Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire Revenue Broke $1 Million Per Day Last Month

Koozek · Dec 4, 2018

https://sensortower.com/blog/final-fantasy-xv-a-new-empire-revenue-november-2018

MZ's combat-focused city builder Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire, based on Square Enix's legendary roleplaying game franchise, is proving to be a boon for the publisher, bringing in an estimated $30 million worldwide during November on the App Store and Google Play combined. That breaks down to an average of $1 million in gross player spending per day across both platforms.

Players in the United States drove the largest portion of that with 42 percent of spending, while Japan was a strong second with about 28 percent of the total. The iOS version of the game brought in approximately 52 percent of this revenue, while Google Play accounted for the remaining 48 percent.

Since launching in June 2017, Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire revenue has grown to more than $485 million globally.

EDIT:

I assume SE got an huge initial upfront payment, plus additional licensing fees every quarter according to their financial report (thanks to Ketaya for pointing that out once):

"Q: Will you continue to see license fees from MACHINE ZONE, INC. in 2Q and beyond?
A: We will be booking license fees on a quarterly basis, and if sales of "FINAL FANTASY XV: A NEW EMPIRE" exceed a certain threshold, we are entitled to collect additional license fees."

Source.

DarkLordMalik · Dec 4, 2018

Damn, these numbers are insane. I wonder if SE only got paid a one-time fee for the license.

asd202 · Dec 4, 2018

This mobile game is more successful than the original game relatively speaking.

sibarraz · Dec 4, 2018

Can't understand how this game is doing so well, it runs badly and even I who loved the original game don't feel like this game is related at all

Koozek · Dec 4, 2018

DarkLordMalik said:
Damn, these numbers are insane. I wonder if SE only got paid a one-time fee for the license.

I assume a huge initial upfront payment plus additional licensing fees every quarter according to their financial report (thanks to Ketaya for pointing that out once):

"Q: Will you continue to see license fees from MACHINE ZONE, INC. in 2Q and beyond?
A: We will be booking license fees on a quarterly basis, and if sales of "FINAL FANTASY XV: A NEW EMPIRE" exceed a certain threshold, we are entitled to collect additional license fees."

Source.

PHOENIXZERO · Dec 4, 2018

Considering how much it costs to usually buy a "pack" after the first couple tiers that's ~10,000 packs a day at the top end where all the whales are sitting. It's ridiculous for a reskin of a reskin that has so little to actually do with Final Fantasy... I hate that I've contributed to it, not recently but I wish I quit over a year ago.

And yeah, the piece of shit continues to run worse and worse.

Marukoban · Dec 4, 2018

sibarraz said:
Can't understand how this game is doing so well, it runs badly and even I who loved the original game don't feel like this game is related at all

Americans love these type of games and they are one of the biggest video game market in the world.
It's similar to a lot of popular browser/mobile game and in certain ways similar to Clash of Clans.
People here love to shit on gacha, but the revenue model in New Empire is much worse.
You can't play this game more than 1-2 weeks without spending anything, unless you enjoy getting beaten to shit everyday.

sibarraz · Dec 4, 2018

Marukoban said:
Americans love these type of games and they are one of the biggest video game market in the world.
It's similar to a lot of popular browser/mobile game and in certain ways similar to Clash of Clans.
People here love to shit on gacha, but the revenue model in New Empire is much worse.
You can't play this game more than 1-2 weeks without spending anything, unless you enjoy getting beaten to shit everyday.

Yeah, you are right, I would love to play a city builder game, but those games are the prime example of "painful fun" they really torture you to make you pay, and I hate that I have to either check my phone each 5 seconds or wait days to get an upgrade

Marukoban · Dec 4, 2018

sibarraz said:
Yeah, you are right, I would love to play a city builder game, but those games are the prime example of "painful fun" they really torture you to make you pay, and I hate that I have to either check my phone each 5 seconds or wait days to get an upgrade

Or pay money to speed up the building/training, which they advertise every day you login.
I used to play similar game for few months. It was definitely fun for a while, but towards the end it was very frustrating how hard I got beaten and how long it takes to recover from losses. The higher your rank is, the tougher the beating that you'll get :/

BadWolf · Dec 4, 2018

Guess that's covering those $30 mill losses that people think are associated with Tabata.

