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Forums - Sales Discussion - FF7 Rebirth has reportedly sold half what Remake did in the same timeframe

Chrkeller on 20 May 2024
curl-6 said:
zeldaring said:

Obviously we said switch is more powerful then then 360/wiiu/ps3 but it's more like wiiu pro and that's why we say it's games just didn't look like they belonged in the ps4 generation graphically. When you look at the things like last of us 2, gow of war, red dead 2, and many other it's looks like a different generation of hardware.

I honestly don't feel Switch fits neatly into either the PS3/360 or PS4/XBO generation graphically; it's kind of this weird middle ground.

Chrkeller said:

I don't think porting anything is impossible (within reason).  It is always a matter of time, money and sacrifice.  

The problem with Rebirth for the S2 is file size.  It is just under 150 gb.  Square doesn't strike as willing to pay for large carts...  and who wants to download something that takes up 70% of the storage?  

File size is a big question for me on the S2.  256 gb is low, my rig is 4 TB.  

The open world sections of Rebirth I think would tear the S2's bandwidth apart.  So I don't think a straight port would be possible.  It would need additional sacrifices to textures and lighting.  Rebirth was built for 16 gb ram and 448 gb/s.  Going to 12 gb and 112 gb/s is possible but isn't a straight port.

As for silky smooth games, I nominate Crack in Time on the ps3.  The game is stunning.  

File size can be drastically reduced in porting; Sniper Elite 4 on PS4 is 35GB, not on Switch it's just 6GB, 1/6th as much while retaining quite good quality.

In terms of bandwidth, that's what settings reductions are for, same as how PS4 to Switch ports like Witcher 3 or Doom Eternal got down from 176GB/s to 25GB/s.

Absolutely.  But Compression means loss of something.  Textures, sound quality, etc.

But yeah, most anything is possible.  My only point is Rebirth won't be the ps5 simply at lower resolution.



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curl-6 on 20 May 2024
Chrkeller said:
curl-6 said:

I honestly don't feel Switch fits neatly into either the PS3/360 or PS4/XBO generation graphically; it's kind of this weird middle ground.

Chrkeller said:

I don't think porting anything is impossible (within reason).  It is always a matter of time, money and sacrifice.  

The problem with Rebirth for the S2 is file size.  It is just under 150 gb.  Square doesn't strike as willing to pay for large carts...  and who wants to download something that takes up 70% of the storage?  

File size is a big question for me on the S2.  256 gb is low, my rig is 4 TB.  

The open world sections of Rebirth I think would tear the S2's bandwidth apart.  So I don't think a straight port would be possible.  It would need additional sacrifices to textures and lighting.  Rebirth was built for 16 gb ram and 448 gb/s.  Going to 12 gb and 112 gb/s is possible but isn't a straight port.

As for silky smooth games, I nominate Crack in Time on the ps3.  The game is stunning.  

File size can be drastically reduced in porting; Sniper Elite 4 on PS4 is 35GB, not on Switch it's just 6GB, 1/6th as much while retaining quite good quality.

In terms of bandwidth, that's what settings reductions are for, same as how PS4 to Switch ports like Witcher 3 or Doom Eternal got down from 176GB/s to 25GB/s.

Absolutely.  But Compression means loss of something.  Textures, sound quality, etc.

But yeah, most anything is possible.  My only point is Rebirth won't be the ps5 simply at lower resolution.

Of course it won't just be the PS5 version at a lower resolution, basically no port between hardware in different power tiers is that simple.

But it won't matter; the audience for these games doesn't mind if they don't look quite as crisp or flashy as PS5, that's the price many are willing to pay for the convenience of the hybrid form factor.



Chrkeller on 20 May 2024
curl-6 said:
Chrkeller said:

Absolutely.  But Compression means loss of something.  Textures, sound quality, etc.

But yeah, most anything is possible.  My only point is Rebirth won't be the ps5 simply at lower resolution.

Of course it won't just be the PS5 version at a lower resolution, basically no port between hardware in different power tiers is that simple.

But it won't matter; the audience for these games doesn't mind if they don't look quite as crisp or flashy as PS5, that's the price many are willing to pay for the convenience of the hybrid form factor.

For sure.  I mean going from RE1 on the ps1 to RE4 was massive.  RE1 is barely playable.  Those days are long gone.  Ps3 games play perfectly fine and ps4 games are still great.  Games aren't archaic anymore when they age.  So most of the downgrades on the S2 are simply visuals.  My personal preference is 30 fps is awful, so 3rd party on the S2 won't be my thing.  But for most others it is viable.

I wouldn't recommend people play PC at 120 fps, because once you do going back to 30 fps is beyond painful.



