If FF-XIII comes out next year, it will be three years since the last chapter in the series. And that was one chapter that was not universally well received (especially by long-time fans of the series). In other words, the impact of FF may not be what it once was.

Mike from Morgantown

If one more Nintendo fan forms a thread because of what a desperate fanboy said, I am going to snap.

What is going to kill the sales of the game is the lack of PS3 userbase in Japan. It just isn't going to pull the enormously large first week sales the previous ones have due to declining sales of the series in that region as well as the low instal base. The game will launch at less than a million in Japan, and the legs on the series will likely be the same. It will sell incredibly well by normal standards, and probably fairly well by Final Fantasy standards. It will not break 8 million though. Coming close would be tricky.

i agree with you, i feel Sony fans have gotten so desperate to be "#1" again on the video game market they tend to forget  certain things like facts and proof

 I'm saying sales will spike for a few weeks and then go back to what they were before FF XIII release, the total spike being around 200-300k consoles over that time... ( I estimate the MGS4 is going to be 100k, so far we have 71k week 1 and 15k week 2 for MGS4). That is for Japan only...

Final Fantasy is a series that's overshot its target market considerably. Originally, the series caught on for its relatively unique appeal (a Western-style theme in an Eastern-style RPG format). After a disastrous second entry that tried to make things more complicated and scared off users, the series started gearing the other way: towards more user-friendliness. You can see an almost linear progression of this happening, from FF3 to FF6.

When 7 hit, the series hit a snag; FF7 was about as complex as FF6, but much bigger and more advertised. This was when things started to go downhill, and the games started to get more complex and limiting again. FF8 featured a fairly deep, but very difficult-to-adapt-to system wherein leveling up is suicide (which goes entirely counter to the RPG norm and has no clear indicator until it's too late). FF9, in attempting to simplify again, simply made things even more complicated by having the battle engine become so static that you have to engage in sidequests to get the items which make battles tolerable. Meaning the player was expected to constantly side-track to do often rumor-mill-esque quests just to get something incrementally better that would let them survive fights.

FFX, on the other hand, re-simplified gameplay. The linear progression of growth was very user-friendly, but still offered options for more advanced users. Battles were much less static, with far more options to rely on (options that weren't pointless, unlike 90% of the skills and spells in FF8 and 9). But then FF11 went and made itself online, automatically alienating a significant portion of the existing userbase. And FF12 was basically an offline MMORPG, ensuring that the past userbase which found FFX appealing but not FF11 would not find FF12 appealing, either.

For FF13 to not live up to its unlucky number, they need to re-simplify combat and out-of-combat gameplay the way that FFX did. If they go the same route that FF11 and 12 did, then they will only stand to lose more potential buyers (even moreso since the game is on a non-dominant console).

Someone made a comment on another thread that really made me think regarding attach rates which made a lotta sense.

It's really hard to guess attach rates on the non-dominant console. Thing is, the dominant console sells to everyone. So it gets crazy high numbers and sells a huge variety of software.

That was the PS2 last generation, and is the Wii this generation.

The other consoles don't quite capture the imagination or interest of the general public and so even though their numbers are a lot smaller, they're pretty much all hardcore gamers.

Ergo, Crazy attach rates and front loaded sales (hardcore gamers are NOT going to wait months to play their big games)

I agree with the predictions, I don't think it'll reach FFX or FFVII sales but I wouldn't put money on it.

My 2ct:

Every RPG lover had a PS2. Period.

The RPG community will be much more split this time around. 360 gets some great JRPG's so some of the PS2 owners will go 360 (not in Japan, but certainly in the US). Wii will also have much more RPG support than GameCube (we'll have Tales next week and quite some are announced). PS3 actually has least RPGs announced, but does have FF, which is the biggest name.

I think people will be "skipping" FF this gen in favour of more other RPG's. FF has become more casual over the years.

I think install base won't matter too much, only in Japan.

So my prediction:

1.7 million in Japan
2.5 million US
1.9 million Others

= 6.1 million

That is true, but what would be the point of making all those systems and continuing making the systems if they don't sell?  You could make less systems and sell those off and find ways to make it cheaper.  And then instead of having a stockpile of systems that were more expensive to make you have systems that were cheaper to make going through to retail.

I sense deja vu....

'mgs4 wont affect the ps3!'

Incorrect. It put the PS3 top of the pile with 320,000 consoles sold in one week.

I sense FF13 will do something similar