AuthenticM · Dec 4, 2018

they should've used that money to make the fucking DLC instead of canceling them

Joeyro · Dec 4, 2018

AuthenticM said:
they should've used that money to make the fucking DLC instead of canceling them

I doubt that SE gets a significant amount of the revenue unless their licensing deal has unrealistic profit margins.

Terraforce · Dec 4, 2018

This is insane to me. Felt like the most boring and generic Clash of Clans rip off I've played. And I loved FFXV. Good for Square Enix though. They could definitely use a win after all the Ls they've been taking.

ZhugeEX · Dec 4, 2018

Last I checked the game had grossed over $400m lifetime.

Deleted member 41931 · Dec 4, 2018

Not all that suprised, it was one of the most aggressively advertised ganes I've ever seen in my life. It seemed every other youtube ad was for it.

Saint-14 · Dec 4, 2018

Tabata making SE bank even after leaving.

Ravage · Dec 4, 2018

It really drives home the point that the future of gaming revolves around psychological manipulation. With the rapid adoption of deep learning tech, it's only a matter of time before developers perfect the art of triggering human brains to impulse buy their MT items.

PHOENIXZERO · Dec 4, 2018

Let's just say that this "game" got me to stop laughing at all those stories about people dumping a shit ton of money into mobile games...

Marukoban said:
Americans love these type of games and they are one of the biggest video game market in the world.
It's similar to a lot of popular browser/mobile game and in certain ways similar to Clash of Clans.
People here love to shit on gacha, but the revenue model in New Empire is much worse.
You can't play this game more than 1-2 weeks without spending anything, unless you enjoy getting beaten to shit everyday.

It's not just Americans, there's just as many if not more whales in Europe and a good deal of them from Japan.

I know I wish I quit the first time I got zeroed but they already "got" me by then.

Einbroch · Dec 4, 2018

As a mobile g4m3r, this game sucks. Like even setting aside any qualms about micro transactions, the game is just really, really bad.

Recluse · Dec 4, 2018

Do not play this game.
It has a "free gift" chest every ten feckin minutes. They don't stack, you don't get another until you claim the one you already have.

I had to destroy my own empire to get away.

Marukoban · Dec 4, 2018

PHOENIXZERO said:
Let's just say that this "game" got me to stop laughing at all those stories about people dumping a shit ton of money into mobile games...

It's not just Americans, there's just as many if not more whales in Europe and a good deal of them from Japan.

I know I wish I quit the first time I got zeroed but they already "got" me by then.

European players tend to spend less on mobile game and is overall a much smaller market for mobile games.
While there are players from other countries, this type of mobile game is far more popular in US.
Even the article itself specifically mentions 42% of the revenue comes from US alone.
New Empire has consistently placed very high in US iOS chart since it was released last year.

Einbroch said:
As a mobile g4m3r, this game sucks. Like even setting aside any qualms about micro transactions, the game is just really, really bad.

Even within game of the same genre, this game sucks.
FF XV really has tremendous brand power it seems.

Jessie · Dec 4, 2018

Episode Aranea will be A New Empire exclusive.

Renfran · Dec 4, 2018

Wow 485 million. What the.

Ge0force · Dec 4, 2018

This is unbelievable. I'm a bit worried what the impact of the huge succes of this kind of mobile games will be on core gaming. I mean, why bother developing expensive and hard to make games for console and pc if you can get so much profit with crappy games with a popular license on mobile platforms?

Treadwell · Dec 4, 2018

It's obvious what this means:

FFXV: RollerChocobo Tycoon

Wispmetas · Dec 4, 2018

The ammounts of money these free phone games make will never make sense to me.

Koozek · Dec 4, 2018

Ge0force said:
This is unbelievable. I'm a bit worried what the impact of the huge succes of this kind of mobile games will be on core gaming. I mean, why bother developing expensive and hard to make games for console and pc if you can get so much profit with crappy games with a popular license on mobile platforms?

