I don't think this would have rescued it. Every generation the PlayStation is selling less and less in Japan.
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Final Fantasy VII Rebirth sold 24,482 copies in its second week on sale in Japan
- Thread starter dusan
- Start date
The best single player FF game in the past 2-3 generations with the worst sales.
This is not the correct timeline :(
This is not the correct timeline :(
Because it was always an idiotic decision to make a story heavy game in 3 parts with several years in between. Part 1 being last gen and part 2 being PS5 only certainly doesn't help.
To have any interest in buying Rebirth you to be in the intersection that played Part 1 and owns a PS5, and we're talking about the ceiling here. SE simply miscalculated and severally limited the potential audience.
Gonna be honest... I'm not a FF fan, nor am I one-console only fan, but I am absolutely depressed seeing this. This looks bad y'all. It is such a good game and I fear they will make the wrong pivot for the final game as a reaction to this. I mean, they did almost everything right with the sequel and this is how they are rewarded?
I can only hope the west just knocks it out of the park in sales. Jesus Christ. What is going on over there in Japan? They really just don't give a shit about anything non-nintendo, huh (and PC maybe?)?
Speaking of PC, I hope SE got a good deal on exclusivity because this may or may not have been worth it bringing it so late to PC too. Time will tell. We will see :'c
I can only hope the west just knocks it out of the park in sales. Jesus Christ. What is going on over there in Japan? They really just don't give a shit about anything non-nintendo, huh (and PC maybe?)?
Speaking of PC, I hope SE got a good deal on exclusivity because this may or may not have been worth it bringing it so late to PC too. Time will tell. We will see :'c
It doesn't make any sense. It's baffling.
It'd be a lot cooler if they did, but here we are two games and two consoles later and some characters from the original haven't had a chance to fight a battle.
Me simply not knowing, is that a general figure or do they mean by individual games sales? And is that overall or just their own titles? Do we even know if Final Fantasy figures into that? I won't disagree that my comment comes off a bit flippant but it's not without some understanding of the trends that we've been seeing. By all means, speculate away, the only challenge I present to your "what if" is simply a "what is". A very broad and non descriptive rehashing of their statement around digital from some PR or maybe an earnings report isn't exactly providing much insight.
it's really interesting to me that the only way that a ff7 remake could have happened was apparently exactly the way they did it and there were no alternatives
I could maybe see saying this after Remake, but playing Rebirth it's so hard to look back and not think what we're getting now is just way way more interesting.
As someone who didn't play the OG, were the originals really too big to remake in one game? They've always stood by that, but I'm not so sure I believe them. Again, I never played the originals, so I'm kind of uninformed on that.
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Making this a PS5 exclusive is what's making the brand decline. Maybe the ROI looks great after all accounting what Sony paid for it but the diminishing impact of the brand is obvious and it will keep spiralling if they don't publish everywhere. Xbox might not be needed but not releasing on PC and switch is really damaging it
Nah getting like 300+ hours over 3 games with my favourite characters of all time is a gift. As long as it sells enough to make all 3 I'm happy.
Juuuhp. I know OG fans and all but we get waaaaaay more character in these Remakes then ever before
Almost everything except from them completely fucking up the market strategy for this project as a whole.
The game isn't flopping because it's bad, but because SE went the extra mile to make it interesting for the least possible amount of people.
At the level they're doing now, absolutely yes. Stuff would've had to be cut or slimmed down drastically.
It's a real shame because the game itself is a phenomenal and a huge improvement on an already pretty good first game. I hope it sells enough and that the Sony moneyhat are enough that the final game has a good scope
Also, I think it's clear that exclusivity will probably go for future games like 17 (still think 7R3 might be an exclusive). I get why SE make these deals when you look at the ballooning budgets of recent AAA games, it makes sense to mitigate the risk but in order to grow the brand again, a multiplatform approach has to be the future. At the very least PC and possibly a Switch 2 port if possible.