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IcaroRibeiro on 20 May 2024

I will make the devils advocate and says everyone (Square included) is looking for the wrong reasons for why Final Fantasy keeps failling and say their multiplatform strategy will backfire hard if they can't get their shit right 

Warning this is a VERY long post

Square is wrong sacrificing Sony's money for a insubstantial amount of copies to be sold in PC/XBOX/Switch

Unless of course it's Sony just saying they are no longer interested in financing Final Fantasy, which can be the case but alas let's just say if was Square decision for the sake of the argument 

Final Fantasy ports will sell poorly on Switch 2 whatever is called  

They sell poorly on PC as well 

Single player Final Fantasy audience is on Playstation. If it can't sell well there it won't sell well anywhere else

People who are expecting some kind of Monster Hunter moment because or cross platform release will be disappointed to discover both IPs don't share the same marketability. Monster Hunter is an action game with huge multi-player factor. Multi-player FF is also extremely popular, and it's doing just fine being mostly a PC-based game 

Single player FF is a different beast. It's a franchise that used to be popular even belonging the very niche JRPG crowd because the games were knew for:

- Having good and elegant thought provoking storys during moment most of games used to have crappy storys

- Used to push hardware capabilities. technically speaking they were among the most advanced and impressive looking game during their generation 

- JRPGs were very poorly designed and programmed in the 80s and 90s, and the ones who were okay-ish (like Dragon quest)  were not widely released outside Japan, when they were they had poor marketing and distribution. In this sense the lack of major options pushed JRPGs fans to buy Final Fantasy 

Points 1 and 2 are no longer selling points. We have many story driven games which much better stories than any FF since XII... well except for XVI which indeed have great story but I guess even di you like those characters and world is harder to create a connection to them knowing they will never make a comeback in any game in the future unlike God of War or The Last of US. Hence I won't get XVII only to see what is the story of Clive, unlike people who will get Horizon 3 to keep seeing Aloys story

Point 2 stopped being real as early as PS3 era when big AAA western developers entered in console market with full force. Games like GTA and Skyrim simply destroyed any chance of Final Fantasy XIII to be considered ground breaking no matter how pretty its graphics are, people wanted to see hardware advancing to a point that let they play games were not possible before and FF XIII trilogy was basically a Final Fasntasy XII game with prettier graphics 

They tried to solve this issue in FF XV creating a huge open world games but guess what. It was a development hell, the game was delayed for years and the budget exploded. They couldn't get the gameplay and the world right (the game is just half open world). Still the best selling FF game despite being called one of the worst FF games just because it's open world game released during the open world craze. This further proves why point 2 was so fundamental for FF 

And third point: JRPGs are thriving. There are plenty for them to play. Some arguably more fun than FF, granted not as impressive technically but who cares? I love my Persona, Octopath Travaler and Nier even if they are nowhere as good looking as Final Fantasy. The consumer now has options. We no longer have to wait 5 years to have a decent JRPG

Needless to say, point 1 and 3 are impossible for Square to address lol

Releasing on Switch 2 is going against point 2, historically the IP biggest selling point. But they also can't keep the budget of their games going on forever with mediocre sales they got from Rebirth and XVI

The worst thing is I believe Square are very much aware of all these issues. They tried changes in gameplay in hope they could break the JRPG niche and got action game players. XVI looks like any generic western RPG, the story is very Game of Thrones-ish. The problem is the game is simply not fun or addictive enough. It was a great game really but when I finished it I knew I was never going to play it again, even the flawed FF XV left me a stronger (and lasting) impression 

I don't know what they can do to save the IP and its clearly as a day that story driven Single player action games are not cutting it. IMO they have two routes here:

- Decreasing budgets and scope. Accepting FF is no longer a AAA IP and treat it like just a simple JRPG game that will sell in the 6-8 million range with budgets well bellow anything they have done since XIII. Change their strategy to release more derivatives, like Atlus does with Persona. This will strengthen the game impression in gamers consciousness and will help the game to keep selling for years

- Change the core of the IP, including elements of multi-player and social features. Those things thrive on PC platforms and can be the breaktrogh they are expecting for renew its boomer fanbase

Well, the good thing is they can do both. Releasing single player experiences will keep the older fandom engaged, in a safe environment (because they know how to make those smaller single player games), while keep working in a FF that allow co-op and social features

Let's just hope they won't release a new FF XVI and think multiplatform release will do anything because oh boy, if they do this they need to be ready for another failure 



Tico on 20 May 2024
IcaroRibeiro said:

I will make the devils advocate and says everyone (Square included) is looking for the wrong reasons for why Final Fantasy keeps failling and say their multiplatform strategy will backfire hard if they can't get their shit right 