People have been saying this for years now and console games are still existing and thriving, lol. Why would SE throw away another big and stable pillar like their console/MMO games and put all eggs in one basket? This year for the first time SE's income from mobile games was as big as from their console games + MMOs, btw. They kinda need the synergy effect of utilizing big popular console IPs for mobile games (and sometimes vice versa) - their biggest mobile games are the FF and DQ ones.

Besides, as noted in their recent financial reports the mobile market is getting saturated and extremely competetive for SE too and there have been non-Japanese publishers dominating the Japanese mobile market recently which they seem to worry about (see this recent article on the current Japanese mobile market too):

Net sales in our Games for Smart Devices/PC Browsers sub-segment came in slightly under the ¥100 billion mark, and the titles we released in the latter half of the fiscal year ended March 2018 delivered lackluster performances on the whole. As such, we saw the year as one that left us many issues to tackle. While maintaining and bolstering the percentage of our titles that prove successful is always a key challenge, we regret that many of the new titles released in the last fiscal year delivered very disappointing results. Common wisdom has it that Japan's gaming market has matured, making it difficult to generate new hits. Meanwhile, we view the new trend of Chinese and Korean developers and publishers creating hit titles to be one worthy of note. Our intention is always to pursue new and creative gaming experiences, and in the fiscal year ending March 2019, we will return to this basic philosophy, revisit our development and operation organizations, and strive to create new hit titles.

Source.

ShinySunny · Dec 4, 2018

Ge0force said:
This is unbelievable. I'm a bit worried what the impact of the huge succes of this kind of mobile games will be on core gaming. I mean, why bother developing expensive and hard to make games for console and pc if you can get so much profit with crappy games with a popular license on mobile platforms?

This is why I thought Blizzard did the right thing about Diablo.
There isn't a point in making Diablo on the PC.

I truly believe WoW mobile will be releasing next year.
Just look at the trend in Korea MMO.
All mobile.

The Bear · Dec 4, 2018

Those numbers must mean that the game is making ridiculous profit.

Given how much money a spin-off mobile games seem to be making, I wonder how much money Square would make by making a mainline FF game a F2P mobile game in the vein of Brave Exvius of similar. I doubt they would do that - but I'm sure it has crossed their mind at least once.

Adamska · Dec 4, 2018

Good on Square and Machine Zone, the product clearly appeals to a market that's happy to spend their money on it. It doesn't look very fun, IMO, but I can respect how people clearly like it by "voting with their wallets", so to say.

Ge0force · Dec 4, 2018

ShinySunny said:
There isn't a point in making Diablo on the PC.

Pretty sure Diablo 3 on pc and consoles made them lots of money as well. Just not as much as the (much cheaper) mobile version will probably make.

Wulfric · Dec 4, 2018

So, uh, could they funnel some of this cash into the XV project proper?

texhnolyze · Dec 4, 2018

Is there any info whether or not that the mobile game has surpassed the console game revenue so far?

Jessie · Dec 4, 2018

Wulfric said:
So, uh, could they funnel some of this cash into the XV project proper?

They need to work on a Final Fantasy VII city building game, sorry

Wulfric · Dec 4, 2018

Jessie said:
They need to work on a Final Fantasy VII city building game, sorry

I'd be down for Midgar Tycoon tbh

Treadwell · Dec 5, 2018

Jessie said:
They need to work on a Final Fantasy VII city building game, sorry

This game would feature a single natural disaster: Meteor

Koozek · Dec 5, 2018

Jessie said:
They need to work on a Final Fantasy VII city building game, sorry

Wulfric said:
I'd be down for Midgar Tycoon tbh

Treadwell said:
This game would feature a single natural disaster: Meteor

Rebuild Midgar after the events of FFVII. Hire me, SE.

gordofredito · Dec 5, 2018

this is why we can't have nice things

THE GUY · Dec 5, 2018

Bloody hell. So FFXV must be the most successful of the single player FF franchises at this point right? This is some stupid money.

Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire Revenue Broke $1 Million Per Day Last Month

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