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Final Fantasy's sales crisis is also an identity crisis | Opinion
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They just need to identify what the true brand identity is and keep putting out bangers.
Right now FF is like a random gamble on whether you're going to like it. If they stick with either the style of FFXVI or FFVII Rebirth both of which had solid base mechanics (even though I prefer FFVII), and just focus on building out quality and content at a high level then I think there's a solid path for them to succeed.
At this point they need to pick a direction and iterate don't innovate.
Right now FF is like a random gamble on whether you're going to like it. If they stick with either the style of FFXVI or FFVII Rebirth both of which had solid base mechanics (even though I prefer FFVII), and just focus on building out quality and content at a high level then I think there's a solid path for them to succeed.
At this point they need to pick a direction and iterate don't innovate.
Yea, I can get down with this. Just give us gambits so I don't have to switch characters.
I think this is a big thing. Like yes, I used to say "oh each FF plays differently" and while it's (I guess) TECHNICALLY true......it's really not. 1-3 were turn based but some of the inner workings were altered. 4-9 moved to ATB, but despite them changing some inner workings (Job classes, Esper systems, Materia systems, Junction, Weapon/Armor abilities) it was still an ATB turn based game. 10 went a bit more basic, but still turn based. 12 went back to ATB but again, with just inner workings altered once again. Same with 13.
At the same time it's kinda like...ok SE makes 4-5 new FFs that are all turn-based with overworlds and flying airships on them and 8ish party members and...yeah. I dunno, I really loved what XIII and XV and XII and X brought to the table. They all have ties to the games that came before in their own ways.
I feel like SE would be best served if they just put the teams together (CS1/CS3 leadership) and have them create a blueprint for the next ~4 mainline FFs in a way that they'll be similar games with similar identities, similar gameplay, similar styles, characters/parties, etc. Each game could iterate a bit but they'd all follow off a similar blueprint and the studios would each make 2. They could use FF7 Rebirth as the basics of the blueprint.
(Obviously they have to make FF7 Part 3 first, but one will be making FF17 and can start first).
And I'm on the team that they don't need to keep pushing graphical fidelity; it literally doesn't matter at this point; you're not going to make games that look significantly better than FF16 and Rebirth; it's not the main selling point for video games to try to keep pushing the bleeding edge of graphics. Trying to make the best selling point of FFs the graphics has not worked and won't work...
I mean just look at the top selling live service games: WoW, Fortnite, Roblox, GTA 5, Minecraft; literally none of these is selling off graphics. Millions of people were playing WoW Classic with 20 year old graphics the past 5 years (including I'd imagine plenty of FF fans that grew up on FF7-X).
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As others have mentioned, 7 Rebirth is your template for combat. It's deeply satisfying as is. If they need to better consider how they're going to structure their overall worlds to both be economical and how to pace their stories as a result, then go right ahead.
Hell, there's a massive asset library of animation skeletons, incidentals, etc. Bioware got 5 games across 2 franchises out of the same library of dialogue animations.
That includes building a team and expanding CBU 3 to be able to ship another game alongside FFXIV, and making all the development tools with a new team for the first time. IIRC, full production was only about 4 years and that included the COVID years. Not that crazy for a new game and development tools. The battle director only joined SE in 2020, for example.
Yeah, the combat system between 1-3 and 4-9 had actually been mostly the same across those games, it was -everything else- that was constantly changing. It wasn't until X that they started throwing out everything including the combat system each time, and it's probably not a coincidence that the series had been stumbling ever since.
That said, I recall that Yoshi-P interview talking about why they chose the combat design they did for XVI, saying that they did consider turn-based at one point, and they said something to the effect of believing that the action gameplay turned out to be a better fit for the visuals/setting/story that they were going for. I think SE has been trapped in the idea that the gameplay has to reflect the visuals they're going for, rather than the other way around or detaching those concepts. All of the titles since X appear to be designed with a visuals > story >= gameplay philosophy, but the current mainstream audience seems to value gameplay above all.
You just described the gardens and junction system of FF8, lol.
Tonally I want something more like Rebirth than XVI. Honestly if they expanded upon or used a slightly altered version of Rebirth's combat too I wouldn't be mad. XVI makes me incredibly skeptical of another action game, I'd love classic turn based but there's no way they'd go back to it. I do think continuing down the action route is straying too far from what I think of when I think of FF. Rebirth hits the middle ground very well imo.