Warning this is a VERY long post

Square is wrong sacrificing Sony's money for a insubstantial amount of copies to be sold in PC/XBOX/Switch

Unless of course it's Sony just saying they are no longer interested in financing Final Fantasy, which can be the case but alas let's just say if was Square decision for the sake of the argument 

Final Fantasy ports will sell poorly on Switch 2 whatever is called  

They sell poorly on PC as well 

Single player Final Fantasy audience is on Playstation. If it can't sell well there it won't sell well anywhere else

People who are expecting some kind of Monster Hunter moment because or cross platform release will be disappointed to discover both IPs don't share the same marketability. Monster Hunter is an action game with huge multi-player factor. Multi-player FF is also extremely popular, and it's doing just fine being mostly a PC-based game 

Single player FF is a different beast. It's a franchise that used to be popular even belonging the very niche JRPG crowd because the games were knew for:

- Having good and elegant thought provoking storys during moment most of games used to have crappy storys

- Used to push hardware capabilities. technically speaking they were among the most advanced and impressive looking game during their generation 

- JRPGs were very poorly designed and programmed in the 80s and 90s, and the ones who were okay-ish (like Dragon quest)  were not widely released outside Japan, when they were they had poor marketing and distribution. In this sense the lack of major options pushed JRPGs fans to buy Final Fantasy 

Points 1 and 2 are no longer selling points. We have many story driven games which much better stories than any FF since XII... well except for XVI which indeed have great story but I guess even di you like those characters and world is harder to create a connection to them knowing they will never make a comeback in any game in the future unlike God of War or The Last of US. Hence I won't get XVII only to see what is the story of Clive, unlike people who will get Horizon 3 to keep seeing Aloys story

Point 2 stopped being real as early as PS3 era when big AAA western developers entered in console market with full force. Games like GTA and Skyrim simply destroyed any chance of Final Fantasy XIII to be considered ground breaking no matter how pretty its graphics are, people wanted to see hardware advancing to a point that let they play games were not possible before and FF XIII trilogy was basically a Final Fasntasy XII game with prettier graphics 

They tried to solve this issue in FF XV creating a huge open world games but guess what. It was a development hell, the game was delayed for years and the budget exploded. They couldn't get the gameplay and the world right (the game is just half open world). Still the best selling FF game despite being called one of the worst FF games just because it's open world game released during the open world craze. This further proves why point 2 was so fundamental for FF 

And third point: JRPGs are thriving. There are plenty for them to play. Some arguably more fun than FF, granted not as impressive technically but who cares? I love my Persona, Octopath Travaler and Nier even if they are nowhere as good looking as Final Fantasy. The consumer now has options. We no longer have to wait 5 years to have a decent JRPG

Needless to say, point 1 and 3 are impossible for Square to address lol

Releasing on Switch 2 is going against point 2, historically the IP biggest selling point. But they also can't keep the budget of their games going on forever with mediocre sales they got from Rebirth and XVI

The worst thing is I believe Square are very much aware of all these issues. They tried changes in gameplay in hope they could break the JRPG niche and got action game players. XVI looks like any generic western RPG, the story is very Game of Thrones-ish. The problem is the game is simply not fun or addictive enough. It was a great game really but when I finished it I knew I was never going to play it again, even the flawed FF XV left me a stronger (and lasting) impression 

I don't know what they can do to save the IP and its clearly as a day that story driven Single player action games are not cutting it. IMO they have two routes here:

- Decreasing budgets and scope. Accepting FF is no longer a AAA IP and treat it like just a simple JRPG game that will sell in the 6-8 million range with budgets well bellow anything they have done since XIII. Change their strategy to release more derivatives, like Atlus does with Persona. This will strengthen the game impression in gamers consciousness and will help the game to keep selling for years

- Change the core of the IP, including elements of multi-player and social features. Those things thrive on PC platforms and can be the breaktrogh they are expecting for renew its boomer fanbase

Well, the good thing is they can do both. Releasing single player experiences will keep the older fandom engaged, in a safe environment (because they know how to make those smaller single player games), while keep working in a FF that allow co-op and social features

Let's just hope they won't release a new FF XVI and think multiplatform release will do anything because oh boy, if they do this they need to be ready for another failure 

Applause.


The players want:
-time disappears
-give us experiences that we will never forget
-let tears come to our eyes
-that we are not the ones who have won; let it be the game that has won us


If FF gives us that, we'll buy it. The problem is that it doesn't give it.



