Kinda crazy that some mainline FF games these days have around the same selling potential as Fire Emblem three houses. If you would argue that a Fire Emblem game would sell around the same as a new FF game a decade ago everyoune would have laughed at it.

The very notion would have been considered absurd.

I checked and Tales of Arise sold 3 million as of early 2024, so it has probably sold more than FF16; we live in a world where the latest Tales outsold the latest Final Fantasy.

Heck, different genre, but freaking Pikmin 4 has sold around 3.5 million as of its last update too, imagine the reaction if you said 10 years ago that FF would sell on par with Pikmin.

Square Enix slapping "Final Fantasy" on everything, no matter the genre, has devalued the IP. It would be one thing to evolve the series but they've changed it so much, that no one knows what to expect. Instead of potentionally having multiple IPs with the various styles they've placed under the Final Fantasy name. They've have one thoroughly damaged IP. And the exclusivity accelerated the decline. Exclusivity can work, but when you don't know what type of "Final Fantasy" you're buying it's not helpful. At least it was exclusive to a popular platform in the West. In Japan, that's the not the case, so you have whole generation of Japanese gamers that grew up with the mainline Final Fantasy games not being on their platform of choice.

While I'm not fan of what MS has done with the Xbox brand on the whole, one of the good things they did was how they handled the Forza series. SE could have done something similar for Final Fantasy. They didn't just slap Forza Motorport onto their more arcade style titles. They have created the Forza Horizon branding. So even a laymen would know what type of Forza game they'd be buying and whether it was something they'd be interested in. Forza Motorport is for simulation racing game fans. Forza Horizon is for fans that prefer arcade style racers. Square Enix should have done something similar with Final Fantasy if they were so set on placing so many genre's under the banner. They did so with Dissidia. Why not do the same for other genres with a Final Fantasy theme?

Bullshit numbers afterall. Never take anything Hideki Yasuda says at face value.

https://x.com/Genki_JPN/status/1903357561426018350

Number that doesn’t even pass a basic eyeball check turns out to be nonsense, what a shocker, if only anyone could have foresaw this.

I'm sort of surprised this figure didn't get more pushback on here and other forums. A lot of people just ran with it lol.

The source claimed to have gotten the number from SE's investor meeting initially so the is no way for anyone here to push back against it as you'd naturally expect news from such an event to be official case point is how even VGC themselves and other outlets reported on the same numbers.

But the author was relatively unknown and not someone like Mat or Chris Dring. I even think a few of these sites that posted this claim had a disclaimer about it such as the thread on Era. 

The assumption was that it overshipped at launch, like what apparently happened in Halo 5's case.

The one constant is change. Every generation will have titles that rise in popularity and others that fall.

Multiple Nintendo, Capcom, and Sony titles + Forza Horizon and NieR (though we didn't get a single new NieR since Automata which might be a flash in the pan) rose in popularity. Halo, Forza Motorsport, and apparently Final Fantasy declined but it's still hard to say for sure because we need a "right' Final Fantasy to launch before judging the IP's power. XIV was super successful, maybe more than any Capcom game to date, but it's an MMO so it's hard to compare. FF13 and FF15 both grew in popularity (even though they both disappointed) and the same can happen to the next mainline FF if it's as good or better than Rebirth.

Final Fantasy was never a stable high seller. With the quality in mind, FF9 and 12 underperformed on paper, 13 and 15 overperformed. But FF16 is unique in that it sold poorly while being the first FF of its generation. Like Zelda, early Final Fantasy within a generation are typically supposed to sell better than later ones.