I also think Rebirth not doing well (in the eyes of SE) is just because it's the middle part of a remake trilogy, as well it's exclusivity. If it was a multiplat, original game (i.e., same combat system, same tone, open world etc.) I wonder if there would've been more people buying it akin to the comparisons people were making with BG3.
I also think Rebirth not doing well (in the eyes of SE) is just because it's the middle part of a remake trilogy, as well it's exclusivity. If it was a multiplat, original game (i.e., same combat system, same tone, open world etc.) I wonder if there would've been more people buying it akin to the comparisons people were making with BG3.
They canned the announced DLC because of creative differences between Matsuda and Tabata which left to the latter leaving the company, and because DLC ~3 years after launch is basically never a good idea for any game. The fact that the tail end of the second wave of DLC was deemed not viable due to a multitude of factors, doesn't mean that XV, and even it's first year+ of support was not a success, especially when Squeenix said they broke even day one/day zero and it was part of the reason they had one of their best financial periods ever around the release of the game.
In terms of sale prices, this is basically every blockbuster game ever. Give it a couple months and you will usually be able to find a game at half off if not more depending on where you look. We see the same thing in the Inqusiiton thread where you have users saying "But how many of those 12m copies sold at sale prices huh?". The answer for any game which has sold 10m copies is usually "a lot of them". At a bare minimum they sold probably close to 5-6 million copies at full price, which is an order of magnitude more than what a lot of games do.
FFXV, by basically every metric, was a runaway success for Squeenix.
Importantly XV had massive legs. This isn't a case of like Resi6 where the game sold a lot up front (and even then sold less than capcom forecast at launch) and then never sold much more. XV sold like 5m at launch, 1m+ within another month or so when all reviews and whatnot were out, and then like a 1m and change a year for next several years. This isn't including DLC sales either.
To believe that it was all hype or something you'd have to believe that somehow the game continued to sell in spite of presumably negative word of mouth. To believe that it meaningfully damaged the brand you'd expect to see a drop off for the next title. Unfortunately the game was/is Squeenix's best PC launch, with very positive steam reviews, and 7 Remake sold perfectly fine for a single platform with legs comparable to XV.
The constant relitigation of "was 10m copies actually a bad thing" is always so absurd. You'd think that people would be able to say "huh game sold well even if I don't like it". I literally have to do that with basically every Pokemon game lmao. It would be like if I went through Metacritic reviews for XVI and started arbitrarily excluding them for reasons to say that actually game didn't review well lol.
Great post! IIRC they made dev costs back pretty quick.
Then there's that mobile game (that made bank) and pocket edition too that completely flew by my mind.
How the hell, they just lost that momentum...
I've been saying this for ages (said it in the last thread about FF sales). Starting with XI the FF series has lost its way in terms of an identity. Should I be excited for XVII? Who the fuck knows. Is it character action? A third-person shooter? A turn based game?
There is no other series that makes me wonder if I should get the next one like FF. That's terrible to me at least.
There is no other series that makes me wonder if I should get the next one like FF. That's terrible to me at least.
Calling it an identity is one thing but I think what it really comes down to is that the games need a hook. Final Fantasy XV was marketed well for sure but also it had a very clear and unique hook that a lot of people were interested in: A game about going on a road trip with your bros.
There's not a lot of other games like that.
The hook for Final Fantasy XVI on the other hand is a lot more generic. "Medieval fast paced action game" isn't an awful hook or anything but it's directly competing with something like Devil May Cry or the many other action games out that are (or at least seem) similar.
There's not a lot of other games like that.
The hook for Final Fantasy XVI on the other hand is a lot more generic. "Medieval fast paced action game" isn't an awful hook or anything but it's directly competing with something like Devil May Cry or the many other action games out that are (or at least seem) similar.
FF didn't use to be like this until 12-13 after ff10 all FFs had to be different for some reason
Final Fantasy's sales crisis is also an identity crisis | Opinion
The news that Square Enix considers its two major Final Fantasy titles in the past year – Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fa…www.gamesindustry.biz
I've had this argument for a while. While I do like how the FF series does reinvent itself every entry, it makes it hard to build a real identity because of this.
