True, the aspects of social/multiplayer and modern open world have changed the landscape of gaming that franchises had to keep up in order to maintain or expand their respective audiences. Hell, even if people nowadays question the quality of the latest games, the Pokémon franchise has found new audiences with their latest generations of games that Final Fantasy wished it could have.

And as what Soundwave said, unfortunately Sony may be quite influential within Square in regards to Final Fantasy. Square would have to be stubborn enough to say, hey somethings not working with this partnership. As you brought up Pikmin 4, here’s another example. FFVII remake, a long requested game and among the top desired games per Famitsu, was completely overshadowed by Animal Crossing New Horizons. A SOCIAL SIMULATION GAME! New Horizons ends up selling over 30 million worldwide and is the best selling game in Japan.,.EVER! While VII Remake did respectfully well, it wishes it got half of what New Horizons sold.

I know the circumstances were unique, but imagine more people wanting to spend time at home playing Animal Crossing instead of a highly requested JRPG remake. That’s wild. I’m sure it blows the mind of every hardcore gamer.

Marketing effect of the Spiderverse and Gran Turismo movies!

I don't think Square-Enix really has to listen to Sony. They can just say we're not accepting money-hats that will prohibit our games from being on other platforms, what exactly is Sony going to do. They have a new president so I think things are going to change, their stock price has fallen off a cliff. 

FF7 Remake's sales honestly are a low key dud, I wonder why Square-Enix is so reluctant to update its sales after 5 million ... probably because it had no legs. This game released right as the pandemic was starting so it should have seen a boom in sales as people were basically locked inside, schools shut down, etc. etc., you can't ask for a better window of opportunity than that. Didn't the RE2 Remke top 10 million in sales? How in the world is FF7 not getting at least that much traction? 

I mean yes that is exactly what they SHOULD do. But until I start to see it I have no confidence third parties are gonna start putting current gen AAA games on Nintendo. It happens once in a blue moon. It would be great to see FF come back to Nintendo, and obviously it'd be a great business decision for the franchise, but it's a long shot as to that actually happening. Though who knows, Switch 2 might be the best chance to have this sort of thing happen since Nintendo went with lower powered systems starting with the Wii, so maybe they will, but after 20 years of waiting I'm just assuming they aren't gonna do it, no matter how obvious it is that it would be the right decision.

Which is why I’m kinda eery on what third parties (especially Japanese ones) will do with the Switch successor..
If it’s as powerful as rumored, then more PS4/Xbone games shouldn’t be an issue. But I’m a bit concerned that they’ll play the same playbook they used on the OG Switch, mostly ports from 2 gens ago (or older) as “test” games.
I should expect the remakes of FFVII, RE2, 3, and 4, Street Fighter VI, Elden Ring, King of Fighters XV, Kingdom Hearts (the whole damn series digitally/physically, not lazy cloud versions), Sekiro, etc. Yet, I worry the Switch 2 may only get 1-2 of those types of games come launch year, if ever. At this point, if the concept is mostly the same but powerful, what other excuses does Japanese third parties have left?

The reason the Switch saw a few 3rd party games in it's first year was because publishers were very hesitant to bring games to it. They were unsure how the system would sell after the Wii U. The only company that went all out on Switch since day one was Koei Tecmo. Notable companies that were supportive since day one were Bethesda (surprisingly), Ubisoft, Square Enix, and Sega. The rest were obviously hesitant and didn't actively support the system until year two or three.

These companies are not going to make the same mistake with Nintendo's next system. We will see a ton of support in the first year.

Next week starts 2022's Switch Splatoon 3 boost, so the gap will grow again - but damn did 2023 get close to 2022 gain, shrinking the gap from over 500k to 150k.

Perhaps FF17 should be developed for the switch 2 and not Playstation.  

Mario wonder is coming to help Sales for the rest of the year and 2024 !