Do you think they are really scared of the reception of FF16 that they dont consider making one in the future ? Some rumours are going around for action rpg title in the making, but still no one can tell it is attached to FF, it could be Project Athia, as seen by latest developments.


Seems you're under the wrong impression. FFXIII sold around 8 million. FFXV hit 9 million as of 2016. The Lightning Saga hit 11 million. Also, FFXV is missing the XBO numbers, which were probably not that low given Comrades was matchmaking up until after 2017. The console probably sold a million or so... 

Also, hard to develop a new FF when you're already working on something like VII and the new IP. 



Uhhhh, what?

Shipped + digital numbers for XV were at 8.9 million by late December 2019:
https://www.vgchartz.com/article/441894/final-fantasy-xv-ships-89-million-units-worldwide/,

So by this point, it's likely well over 9 million, which puts it behind just VII, VIII, and, possibly X as the 3rd or 4th best selling mainline game in the series, but comfortably ahead of XIII, which was last reported ~7.8 million copies between PS3/360/PC.

And it's actually the #1 best selling game in the series in the US.
https://www.vgchartz.com/article/443082/top-10-best-selling-final-fantasy-titles-in-the-us/

And the general consensus from what I've heard has been that XV was a step in the right direction for the series from XIII. And it would seem that its sales reflect that. A step up from XIII and in both sales AND acclaim.

So, I really don't see how Square Enix would be intimidated or scared, from a commercial OR critical standpoint, to release XVI. As long as they build off what worked with XV while fixing what didn't work, then the game will be received just fine, and based on sales for not just XV but the VII Remake as well, it's certainly in no danger of flopping.



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twintail said:
JapaneseGamesLover said:

To many people the franchise has been kinda tarnished with latest entries. Each Flagship gen FF sells less than the previous. FF 15 sold less than 13 and FF 13 sold less than X. Next to that there is no official word on FF16 and SE is pushing a remake/remasters agenda of previous beloved titles, such as VII,VIII,X and XII the past 3 years.  Do you think they are really scared of the reception of FF16 that they dont consider making one in the future ? Some rumours are going around for action rpg title in the making, but still no one can tell it is attached to FF, it could be Project Athia, as seen by latest developments.

Wasn't FF15 the best launch month for an FF game?

crissindahouse said:
Isn't FF16 moneyhatted by Sony to take it away from other platforms and will probably be shown next month? That would be the reason.

Though now FF7R is. but I guess this is the new 'flopping' standard.

The fastest selling FF to date (even broke even at launch). So yeah, if anything, the reception was positive. It's the support and back and forth that soured the fanbase. 



JapaneseGamesLover said:
crissindahouse said:
Isn't FF16 moneyhatted by Sony to take it away from other platforms and will probably be shown next month? That would be the reason.

Moneyhatted like successful FFX ? SE knows where the money and the brand prestige is looking at FF7R numbers. This is called wise bussiness model. At the moment it is rumour.

Moneyhatted like Sony pays a dev to take a game away from other platforms. FF7R didn't sell so well because it got an exclusive release on PS, it sold so well  because it's a very good remake of a legendary game. It's not as if people only bought it because it didn't release on PC or Xbox yet lol. 

And it's obviously wise from Square to take the money if it is more as they lose from less sales on PC/Xbox. I didn't question that. 

Yes, it's a rumour but it wouldn't be a surprise.

No reason to let it sound better as it is. No gamer really gains much from it. Same with Tomb Raider on Xbox in 2015 as example. 



crissindahouse said:
JapaneseGamesLover said:

Moneyhatted like successful FFX ? SE knows where the money and the brand prestige is looking at FF7R numbers. This is called wise bussiness model. At the moment it is rumour.

Moneyhatted like Sony pays a dev to take a game away from other platforms. FF7R didn't sell so well because it got an exclusive release on PS, it sold so well  because it's a very good remake of a legendary game. It's not as if people only bought it because it didn't release on PC or Xbox yet lol. 

And it's obviously wise from Square to take the money if it is more as they lose from less sales on PC/Xbox. I didn't question that. 

Yes, it's a rumour but it wouldn't be a surprise.

No reason to let it sound better as it is. No gamer really gains much from it. Same with Tomb Raider on Xbox in 2015 as example. 

A good look at SE multiplat numbers says SE games on MS consoles all flopped/underperfomed, so where do you get the point a multiplat is a successful thing ? An exclusive is promoted by the console company, therefore gets more spotlight, more targeted promo. Thats why FF7R digital sales were so high. If as a company, i know that i will get spotlight promo in a console of 112m users that based on previous gen these users of this brand tend to buy more my games than in the console of competitor (and in  that one previous gen they had the same size userbase and now competitor has half of the userbase), that would luckily mean 6-8% less sales for SE titles on the current gen that are easily replicated or outdone by the boosted interest on PS4 version. That is called wise business model.   If SE was supporting the other console, where the company lost money on timed exclusive releases the past gen and run to make these titles multiplat, that would make a company going bankrupt on purpose. I dont see SE running to make PS4 exclusives to Xbox available. It took 3 years for KH Remaster editions, Star Ocean 5 never got an Xbox release. Same thing happens with titles from other developers, such as Persona 5 and Tales of Berseria. Why all of these japanese companies avoid Xbox ? Have a look at 360 and One numbers of some japanese companies in the sector and you will understand what happened to the moneyhatted MS titles and why all the japanese games Xbox exclusives went extinct the last 6 years.



Final Fantasy is a still a hot brand. FFVII remake sold 3.5m in 3 days, so no not really.

Sony did say they have a tonne more things to annouce this August, so FFXVI could make an appearance this year. SE showed off Project Athia last month, in development by Luminous Productions (team behind FFXV). The other main people are still working on FFVII Remake part 2 and 3 (Tetsuya Nomura/Yoshinori Kitase/Takeshi Nozue etc).

I would imagine they would want their main team concentrating on one project and not to be stretched thin. Maybe its too early in development to show anything.

Last edited by hinch - on 07 July 2020

I wonder how successful from a financial point of view final fantasy is.
A lot of those 9 million units sold for FFXV were under promotion prices and considering the game took almost 10 years to be released makes me wonder if they were able to have a profit with the game at the end of the day. Probably yes much much less than FF7-FF10 when the time to develop the games was much shorter and the teams much smaller.
Maybe this was one of the reasons to go with FF7 remake? Guaranteed sales?
Anyway considering how we expect excellence and graphical fidelity from a main FF game, it seems to me the cost to develop it will be really high and will demand sales of at least 10 million units to be a success.
It definitely must be a difficult decision when planning FF16. Lets wait and see.