You know what you're getting from Souls games. You know what you're getting from GTA. You know what you're getting from Mario. But FF mainlines has these very drastic shifts that makes it hard for consumers and fanbases. The recent game plays more character action for example.
Souls fans don't need to worry about this. GTA fans don't need to worry about this. Like a Dragon fans, a game that did have a big recent shift in the battle system, don't' have to worry about this still.
Even SE's other big franchise--KH (well technically Disney's but you know)--has a pretty clear identity. You know what you're getting.
I can't imagine a Souls fan skipping a Souls mainline entry, but it happens a lot with FF because of the drastic experimentation. Many long time FF fans said nope to 15 and 16.
Yeah, exactly. The first 10 FF titles feel pretty darn close to each other in terms of how you would expect to play them. They didn't reinvent that part, more micro innovations in the systems.
Mechanically, they mixed up. Material, junction, AP weapon/armour system. You had to learn each game. Then sphere grid, dress spheres, licence board, crystarium and whatever you had in XV felt the most like an actual conservative iteration being sphere grid style unlocks.
They should probably consider giving the series a break, or maybe stop making a bunch of poor action games masquerading as RPGs
FFX was different from IX by a massive margin. Threw away ATB, airship is a menu, no card game, node progression system, hard tic tac toe character spread, in-battle character switching, summons that aren't cutscenes, 3d areas instead of pre-rendered maps, no true overworld. But people want desperately for it to be 'part of the club' of earlier FFs because those are the 'cool' kids
And XII is closer to 1-9 than XIII, which is closer to 1-9 than XV...
This is the point that everything comes back to... The gameplay is really what FF fans understand as a key part of the identity of the series, and wildly changing that across the most recent iterations is a major part of why it's become unpredictable and why nobody knows what FF17 will be.
I don't think FF fans care whether the next story is a medieval kingdom story or about the moon falling or about bros on a trip or about a big corporation doing evil things..., but the gameplay needs to feel iterative across games again; the games need to feel similar in a way that they haven't for a long time. Letting each team reinvent the wheel every time needs to end.
FF as a "fantasy epic about a party of characters with a specific style of gameplay" is what the identity of the series needs to be even if the details of the adventure are very different across games. Go with the FF7 Rebirth (or FF7 Part 3 if that iterates off Rebirth) style of gameplay and iterate off that for a bunch of mainline FFs in a row.
If it means anything, I suspect that even CS3 is at the point of understanding that future FF games need to have the party as a major element. They've even added them to XIV, the goddamn MMO, at this point. Sometimes even briefly playable.
Nowadays franchises are kinda "required" to be multi-entry universes, with multiple games, spinoffs, that bring the story of that universe forward, with recurring characters and "a world" with seemingly no end.
Final Fantasy is the antithesis to this. Each entry is its own self-contained universe, which maybe specially newer generations (and our Marvel-filled brains) struggle to connect with. "What's the point when there's not gonna be a sequel or a continuation?"
You could say FF7 remake fits this "multi-entry" strategy, and I think on this specific case, it just might be the "it's only on PS" reason, but idk.
Final Fantasy is the antithesis to this. Each entry is its own self-contained universe, which maybe specially newer generations (and our Marvel-filled brains) struggle to connect with. "What's the point when there's not gonna be a sequel or a continuation?"
You could say FF7 remake fits this "multi-entry" strategy, and I think on this specific case, it just might be the "it's only on PS" reason, but idk.
The first major narrative follow-up to a Final Fantasy game since the Lightning trilogy just seemingly flopped harder than any other high budget game in the series.
Are you talking about FF versus 13? I think that case was just a huge mismanaged shitshow. I will also say that it's really difficult to make multi-entry franchises when companies feel the need to make AAAA games that take a decade to make.
This being said, I want FF to keep being FF. Self-contained stories in new universes and wild ideas.
I'm talking about Rebirth. It's a sequel to FFVII Remake, and a meta-sequel to the original FFVII and all its spin-offs, and by all accounts it seems to have done very poorly sales-wise.
FFVSXII became FFXV, which sold very well, though it's left a very mixed legacy in terms of its reception and reputation.
Final Fantasy is called Final Fantasy because every game should be developed like it might be the last. That IS the identity of this franchise. I'd take this franchise going out being what it is, than see it try to adapt by becoming something it isn't.
