But that would only hold if we assume the sellthrough vs shipments was similarly ratio’d globally.
Either way the demo aspect does indeed make it useless.
-
A small post regarding transcribing source, especially twitter. Please make sure to read the thread here.
-
⭐ Install Base Badges ⭐
Install Base introduces its brand-new Badge system. Check out the details here!
-
📰Sales Design Gazette: A Video Game Sales Magazine #001📰
Check out the first release of Sales Design Gazette: A Video Game Sales Magazine at the thread here!
Final Fantasy XVI ships 3m units worldwide
- Thread starter Lite_Agent
- Replies 1,268
- Views 78,922
- Start date
- Milestone
Either way the demo aspect does indeed make it useless.
FF16 sales in the UK are 70K units including digital. According to this data, that's a 7% share; the sell-through for FF16 is 1M units WW.
In other words, this data is not useful for understanding market share percentages by country. (I know that it includes demo version numbers.)
In other words, this data is not useful for understanding market share percentages by country. (I know that it includes demo version numbers.)
That number is what the thread is about. I assume the game has sold through the 3 million by this point but that poster is just the accolades promotion and is just reusing the previously iterated shipped figures.
Two things:
1.) Now it says over
2.) Also, it shows there's no significant update on sales to include in the accolades poster.
Two things:
1.) Now it says over
2.) Also, it shows there's no significant update on sales to include in the accolades poster.
that's still an amazing art!
It is indeed - and all those scores will hopefully mean that word of mouth can carry this further.
- Pronouns
- Him
That can't be right ... right? Not hitting 4 million by now would be pretty eh. I have to imagine it's just not a real update for their marketing.Two things:
1.) Now it says over
2.) Also, it shows there's no significant update on sales to include in the accolades poster.
This looks like your typical "Look at all these high scores" renewed add campaign with the initial shipped figure tacked onto it.
If the game had any significant sales update, they would have given it, making the legs look (I said look, not beeing) rather poor.
If the game had any significant sales update, they would have given it, making the legs look (I said look, not beeing) rather poor.
Should be later this week. I think Thursday.
Yes, it'll be good to get a proper update via financial results. It's odd that the sales milestone was included in such a 'look at all these scores!!!' email. Just muddies the waters a bit amongst sales enthusiasts, such as ourselves. Rather leave it off completely if there's either no change or at least no change they can report on ahead of the financials.
6 weeks after launch XV hit 6 million.
4 months after launch 7R hit 5 million.
It's currently right now 6 weeks since XVI launched.
The thing is I think most of us are aware of that last point, the question is why. FF was once one of the biggest brands in gaming and now has built up decades of fans and there is a ton of nostalgia around the franchise. So why hasn’t it been able to make a jump to the next level when so many others have?
It’s not as though SE haven’t been throwing big budgets behind the franchise either, they’ve absolutely been going all out and chasing western markets looking to grow the franchise.
If they made gameplay to match then it could have lead to growth. But they made a DMC game, said it was inspired by a game that isn't even like DMC, and then sprinkled the lightest of rpg-ness on it.
Maybe it was just what YoshiP wanted to make and the bean counters had to spin it to make sense, sales-wise
- Pronouns
- Him
Well FF lacks consistency so the series really just goes in waves some people like the next one some people like the old ones, players return, players leave, some new players come but ultimately it’s stagnant. RE found a winning formula & made it work & has been consistent which led to growth people knew what they were buying & it was good. FF changes drastically with each release.
Its not easy to grow franchise, I'm sure FF17 will be open world at this point but even that may not be enough to become 20m seller.
I have said this before but anime style is turn off for many, especially on Steam which is WRPG dominated. And without steam doing its number, its hard to see FF reaching 20m on PS alone. But FF in western RPG style could be even more dumb, instead of gaining new players they may loss FF loyal fanbase.
If they want to chase WRPG crowd then make new IP.
The problem for FF17 is they are still split doing this pointless FF7 series.
- Pronouns
- He
I dont see "anime style" in FFXVI tbh, people that say that about FFXVI are just being racists because "made in Japan:anime"
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The recipe to have growth in the west is fairly straight forward. Your story and characters must be good, the side quest/content needs to be better and actually circle back to the main themes of the main story and/or enrich the world building. You also need to craft a large open world that is dinstinct with many different biomes. You also need a combat that clicks with the general audience.