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Chrkeller on 20 May 2024

I find it sad, or maybe funny, that Sony is better at supporting Steam than Square. GoT has 76,000 active players. Sony will get a few million in sales. Easy money if Square would stop being stupid.



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Radek on 20 May 2024
Chrkeller said:

I find it sad, or maybe funny, that Sony is better at supporting Steam than Square. GoT has 76,000 active players. Sony will get a few million in sales. Easy money if Square would stop being stupid.

Seriously each month they are losing the potential sales by not releasing FF XVI on Steam...


Exclusive period was 6 months and we are now 11 months after PS5 release.



burninmylight on 20 May 2024
Liquid_faction said:

I think one aspect people aren't looking into as to why it's sales are half of the remake is that because the naming scheme is confusing. I'm not an OG fan of Final Fantasy, played only 15 and 16, but when rebirth came out I thought that it was like a remaster of the remake or maybe like a Pokemon variant like Sword or Shield. So consumers that aren't hardcore FF fans probably think that as well. But hey, I could be wrong and I'm probably the only one that thought of it like that.

I think the naming scheme is only hurting it. "Remake" and "Rebirth" already sound alike, so anyone who isn't paying attention can easily think of the former when hearing or seeing the title of the latter. I'm one of those people; it took me a while to realize Rebirth is a different game around launch, and I asked a friend what the difference is.

It's like how people heard Wii U and assumed it's a Wii add-on instead of a new generation of console.



Soundwave on 20 May 2024
IcaroRibeiro said:

I will make the devils advocate and says everyone (Square included) is looking for the wrong reasons for why Final Fantasy keeps failling and say their multiplatform strategy will backfire hard if they can't get their shit right 

Warning this is a VERY long post

Square is wrong sacrificing Sony's money for a insubstantial amount of copies to be sold in PC/XBOX/Switch

Unless of course it's Sony just saying they are no longer interested in financing Final Fantasy, which can be the case but alas let's just say if was Square decision for the sake of the argument 

Final Fantasy ports will sell poorly on Switch 2 whatever is called  

They sell poorly on PC as well 

Single player Final Fantasy audience is on Playstation. If it can't sell well there it won't sell well anywhere else

People who are expecting some kind of Monster Hunter moment because or cross platform release will be disappointed to discover both IPs don't share the same marketability. Monster Hunter is an action game with huge multi-player factor. Multi-player FF is also extremely popular, and it's doing just fine being mostly a PC-based game 

Single player FF is a different beast. It's a franchise that used to be popular even belonging the very niche JRPG crowd because the games were knew for:

- Having good and elegant thought provoking storys during moment most of games used to have crappy storys

- Used to push hardware capabilities. technically speaking they were among the most advanced and impressive looking game during their generation 

- JRPGs were very poorly designed and programmed in the 80s and 90s, and the ones who were okay-ish (like Dragon quest)  were not widely released outside Japan, when they were they had poor marketing and distribution. In this sense the lack of major options pushed JRPGs fans to buy Final Fantasy 

Points 1 and 2 are no longer selling points. We have many story driven games which much better stories than any FF since XII... well except for XVI which indeed have great story but I guess even di you like those characters and world is harder to create a connection to them knowing they will never make a comeback in any game in the future unlike God of War or The Last of US. Hence I won't get XVII only to see what is the story of Clive, unlike people who will get Horizon 3 to keep seeing Aloys story

Point 2 stopped being real as early as PS3 era when big AAA western developers entered in console market with full force. Games like GTA and Skyrim simply destroyed any chance of Final Fantasy XIII to be considered ground breaking no matter how pretty its graphics are, people wanted to see hardware advancing to a point that let they play games were not possible before and FF XIII trilogy was basically a Final Fasntasy XII game with prettier graphics 

They tried to solve this issue in FF XV creating a huge open world games but guess what. It was a development hell, the game was delayed for years and the budget exploded. They couldn't get the gameplay and the world right (the game is just half open world). Still the best selling FF game despite being called one of the worst FF games just because it's open world game released during the open world craze. This further proves why point 2 was so fundamental for FF 

And third point: JRPGs are thriving. There are plenty for them to play. Some arguably more fun than FF, granted not as impressive technically but who cares? I love my Persona, Octopath Travaler and Nier even if they are nowhere as good looking as Final Fantasy. The consumer now has options. We no longer have to wait 5 years to have a decent JRPG

Needless to say, point 1 and 3 are impossible for Square to address lol

Releasing on Switch 2 is going against point 2, historically the IP biggest selling point. But they also can't keep the budget of their games going on forever with mediocre sales they got from Rebirth and XVI

