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

Soundwave said:
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. 

Naw they just need to focus on the PC market and make ports great. Switch 2 has a user base is 0 and no big third party really wants to make software tailored for the Switch cause  as you can imagine it's not fun working on something so old and not able to achieve there vision.

Last edited by zeldaring - on 20 May 2024

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zeldaring said:
Soundwave said:

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. 

Naw they just need to focus on the PC market and make ports great. Switch 2 has a user base is 0 and no big third party really wants to make software tailored for the Switch cause  as you can imagine it's not fun working on something so old and not able to achieve there vision.

Their games are going to be tailored to Switch 2, again maybe you should have put your money where your mouth is and supported these games on the PS5 if you don't like it.

Graphics enthusiasts make a lot of noise as a minority on message forums on the internet, but that doesn't translate to actual sales in the real world where Square-Enix has to pay bills and answer to their business suits (board of directors) and shareholders when big budget games fail to sell. You guys had your chance to support games like Rebirth, and 16, and Forspoken and all of Square's wonderful vision's and you didn't show up. Now there are consequences. 

Their "vision" doesn't mean shit if they ain't getting the sales. This is a business, not an afterschool hobby club for people to achieve their vision, lol, fuck their vision.  

If Capcom can make a mediocre looking Monster Hunter 6 that is probably going to be on Switch 2, Square will get used to the business reality of making games in 2025, which is only 5-6 Western studios really are going to be getting massive budgets going forward with $300+ million budgets and 7+ year dev cycles, everyone else is gonna have to make due with less. It ain't 1997 or 2002 anymore where Final Fantasy was like the top of the heap for industry production value, those days are over and never coming back.

Last edited by Soundwave - on 20 May 2024

Soundwave said:
zeldaring said:

Naw they just need to focus on the PC market and make ports great. Switch 2 has a user base is 0 and no big third party really wants to make software tailored for the Switch cause  as you can imagine it's not fun working on something so old and not able to achieve there vision.

Their games are going to be tailored to Switch 2, again maybe you should have put your money where your mouth is and supported these games on the PS5 if you don't like it.

Graphics enthusiasts make a lot of noise as a minority on message forums on the internet, but that doesn't translate to actual sales in the real world where Square-Enix has to pay bills and answer to their business suits (board of directors) and shareholders when big budget games fail to sell. You guys had your chance to support games like Rebirth, and 16, and Forspoken and all of Square's wonderful vision's and you didn't show up. Now there are consequences. 

Their "vision" doesn't mean shit if they ain't getting the sales. This is a business, not an afterschool hobby club for people to achieve their vision, lol, fuck their vision.  

If Capcom can make a mediocre looking Monster Hunter 6 that is probably going to be on Switch 2, Square will get used to the business reality of making games in 2025, which is only 5-6 Western studios really are going to be getting massive budgets going forward with $300+ million budgets and 7+ year dev cycles, everyone else is gonna have to make due with less. It ain't 1997 or 2002 anymore where Final Fantasy was like the top of the heap for industry production value, those days are over and never coming back.

I doubt it but we'll see monster Hunter was mainly a Nintendo selling franchise capcom said fuck handhelds and made a killing  on pc and ps4, and monster Hunter wilds looks to have a world that has unscripted even with do many things going on that it would probably cripple the switch 2 cpu.



zeldaring said:
Soundwave said:

Their games are going to be tailored to Switch 2, again maybe you should have put your money where your mouth is and supported these games on the PS5 if you don't like it.

Graphics enthusiasts make a lot of noise as a minority on message forums on the internet, but that doesn't translate to actual sales in the real world where Square-Enix has to pay bills and answer to their business suits (board of directors) and shareholders when big budget games fail to sell. You guys had your chance to support games like Rebirth, and 16, and Forspoken and all of Square's wonderful vision's and you didn't show up. Now there are consequences. 

Their "vision" doesn't mean shit if they ain't getting the sales. This is a business, not an afterschool hobby club for people to achieve their vision, lol, fuck their vision.  

If Capcom can make a mediocre looking Monster Hunter 6 that is probably going to be on Switch 2, Square will get used to the business reality of making games in 2025, which is only 5-6 Western studios really are going to be getting massive budgets going forward with $300+ million budgets and 7+ year dev cycles, everyone else is gonna have to make due with less. It ain't 1997 or 2002 anymore where Final Fantasy was like the top of the heap for industry production value, those days are over and never coming back.

I doubt it but we'll see monster Hunter was mainly a Nintendo selling franchise capcom said fuck handhelds and made a killing  on pc and ps4, and monster Hunter wilds looks to have a world that has unscripted even with do many things going on that it would probably cripple the switch 2 cpu.

Wilds looks like a PS4 game, lol, stop trying to convince people otherwise everyone has eyes and can see it plain as day. Not only does it look like a PS4 game it doesn't even look like a top end PS4 game, lol. 

Rise on Switch sold the same as World did on PS4 (8 million basically on either platform) so again if you want to be mad about this -- blame the sales figures. They ditched Nintendo sure when Wii U looked like it was in trouble and 3DS was fading, different story today when Nintendo is going to beat the PS2 and have the no.1 console of all time. 

Too many darn Nintendo fans bought Rise on Switch, now Capcom can't ignore them for MH6 because their business suits did some simple math and realized 8 million MH fans on any platform is too many to look off of. That's all that happened. 