FFXV managed to do 10M with a uneven story that rushes it's conclusion, somewhat of a clunky combat system tha does not entirely mesh together, a non-diverse cast of dudes being bros and pretty much a singular big zone with little biome change within it and fetch quests.
A FFXVII that manages to do better in the ways FFXV fell short without SE hampering sales with multiplatform day 1 would easily manage to sell 15M and 20M+ should be possible as well depending on how well they managed the product as a whole.
FFXVI is definitely a slight departure in terms of skin/facial rendering compared to their other game that leaves the "anime" aesthetic a bit, but everyone who watched the first trailer live instantly knew this was the new FF.
It's better to say that it's a "Square Enix" face. Does it hurt it's chance at acquiring a new audience? Probably, although I wouldn't know by how much.
FFXV managed to do 10M with a uneven story that rushes it's conclusion, somewhat of a clunky combat system tha does not entirely mesh together, a non-diverse cast of dudes being bros and pretty much a singular big zone with little biome change within it and fetch quests.
A FFXVII that manages to do better in the ways FFXV fell short without SE hampering sales with multiplatform day 1 would easily manage to sell 15M and 20M+ should be possible as well depending on how well they managed the product as a whole.
A new IP would be the best, but Square Enix isn't really the greatest when it comes to making those, especially the large scale projects.
FFXVI is definitely a slight departure in terms of skin/facial rendering compared to their other game that leaves the "anime" aesthetic a bit, but everyone who watched the first trailer live instantly knew this was the new FF.
It's better to say that it's a "Square Enix" face. Does it hurt it's chance at acquiring a new audience? Probably, although I wouldn't know by how much.
Racism? Really? I thought Aicon battles look lifted straight from Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm. The child with the latent destructive power and melodrama also make the connection easy to make. I disagree with the premise that may have hurt sales though.
Not really, see Souls games are like WRPG in aesthetics.
- Pronouns
- He/him
I'm pretty skeptical of the idea that anime style is a damper on sales. The anime market itself is growing, and in the gaming space we have Genshin and Honkai being huge successes.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Main Story/Characters/Combat/Open World and Quest Design/General Diversity and other things have a much bigger impact than a game being "Anime style" when it comes to "western" appeal.
Like you say, the negative effect is minimal at worst. There's so many bigger things that can have a negative and positive influence on the sale potential of the game that it's not really worth mentioning as anything less than a nitpick at the bottom of a list.
In fact, if we look at FFXVI, we see that the people of colour in the game actually have features of the kind of ethnicity they're suppose to represent from the real world. This is very rare JP/KR/CN games, most of the time it stops at skin colour but the traits remain the same no matter what.
On the top of my head I can only think of Capcom with RE and especially SF6 in recent times where there is a clear effort in that regard. We know this is a priority within Capcom because of the leak and the memo talking about diversity to reach a global audience alongside their commitment to multi-platform releases.
Which makes the whole "there's is no black people in our white medieval inspired fantasy" unforced error all that much puzzling. I'm sure the team regrets this production decision.
This is basically just confirmation at this point.
That last part of the tweet that this could go on to become one of the best selling FF titles, errm, I dnt know where that is coming from LOL
Confirmation of what? Poor legs?
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Man, I really can't handle all the deluge of news today and we're just in the morning over here.
They’re absolut no new information here and it’s a transcript from the start of August. No idea why he brings that up now.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
So the Bloomberg line of not meeting high end of expectations was completely made up ?!
I am fairly certain the two articles are talking about different things.
Good thing this is a thread with no news today apparently.
Is this youtuber supposed to be a legit source? First time I'm hearing about them
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well the image is real, it's part of :https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ir/library/pdf/24q1outline.pdf
At the same time, this is from August.
I wasn't a member yet, so I don't know if this wasn't previously talked about.
Edit : Wrong link
If you look at the actual Bloomberg report, he cites 3 people on the call telling him that. So either there was something else said (highly unlikely), or the investors heard what they wanted hear with concerns to the game as they feel Square Enix is doing poorly. Independently Gibson’s original tweet echoed this (Mochi didn’t cite him for that claim in the article) before toning down his wording.