Also, I think it's clear that exclusivity will probably go for future games like 17 (still think 7R3 might be an exclusive). I get why SE make these deals when you look at the ballooning budgets of recent AAA games, it makes sense to mitigate the risk but in order to grow the brand again, a multiplatform approach has to be the future. At the very least PC and possibly a Switch 2 port if possible.
Like I said, home consoles are dead in Japan and have been for a long time.
Not at all. It's all a matter of scope & scale. You could release a game like SMB3 or something as a multi-game, gigantic release where each world can be made as big as you want to take it out to infinite limits. It's all a matter of how much you want to expand. They decided to expand FF7 to super duper mega size and that's why we've got three separate games. The entire game of FF7 Remake is taken from the prologue from the original and stretched out to a 40 hour game.
I mean…. They kinda have to finish big right? Maybe i'm daft AF but it is FF7 we are talking about. Square failing to deliver there on scope and going all out will set a horrible example
At the scale they're doing it? Yeah it had to be multiple games.
Now could they have done a single game that was mechanically/structurally very faithful to the original with Ever Crisis tier graphics? Absolutely, though I imagine a lot of people would be disappointed at a "low budget" remake of FF7 when the original was cutting edge graphically.
I'll always buy my PS5 games physically in Japan because it's much cheaper than the digital version here. With the point systems of your shop, you can save at times 20% compared to digital price.
However in this case I bought Rebirth digitally because it came with the Twin Pack (digital version of Remake+Integrade). So the digital sales of this specific game may be higher than usual as the deal was quite good.
However in this case I bought Rebirth digitally because it came with the Twin Pack (digital version of Remake+Integrade). So the digital sales of this specific game may be higher than usual as the deal was quite good.
In terms of this Japanese context I imagine the biggest problem is it not being on Switch?
But then surely we have to be speaking of Switch 2, in which case it will suffer the same problem as PS5 of lack of install base
For a lot of people there is an asterisk when referencing Switch with anything approaching the term console.
Switch is a home console, Nintendo considers it one and the industry considers it one too. Just because it's a device that can be played portably doesn't change how it's counted revenue wise. At best you're trolling or sticking your head in the sand to feed into your misguided narrative.
My guess is future mainline games will be multiplatform again but the third remake game will still be a PS5 exclusive. A third direct sequel will do even worse numbers than Rebirth and I don't think it'll do great launching on other platforms after they missed the first 2 in the series so SE will take the moneyhat to mitigate risks and keep budgets manageable for profit purposes.
Then, FF17 launches on everything and that's the new strategy going forward. The PS5 software sales in Japan are brutal. Exclusivity worked in Japan (1-1.5 million sales for FF7R1 was very good) for PS4 but clearly doesn't have the same cache for PS5 unless there's some data that shows digital sales have increased a lot there. I'm sure digital numbers have improved in general but I'm skeptical it's at the point where it's at 50% of total sales like it probably is in most of the other countries
Then, FF17 launches on everything and that's the new strategy going forward. The PS5 software sales in Japan are brutal. Exclusivity worked in Japan (1-1.5 million sales for FF7R1 was very good) for PS4 but clearly doesn't have the same cache for PS5 unless there's some data that shows digital sales have increased a lot there. I'm sure digital numbers have improved in general but I'm skeptical it's at the point where it's at 50% of total sales like it probably is in most of the other countries
The reason the games are the way they are is they did not want to make compromises on scale, and so several problems have been 'broken up' and the storyline divied up between installments to justify this a bit.
The original game has a very linear opening in Midgar, gets an overworld afterwards, then in the 2nd disc (last game of this trilogy) you can fly a ship around that same world and a submarine can go underwater. It is hard to preserve these design elements, as well as the multiple context shifts/different gameplay 'flavours' that make up FFVII to the standards of modern production. Like, the motorbike sequence in the original is just one of many context switch tricks that game pulls off, the 90s equivalent of a set piece except with entirely bespoke mechanics. In the new game, it had to make up half of an entire chapter and the game had to end almost straight afterwards. And FFVII keeps doing that over and over
Now, that doesn't necessarily mean it was a 'good' idea to make a zero compromise FFVII Remake, cause even if the scale required to preserve all these disparate elements is impossible in one AAA game, the story isn't really great at keeping people invested between releases I'd say. That to me is the main issue with this series, that they mostly keep the story the same for like 90 percent of it. It limits their scope for trying different things, design wise, as well as making the story essentially a sequence of 'remember this?' type moments.
