Earlier today Square Enix released a big announcement about the sales performance of Final Fantasy XVI after 6 days:
This game has been somewhat controversial because of its tone and Square Enix’s decision to double down on action combat despite the mixed reception to Final Fantasy XV. A lot of people are using the game’s sales to say these concerns weren’t valid, but, as usual, it is more complicated than that. 3 million in 6 days is definitely not a flop, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is good for Square Enix (who is notorious for having high expectations).
As a public company, Square Enix’s ultimate goal is to grow and make more money than it has in the past. Just beating itself isn’t necessarily good enough, though. Ideally it should be outperforming the market overall or at least be on track to. Otherwise, it doesn’t make sense why people would be investing their money in it.
Compared to Past Final Fantasy Games
Square Enix doesn’t seem to necessarily be achieving even that first goal, though. In 2016 they managed 5 million copies of Final Fantasy XV sold in one day. In 2020 it was 3.5 million in three days for Final Fantasy VII Remake. Clearly the launches have been getting smaller over the last decade, but there are plenty of good excuses for why. Final Fantasy XV was on both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on launch day, which combined was maybe double what the PlayStation 5 has now if we are being generous. That still wouldn’t explain such a major gap, but it helps with part of it.
The comparison to Final Fantasy VII Remake is even more favorable. When that game came out there were over 100 million PlayStation 4 consoles sold. It might then make sense that you sold the game more than twice as fast on over twice as many systems. It’s definitely debatable if the people who bought Final Fantasy VII Remake wouldn’t have PlayStation 5 consoles by now, but even ignoring that this doesn’t paint a very good picture as far as growth goes.
There has also been the issue of PlayStation exclusivity which affects all of the mainline games after Final Fantasy XV, which Sony has been funding. Perhaps this makes up for the difference in sales, but it definitely can’t make up for the damage to the series from limiting who has been exposed to it ever since 2016. It is also quite unlikely that the amount Square Enix is getting paid would cover the potential sales of Final Fantasy if they handled it as well as their competitors have been handling their series since 2016.
So at worst the sales have dropped significantly since 2016 and continued to fall, and at best we might have seen a very small improvement from 2020 to 2023. It is not a great situation, but at least they seemed to have stopped the fall in sales somewhat. What makes it look far worse is what has been happening in the rest of the market.
The Competition
Looking at the small number of other Japanese companies that typically release sales numbers, Square Enix is far from the best performer since 2016.
In the same time, companies like Capcom has seen major growth in pretty much every series they still support. Monster Hunter World took a series that was barely known in the West to a 20+ million unit seller worldwide in 3 years, while Final Fantasy XV took 6 years to reach half of that. They later took an exclusive deal with Nintendo, which ended up with them selling 1.3 million copies during launch week in Japan alone with physical copies alone, quite a bit better than what Square Enix’s deal with Sony has got them. Beyond Monster Hunter, 7 of the top 10 best selling Capcom games of all time all came out after 2016. Capcom definitely isn’t alone, either.
Bandai Namco has seen similar success recently. Tekken 7 hit 10 million copies and became the best selling game in the series, Elden Ring sold 12 million in less than a month, and they had multiple Dragon Ball games hit 10 million copies, too. Probably the most striking comparison is Nintendo, though.
Since 2016, Nintendo has has entries in series like Animal Crossing, Super Smash Bros., The Legend of Zelda, and Super Mario all surpass 20 million sales and break series records. Nintendo’s position as the console owner didn’t really contribute to this much either, apart from the “free” marketing. They did this without bundling them with systems and hardly even ever putting them on sale.
It should be rather clear by now that Square Enix’s flagship series, Final Fantasy, hasn’t really followed the trajectory of other major Japanese game franchises in recent years. You can be certain that inside of Square Enix they are making the same comparisons and are trying to figure out how to get on this wave that many of their competitors seem to be on.
Where to Go From Here
This is the hard part, and is what people inside of Square Enix are getting paid a lot of money to figure out. Obviously, the three major things limiting sales are people haven’t been convinced they want the game by marketing, the game isn’t good enough to convince them, and they can’t buy the game because they don’t own a PlayStation.
The PlayStation thing is a definitely a major factor. Realistically, reaching massive sales numbers on one console is not going to happen unless you are Nintendo (whatever the reason for that is). Still, Sony is able to sell more units faster with some of their games just on PlayStation, so Square Enix definitely aren’t reaching their full potential on PlayStation. Doing as well as something as Elden Ring probably isn’t on the cards on just PlayStation, though. Maybe something like Grand Theft Auto or Elder Scrolls can manage it, but Square Enix is quite a few steps away from there.
If they are going to take the risk of not doing an exclusivity deal, then they probably want to reevaluate how they are making these games, too. Just looking at Final Fantasy XVI at a superficial level, there isn’t much reason to believe it has the potential to become a game that sells tens of millions of units. The closest thing would probably be The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which did manage multiple tens of millions of sales. That game is a lot closer to Final Fantasy XV than XVI besides the setting, though, so perhaps changing the trajectory of the Final Fantasy series’ mechanics would be a good idea.
Presumably whatever comes next for numbered Final Fantasy is going to be quite different from Final Fantasy XVI. Unless sales have an unprecedented tail, the new direction for Final Fantasy XVI didn’t seem to succeed beyond keeping the franchise at about where it has already been, which definitely isn’t what Square Enix is looking for.
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