Granted I didn’t think it would be this outcome as it means investors just don’t believe Square Enix period (personally can’t blame them), hence the massive stock drop as a result of the earnings and the angst they feel about them subsequently.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Even tho it's the same information we got a few weeks ago, I guess this might be the time to close the lid on whether or not XVI managed to achieve internal expectations for its launch - unless Kiryu is lying or something, which I extremely doubt.
Big question now is how they'll be able to keep generating revenue in the coming months - the game is already out of the conversation from what I've seen. Hopefully the DLC will be able to reignite the interest.
Big question now is how they'll be able to keep generating revenue in the coming months - the game is already out of the conversation from what I've seen. Hopefully the DLC will be able to reignite the interest.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Afaic that QA is the post earnings call and thats the official transcript.
Nowhere is the phrase "high end of expectations" there.
I wasn't on the call so I can't attest to the transcription but its from SE.
Not the first time his sources have been wrong.
And didn't Gibson delete his tweets?
It's generally is in SE's best interest to sand off the rough edges from official responses. If they let something slip in an investor call, they can redact simple descriptors like "lower" and reword quotes to sound more PR friendly. The other quote sounds like a softball version of the quote where they said they'd cut back on smaller projects. I definitely recall something similar with Nintendo where they mentioned like F-Zero or something as an example in the actual q&a but, removed it in the official transcript.
It was weird how people were claiming that the operating income slump wasn't caused by FFXVI but because of weak Mobile and MMO performance, the statement in the report basically outright states it was FFXVI's dev and marketing costs being the major reason for it, which in turn is the major reason for the stock price dropping after the investors call. The comment David Gibson said about FFXVI being profit from July 1st onward wasn't stated by SE at all, what they said was they "We intend to steadily add to our profits by expanding sales of the aforementioned title in Q2 and beyond.", this comment was made only after 1 week from FFXVI's release, and as we all know it's sales have completely tanked everywhere so this intent to expand sales has fallen on its face.
I've seen people claiming FFXVI is already profitable because they expensed their costs in Q1 but this comment doesn't even confirm that FFXVI is profitable from July 1, only that it can possibly begin to be profitable from that point on, not that it is. Like even at absolute best, since week 2 to now it would have only sold like what, 300k? 400k? Around that much units that they could actually generate some profit from since the beginning of Q2? Not even counting how many of those units were part of the initial stock that already were counted as contributing SE's Q1 net sales which already kneecaps most of the week 2 physical sales, in this aspect really the only thing that could actually be contributing to FFXVI profit from July 1 on are its digital sales, and well, I don't know how selling worse on PS5 than Remnant 2 and only 3 spots above Atlas Fallen in the US is good for digital, and already fallen off in the EU chart by August. Even if you are generous and say that is like 400k digital sold which would have all the revenue SE gets for that counted as profit, that is barely is only $19m worth of revenue that would be profit for SE, and that's being extremely generous in if it has even sold that much digital from the start of Q2 digitally.
It's also frankly weird seeing the usual twitter accounts trying to celebrate and spread this news as if it's a success, when if anything it just confirms SE had very low expectations for FFXVI and it only just met their low expectations, congrats FFXVI, you are the worst selling FF in 30 years.
I've seen people claiming FFXVI is already profitable because they expensed their costs in Q1 but this comment doesn't even confirm that FFXVI is profitable from July 1, only that it can possibly begin to be profitable from that point on, not that it is. Like even at absolute best, since week 2 to now it would have only sold like what, 300k? 400k? Around that much units that they could actually generate some profit from since the beginning of Q2? Not even counting how many of those units were part of the initial stock that already were counted as contributing SE's Q1 net sales which already kneecaps most of the week 2 physical sales, in this aspect really the only thing that could actually be contributing to FFXVI profit from July 1 on are its digital sales, and well, I don't know how selling worse on PS5 than Remnant 2 and only 3 spots above Atlas Fallen in the US is good for digital, and already fallen off in the EU chart by August. Even if you are generous and say that is like 400k digital sold which would have all the revenue SE gets for that counted as profit, that is barely is only $19m worth of revenue that would be profit for SE, and that's being extremely generous in if it has even sold that much digital from the start of Q2 digitally.
It's also frankly weird seeing the usual twitter accounts trying to celebrate and spread this news as if it's a success, when if anything it just confirms SE had very low expectations for FFXVI and it only just met their low expectations, congrats FFXVI, you are the worst selling FF in 30 years.
Last edited: