Media Create: FF13 to have worst series opener in 12 years
Posted on September 30, 2009	by Nick

As December slowly creeps up, hundreds of thousands of Japanese gamers eagerly anticipate the arrival of the long awaiting Final Fantasy XIII.  Sony and Square Enix are also looking forward to the launch, as the game is expected to be a jump start for the falling Japanese video game market.  And while no one is doubting the selling power of the long running franchise, Japanese game industry sales tracker Media Create is warning that the series may just have the lowest opener of the series since it migrated to Sony's console in 1997.  Media Create predicts that Final Fantasy XIII will shift 1.5 million units at launch, while all the other Final Fantasy titles since VII have debuted at 2 million plus.

Kenichi Chiba, Media Create's senior analyst, arrived at this conclusion by comparing the PS3's predicted user base at the time of the launch, 4 million, to the PS2's user base at the launch of Final Fantasy X, 5 million.  Final Fantasy X sold 2.4 million in it's opener, so by adjusting that to the userbase ratio of PS3s to PS2s, he arrived at 1.5 million.  He also notes that the series has seen a decline in popularity over the years.

With December 17 only a stones throw away, we'll find out soon enough how accurate Media Create's crystal ball is.

http://www.ps3center.net/news/3789/media-create-ff13-to-have-weakest-series-opener-in-12-years/

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1.) WOW....thats AS HIGH as Famitsu's LTD Predictions for it

2. YES that is lowest since FF7

Analyst needs basic math skills

5 million PS2 = 2.4 million FFX
4 million ps3 = 1.92 million FFXIII

Pretty much what everyone else expects... Apart from Famitsu

@lestatdark

lol atleast he's more generous than Famitsu's silly FF13 to do 1 million only in Week 1 prediction & 1.5 Million LTD!!

Yeah that is what I expect it will do. FFX had a 40% attach rate, if FFXIII has a similar attach rate, it will do between 1.5-1.8M.

Well I think its going to do over 1m and under 2m. Not sure how much though.

true..but he took into account that the series is declining so he deducted some sales from it

@darthdevidem01

It's true, but at least if they are trying to do a proper sales analysis, do it using logical mathematical algorithms and not just throw numbers around. There are also other number of factors that can contribute to that number dropping or rising in the coming months. When it comes to FF, we have to wait and see how it does.

You can't account the factors between the JRPG scenario from the ps2 era to what the ps3 era is. A lot of console users are eager to play an actually good JRPG. Don't get me wrong, ToV, SO4, Lost Odissey and Blue Dragon were all good RPG's in their core, but they don't compare to what the PS2 era offered.
That's why I hate predictions, there is always a number of factors that cannot be put into logical conjecture because their algorythims depend on using past tendencies to figure them out.

wow ps3 centre completely twisted the meaning!

Thanks for pointing this out ioi!