I mean, I personally love what they did with Rebirth, but they probably shouldn't have just made a game for me and made a completely different thing here entirely. But to me, while Rebirth doesn't take up the whole story of VII it's huge diversity in gameplay experiences comes so much closer to capturing what that game was, and it's by no small effort (building on top of the framework already established in Remake)
I think they're already working on it so I'd expect it to have a big scope especially when you consider it will iterate on Rebirth even more than Rebirth did on the first game with most of the map being the same. There were a lot of places in Rebirth where I could see they saved on money by reusing stuff from the first game. I think if Sony pays for exclusivity (which I think they will), SE can maintain the scope generally while keeping their budget manageable
Switch is a home console. That it can be played as a handheld doesn't take away from that. People saying otherwise are delusional.
Yeah I think they'll at least finish it out on PS5. Even if it's not lighting the charts on fire, it's Sony's only 90+ exclusive for this year probably, gotta count for something so hopefully they'll still help fund part 3😩
Either it's not, or there was never a distinction between Home and Handheld hardware to begin with, which is a fine line to draw if you so wanted to, but it never seems like that's the line being drawn.
The switch is (well, was) a new kind of device for the market and the hybrid style of device has become firmly entrenched since Nintendo proved there was a significant market for it
You didn't present a "what is" mate.
And the numbers being presented are only a fraction of the sales.
Your entire effort to shoot down my point is based on mere fragments of information.
But sure, accuse me of speculating. You're funny.
From Sony's perspective, having Final Fantasy as an exclusive is valuable so yeah I'd expect them to pay for it assuming they haven't already done so
77k week 2 is wild tbh. Could it have been bundles? I don't think the first week for Spider-Man 2 wasn't super high in Japan either so that's a possibility
You see, it can't be that Playstation just failed on being continuously appealing to the japanese market, it has to be that no one in Japan likes videogames anymore.
At least the fans are enjoying it. Sony going to have to pony up for part 3 to be exclusive only to PS5/6 and multiplatform to Switch systems if PC sales for Rebirth aren't good enough. But even, then I think Square Enix needs to put the Remake and Rebirth on Switch 2 to build the audience for 3 like they did with kingdom hearts collection before 3 on Xbox One and PS4.
It's absolutely insane that this happened. Blows my mind every single time I think about it.
Pivoting to Switch exclusivity would kill the series in a completely different way though. Square wouldn't be stupid enough to do that. Nobody's going to follow the remake saga across three different platforms. The only way they can salvage this is if Regenesis comes out at the end of this gen on the same hardware Rebirth came out on. If they add another platform on top of that, that's fine, but going "ACTUALLY PART 3 IS ONLY ON SWITCH 2" would be devastating.
What a shame, I hope it sells better outside of Japan, because the game is breathtakingly amazing.
this Is me and some friends.
And (Nomura?) nojima plot sheningans kh tier level scared people, imho
When part 3 releases, it may be in Square Enix's best interests to release the game on more than just one platform. With development costs the way they are for AAA games these days, it doesn't seem financially sustainable to only release your game on one platform
I don't think it'll really help unless they can release the first two parts and find an audience for them before part 3 comes out. Nobody is jumping on this train for the third installment.
This says a lot about where non-Nintendo platforms stand in Japan, and very little about the game itself.
It's great for you.
How many people in the general population are willing to buy three 70 dollars games, with a total of 200+ hours of playtime, across a decade of development and two consoles generations.. for a 30 year old story?
The numbers are showing.... not much.
Dang this game sold like ass comparatively when it's the best Final Fantasy in almost 10 years.