The worst thing is I believe Square are very much aware of all these issues. They tried changes in gameplay in hope they could break the JRPG niche and got action game players. XVI looks like any generic western RPG, the story is very Game of Thrones-ish. The problem is the game is simply not fun or addictive enough. It was a great game really but when I finished it I knew I was never going to play it again, even the flawed FF XV left me a stronger (and lasting) impression 

I don't know what they can do to save the IP and its clearly as a day that story driven Single player action games are not cutting it. IMO they have two routes here:

- Decreasing budgets and scope. Accepting FF is no longer a AAA IP and treat it like just a simple JRPG game that will sell in the 6-8 million range with budgets well bellow anything they have done since XIII. Change their strategy to release more derivatives, like Atlus does with Persona. This will strengthen the game impression in gamers consciousness and will help the game to keep selling for years

- Change the core of the IP, including elements of multi-player and social features. Those things thrive on PC platforms and can be the breaktrogh they are expecting for renew its boomer fanbase

Well, the good thing is they can do both. Releasing single player experiences will keep the older fandom engaged, in a safe environment (because they know how to make those smaller single player games), while keep working in a FF that allow co-op and social features

Let's just hope they won't release a new FF XVI and think multiplatform release will do anything because oh boy, if they do this they need to be ready for another failure 

I don't think they have to decrease graphics and scope from where they are now. They just are going to probably have to accept a cold, hard reality that they can't go any higher. They've reached a dead end with graphics as better graphics are not translating to better sales. They're probably spending as is $150-$200 million just to get to FF16/FF7 Rebirth tier visuals. The game's already look quite good as is, so there's not much to cry about there. You're just not going to have a GTAVI tier Final Fantasy game any time soon, and that's OK because I don't think Square's business division is willing to finance a $500 million+ game any way. 

They need to get Rebirth to run on the Switch 2 probably, which is likely possible with a little work. That should be about what they can use going forward, and they just need to make realistic choices from there on, roughly 4K for PS5 like FF7 Rebirth is on 30 fps mode, 540-1080p DLSS undocked for Switch 2 (720p docked DLSS) should then translate without too much of a fuss.

Monster Hunter World sold a shit ton more than the recent Final Fantasy games but Capcom still didn't go all out for MH6 (Wilds) graphics, so that can be a lesson to Square-Enix in being pragmatic. There is no point in spending big on graphics when the extra spend you make is not resulting in extra sales. 

The "graphics high water mark" games are going to be restricted to like a few Western studios going forward who can afford $500 million-$1 billion budgets and 7+ year dev cycles and/or have an expensive movie/IP license attached to them (ie: Marvel/Spider-Man, Harry Potter, Avatar, etc.). Japanese companies like Square-Enix and Capcom were never going to be able to keep pace when the budgets got into that level of spend anyway, Capcom I think already knew this, it may be a bitter pill for Square to swallow (FF no longer being graphics  showcases) but it's one they are just going to have to live with. 

They need to be initially realistic about sales on other platforms, they have done a piss poor job of building fan bases in those communities so it will take some time for people to come around. But the goal I think should be maybe to sell somewhere between 1.5-2 million copies between PC, Switch 2, and XBox platforms to start with. Keep those expectations realistic, I would want FF7 Remake/Rebirth if possible very early (launch?) for the Switch 2 and try to capitalize on Switch 2's launch momentum. I'm not sure as well how they handle Remake + Rebirth for Switch 2 and XBox, do you release them as two separate games or one combined game (may have to do that to get free of the Sony contract as it would technically be a different game). 

Eventually I think what you want is several million extra sales from being multiplat obviously, I think in Japan specifically you would want to claw your way back to selling 1.5 million in Japan at least, FF used to be one of the top franchises in Japan selling almost 4 million in some cases there, to have it collapse to only doing like 400k is embarrassing when IP like Monster Hunter, Dragon Quest, and Pokemon still sell tons there. You need the Switch 2 to do that though, hanging onto Sony exclusivity basically killed their entire Japanese market. 

Last edited by Soundwave - on 20 May 2024

Chrkeller on 20 May 2024
Radek said:
Chrkeller said:

I find it sad, or maybe funny, that Sony is better at supporting Steam than Square. GoT has 76,000 active players. Sony will get a few million in sales. Easy money if Square would stop being stupid.

Seriously each month they are losing the potential sales by not releasing FF XVI on Steam...


Exclusive period was 6 months and we are now 11 months after PS5 release.

Exactly.  It makes zero sense.  Sony is selling millions of copies at $50 a pop.  That is hundreds of millions across GoW, zero dawn, forbidden west and GoT.  And their ports, minus TLoU, run flawlessly. 

Meanwhile Square isn't releasing many games on Steam and the few that got released run like crap.



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