Oh. My bad then. Haven't really engaged much with Rebirth yet, so the reasons for its low-sales are pretty unkown to me (a game I am really exceited to play when it comes to PC eventually). In my first comment I was kinda mentioning FF16 more and its "mixed-reception".
Some of those are a natural evolution. Moving to 3D was expected for a PS2 game. Having a card game is not mandatory, and it still had a minigame regardless. Different progression system is expected, same as the games before it. Airship menu and no overworld is the same point. And what they did with the summons was a cool change considering the story of the game, and it wasn't a drastic change regardless.
Throwing away ATB wasn't that big of a deal anyway. Turns still work based on character speed, it's just presented in a different way. The game plays very similar to previous games.
XII was a more drastic change. You literally can put the controller on the table and the combat plays itself. That's a way more drastic change than turns working slightly differently.
The identify of the franchise is a story someone on the Internet made up? lol
Final Fantasy was never going to be the last Squaresoft game. They chose that name because they thought it was cool.
Advent Children was the real chocobo in the, eh, materia mine moment. They've been chasing that shite ever since.
This is about an earlier post but it's related, when it comes to iteration specifically on XVI. I mentioned it earlier but Dragon's Dogma basically is a more party based (no active swap tbf), job focused, ARPG with similar trappings to XVI. They aren't one to one obviously but there is some level of similarity you can draw from. But I think a bigger need in XVII is a attention drawing hook in its core concept. Something like "party explores a world in the sky fighting dragons" ala HW or exploring a world bathed in light in ShB it's cool interesting concepts that were eye grabbing from their concept alone I feel.
OP
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This is what happens when you don't have a clear identity, randos online define it for you lol.
That's sad because to me that's the bigger appeal. Then again, i have skipped a few mainlines already because of it.
Curious how sales compare to other RPGs like Drsgon Quest? Has DQ ever dip or has been continuously growing?
This should be the right answer.
Curious how sales compare to other RPGs like Drsgon Quest? Has DQ ever dip or has been continuously growing?
This should be the right answer.
Call it what you will, but there's an interesting story behind the name itself.
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/2011080...hi-discusses-the-development-of-Final-Fantasy
It was not just because they thought the name was cool. The name itself represents that it was, indeed, a last ditch effort.
Hey now! FFXVI is actually an insanely good action game lol! The combat is insanely deep. I just hated the story and the lows. The combat is what kept me interested in it lol! A lot of the stylish action game community loved it.
I've really been wondering how Squenix is gonna pivot for FF17. If they are as down on the sales numbers for Rebirth and 16 as people have reported, then the money guys will definitely want some kind of shake-up, but what that is could be anything. True open-world? Multiplayer-focused? TOTK-style system-em-up?
From Sakaguchi from Famitsu in 2007:
"The name 'Final Fantasy' was a display of my feeling that if this didn't sell, I was going to quit the games industry and go back to university. I'd have had to repeat a year, so I wouldn't have had any friends – it really was a 'final' situation."
Finally, when asked what Final Fantasy means to him, Sakaguchi – who left Square during the development of Final Fantasy XI – said: "Way back then, the spirit was that we weren't making a product but a creation. It was putting our soul into the production – pouring all of your ideas into the game, even if they crop up during development; not saving anything for the sequel.
"So when you finish, you're empty – you've got no idea what to do next. But by pushing yourself forward, new things come to light. I think it's good if that spirit is continued forward with Final Fantasy from here on."
Unless this is all made up? In which case inform me without the sarcasm/condescension.
Dragon Quest is pretty stationary I believe. It sells quite well in Japan. Good enough for SE to keep making them, it's also a cultural touchstone IP for Japan. Sort of operates like Pokemon where it's infinitely marketable (inside Japan)
This is doubly funny because the combat director of XVI was on Dragons Dogma 1!
Honestly, I love FFXVI's combat (srsly I'm on my fourth playthrough of the game now lmao), and i can understand why it was relatively simple this go round (though I will say that it is deeper than most give it credit for). But if they do iterate on it, they need to go all out next time. Multiple playable characters (or at least weapons with different movesets), challenging encounters, more meaningful gear. If they can find a place for classic RPG elements like status effects and elements, throw those in too. XVI, much as I love it, feels like they were still dipping their toes instead of being willing to dive in the pool