Again business reality is a thing. 



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Monster Hunter world looks like shit and barely run on ps4 well you seem to think it's all about graphics but creating a world that's unscripted is very taxing on the cpu. Monster world looks like something that can run on Switch.



zeldaring said:

Monster Hunter world looks like shit and barely run on ps4 well you seem to think it's all about graphics but creating a world that's unscripted is very taxing on the cpu. Monster world looks like something that can run on Switch.

Why are you clinging to Dragon's Dogma as if that means anything, it's not even the same team or even a related franchise to Monster Hunter, and DD likely has nothing to do with actual technical capability, it's just a poorly coded game, plain and simple. Don't tell me it's doing anything revolutionary with its CPU usage, it's just optimized poorly probably in part because Capcom didn't give it big enough of a budget (it's a B/C-tier franchise), there's no big mystery going on there. 

The MH Wilds decision has nothing to do with CPUs or GPUs and likely has everything to do with 8 million people on Switch buying MH Rise. That sold way too well for a spin-off, when a spin-off sells as well as any of the other mainline home console versions, well people in the business department start asking questions like "why the fuck is XBox our second console again?". It's clear there's a massive MH fanbase on Switch. For your sake, MH Rise on Switch needed to sell like only 2-2.5 million copies max. It destroyed that and sold like a main line entry as well as World did on PS4. 

Last edited by Soundwave - on 20 May 2024

Soundwave said:
zeldaring said:

Monster Hunter world looks like shit and barely run on ps4 well you seem to think it's all about graphics but creating a world that's unscripted is very taxing on the cpu. Monster world looks like something that can run on Switch.

Why are you clinging to Dragon's Dogma as if that means anything, it's not even the same team or even a related franchise to Monster Hunter, and DD likely has nothing to do with actual technical capability, it's just a poorly coded game, plain and simple. Don't tell me it's doing anything revolutionary with its CPU usage, it's just optimized poorly probably in part because Capcom didn't give it big enough of a budget (it's a B/C-tier franchise), there's no big mystery going on there. 

The MH Wilds decision has nothing to do with CPUs or GPUs and likely has everything to do with 8 million people on Switch buying MH Rise. That sold way too well for a spin-off, when a spin-off sells as well as any of the other mainline home console versions, well people in the business department start asking questions like "why the fuck is XBox our second console again?". It's clear there's a massive MH fanbase on Switch. For your sake, MH Rise on Switch needed to sell like only 2-2.5 million copies max. It destroyed that and sold like a main line entry as well as World did on PS4. 

I like how you ignore that world looks like a switch game but runs like crap on ps4.



zeldaring said:
Soundwave said:

Why are you clinging to Dragon's Dogma as if that means anything, it's not even the same team or even a related franchise to Monster Hunter, and DD likely has nothing to do with actual technical capability, it's just a poorly coded game, plain and simple. Don't tell me it's doing anything revolutionary with its CPU usage, it's just optimized poorly probably in part because Capcom didn't give it big enough of a budget (it's a B/C-tier franchise), there's no big mystery going on there. 

The MH Wilds decision has nothing to do with CPUs or GPUs and likely has everything to do with 8 million people on Switch buying MH Rise. That sold way too well for a spin-off, when a spin-off sells as well as any of the other mainline home console versions, well people in the business department start asking questions like "why the fuck is XBox our second console again?". It's clear there's a massive MH fanbase on Switch. For your sake, MH Rise on Switch needed to sell like only 2-2.5 million copies max. It destroyed that and sold like a main line entry as well as World did on PS4. 

I like how you ignore that world looks like a switch game but runs like crap on ps4.

World runs fine on a Steam Deck, Wilds will be fine on Switch 2 and they'll sell millions more because they did that. Wilds and World aren't a world (no pun intended) apart visually. MH audience has never really been a graphics obsessed audience anyway, we're talking about an IP that exploded in popularity on the PSP and then went to the Wii and then 3DS and even on PS4/PC/XB1 I don't think it was like top of the heap graphically. 

Looks like Capcom did their one big jump to HD graphics and they're happy enough with that and opted to not do another big jump visually (because doing so would cost a lot more money for at best the same amount of sales). 

PS4 tier graphics are more than good enough to that MH audience, they don't need any more, smart call on Capcom's part to make a design choice that will probably sell them several million more copies (having a Switch 2 version) rather than increasing the visual fidelity and budget by 2x-3x extra but getting 0 extra sales for doing so (stupid).

That's the template all Japanese devs should embrace frankly. You're never going to beat the GTAVI's in graphics fidelity going forward, that's a dead end, it's over. Square-Enix was sorta trying to stay in that race, but it's over for them now too, not only did all of Forspoken, FF16, FF7 Rebirth underperform or flop, that big budget Avengers game they were making also tanked. The Switch 2 should be able to accommodate basically all these Japanese devs with the games they're making now, just going to have to make some smarter design choices and here and there, it's not like you can't still make larger scope games. 

Last edited by Soundwave - on 20 May 2024

I really don't think a potential Rebirth port would sell poorly on Switch 2.
We've seen third party ports like Hogwarts Legacy or Witcher 3 sell well enough on the current Switch, and the Switch audience is big on JRPGs; Dragon Quest 11 sold more in its first week on Switch in Japan than Rebirth did on PS5, and that's despite the Switch version being two years late.