Final Fantasy's sales crisis is also an identity crisis
Final Fantasy's sales crisis is also an identity crisis
The news that Square Enix considers its two major Final Fantasy titles in the past year – Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fa…
Well let's see...
They took a 40-60 hour PS1 game and tried to make three $70-$90 titles out of it. They weren't content to just remake the game in a modern engine, it had to be a trilogy full of a bunch of extra padded stuff. Because just like the Hobbit, they wanted MONEY, not to create something of great value to players.
Not to mention they waited 23 years to remake FF7 despite everybody begging for it at least as far back as the xbox 360 days, if not the ps2 days. I saw the remake as a cry for more traditional JRPGs like they had been known for and wildly successful for in the 90s.
Now they've released another main line final fantasy game in a format that is nothing like what originally made them popular. I've played it, I don't particularly enjoy it. I dropped it about half way through the story and have instead put 80 hours into Unicorn Overlord which I picked up for $40 just two months after release. A game that almost certainly has a way lower budget - and i'm not even done with it yet. I keep picking up that ps5 controller every now and then and doing a level or two before life takes over again, and each time I love it and want to keep playing. It feels more like a final fantasy game, albiet final fantasy tactics, than FFXVI feels like a final fantasy game.
I just can't help but feel like maybe a big budget and big pricetag doesn't mean quality. That stellar graphics don't always mean fun. Maybe Square needs it's own paradigm shift where they figure out how to make really cool games that are cheap with a lot of staying power without giant budgets and huge art production teams. You know, avoid the things that necessitate $210-$270 in release prices to be financially viable.
Or maybe the people who made final fantasy great in the 90s were cut from a different kind of cloth than the people who work at square today. Total shot in the dark, but i'm left questioning why they do what they do like I have now for about 18 years.
Square Enix has had offerings in lower tiers. The Bravely series has been their AA-budget Final Fantasy, and the rest of the Asano division's output (such as HD-2D) specializes in that range. They have also gone even lower recently with The Voice of Cards. SQEX's new president recently laid out a new direction for the company, so it's hard to say what their lineups will look like going forward, but for now, there's a range for players to choose from.
Not to be one of the annoying 'I agree!' posters, but...
They're pretty spot on. For me, personally, FF15 was sufficiently un-fun enough that I skipped the 7 remake entirely when I heard it had the same battle system.
I also kinda uh, forgot FF16 actually existed since I don't do consoles and wasn't even aware it had come out on PC until I read this article, heh.
And this is coming from someone who, as a kid, would rent the NES/SNES Final Fantasy games over and over until I was good enough that I could beat them in one shot during a weekend rental period of Friday night -> Sunday before noon.
And yeah, Persona and Like a Dragon and even the mainline SMT games are freaking great.
I also kinda uh, forgot FF16 actually existed since I don’t do consoles and wasn’t even aware it had come out on PC until I read this article, heh.
This is what I keep coming back to with FF16. As the article hints at, you probably would have heard about it if word-of-mouth on the game was better. Instead, they make the controversial decision (even for a series as experimental as Final Fantasy) to go full action, Yoshida was perhaps a bit too honest with it in interviews, fanning the flames; and then stagger the releases. That's a lot of hubris between changing the genre and betting on the PS5. Even if the game, major changes and all, was a bigger hit with the fandom, it sure feels like the ceiling was already set for this game by waiting a year on PC.
Now, given the lack of fanfare on the PC version's sales, I'm left wondering just how bad they are overall. Is FF16 not even going to reach Persona 5's numbers? That would mark a huge shift in the competitive landscape. If nothing else, FF16 ending up with a huge decline in mainline series sales could end up serving everyone by sending a message to the rest of the industry that exclusivity is too risky today.
I wouldn't say Final Fantasy vII Remake's battle system is anywere near Final Fantasy XV's? Do you even like action battle system? Final Fantasy 16 just came out on pc and is very action like. Would you like this community reminds more on game releases, i could add a release table for about a month ahead? I kind of think hear are about to much news about new games, so i haven't done it yet. But i'm curious what others think.
A release table could be interesting, but what happened here was squeenix took a year to ship the PC version, which is just silly.
I get they're Japanese and devs there historically don't care much about the PC, but it's 2024 and if you're not doing a simultaneous launch, it should be much faster than a year (unless you have a VERY good reason, but you shouldn't).
There's too many games moving around on the indie side and the some-number-of-AAAs side to keep track of everything, and this one just kinda fell off my radar completely in favor of other things. (I expect GTA6 to do the exact same thing for much the same reason, so it's not specific to them.)
As for 15 and 7, I'll admit I probably didn't look further than a 'Has the FF15 battle system!' posted somewhere and went nah and just kind of never looked at it again. And, of course, I don't have that FF7 nostalgia, since I managed to never play it when it was current content - we were a Nintendo household and uh, I didn't even own a Playstation until like 2 or 3 years ago.
I like both ff7 remake and rebirth... FF16 is devil may cry. I like devil may cry but not like this... I still bought it though.
I enjoy the remake. I just wish it wasn't separated into 3 long awaited parts.
same for me. Maybe i finish FF16 one day....
Well, I kind of agree with the article. Some people don't like the fact that Final Fantasy games are now action games, or some people think that the game mechanics and story got bad in maybe Final Fantasy XII. People think the story of XIII is a bit bad or the game mechanic is stupid, and Final Fantasy XV got a lot of criticism as well. There have been games that have not been as well received, and I think that has done a lot of damage to the brand. I hope that multiplatform will help some people to play it, at least some of the FF XIV players. Because there are few other franchises in the genre like Final Fantasy. I really don't need good graphics to like a game, but I would like to see at least one dev that spends money to make an expensive game that I can recommend to a lot of people who know the brand and have probably played a few installs. Sure, games like Persona 5 have gotten a lot of popularity, but I'd still say it's a lot less known than Final Fantasy. When I mention Tales or Trails games, people usually don't know those franchises at all. Having Final Fantasy as an entry point into the franchise and maybe some more JRPGs is probably a good thing.
I still like most Final Fantasy games. So i'm very curious what Final Fanasy XVII will look like after theses sales. Maybe SE believe more in turn based games again???
I feel like they really need to scale back the budget and focus on a much simpler game, go back to the rpg roots. It's not like they can't do that, Japan still keeps making great RPGs. It's just they get so caught up in big budget cinematic experience style games. I mean Sega pulled a wild card and turned the Yakuza series into an RPG for funzies.
Literally all I've ever wanted them to do with the final fantasy series. I've given up on them making a good game since like ff9, tried 14 and 15 but disliked em both. 15 really bothered me with how in final fantasy it was.
I want my sprites.
I got 90h in to Tales of Berseria and just couldn't when I realized I wasn't even like halfway through. Haven't gone back in a couple years now...
I think the audience for turn based and action don't overlap 100% so when you take a turn based and make it action you alienate a lot of players.