Final Fantasy XVI ships 3m units worldwide

[Laguna]

I agree. It is really weird how much effort people put into spinning this mediocre at best sales results. That there is a certain resistance to outright tell investors that there flagship IP underperformed is obvious.

The company lost a lot of value recently because trends aren't favourable right now. We have Japanese sales data and Yoshi P didn't mention God of War post sales explosion just to be happy with FF16 selling something like 5 million in its first 12 months.

 

[Quinton]

I certainly don't understand why that Spawn Wave person claims this could go on to become one of the best-selling FFs.

I have a lot of thoughts on this, but that one's never entered the mind, nor should it.

 

[ArkhamFantasy]

I agree. It is really weird how much effort people put into spinning this mediocre at best sales results. That there is a certain resistance to outright tell investors that there flagship IP underperformed is obvious.

The company lost a lot of value recently because trends aren't favourable right now. We have Japanese sales data and Yoshi P didn't mention God of War post sales explosion just to be happy with FF16 selling something like 5 million in its first 12 months.

The lack of self awareness here is utterly staggering.

 

[Fularu]

I certainly don't understand why that Spawn Wave person claims this could go on to become one of the best-selling FFs.

I have a lot of thoughts on this, but that one's never entered the mind, nor should it.

Make it $5 and see sales soar !

Or queue the simpsons disco jpeg

 

[theprodigy]

I wonder how long it will take until the next milestone announcement for this game.

 

[BassForever]

I wonder how long it will take until the next milestone announcement for this game.

Considering they waited to announce FF7R1 passed 7 million until a random trailer for the sequel dropped, we could be waiting awhile. My guess is we'll get a milestone update after the pc version launches.

 

[BoktaiFan]

I wonder how long it will take until the next milestone announcement for this game.

I'm guessing it launches on PC then they do a 4/4.5 million announcement soon after once they get all those launch sales. Then I'm expecting a long silence.

 

[sheep]

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?

What you see posted are summarized English translations. They're not full transcripts of what is said in these calls.

 

[MegaXZero]

What you see posted are summarized English translations. They're not full transcripts of what is said in these calls.

Makes sense given what we know but That certainly changes possibilities here. Thanks for that info.

 

[Laguna]

The lack of self awareness here is utterly staggering.

The lack of self awareness here is utterly staggering.

 

[MegaXZero]

The lack of self awareness here is utterly staggering.

The lack of self awareness here is utterly staggering.

How about we don’t do this, okay?

 

[GoldenFingers]

Make it $5 and see sales soar !

Or queue the simpsons disco jpeg

The PSX era games had a 60% permanent price drop within the first year (or so) and also used global publishing partners that took an increased fraction of the revenue. So I think that undercuts a lot of sales discussion-- average (real) revenue per copy sold is way higher than the old days.

A bunch of additional revenue that didn't exist in ~2000 doesn't contribute to sales but SE appreciates the money all the same. I don't think the state of the market is remotely in a spot for the game to be the best selling, because SE milks non-sales revenue streams rather than permanently cutting the price nearly as much as was the practice back in the day.

 

[enpleinjour]

What you see posted are summarized English translations. They're not full transcripts of what is said in these calls.

Find it very disappointing that a public company does not provide a full transcript of investor calls.

 

[sheep]

Find it very disappointing that a public company does not provide a full transcript of investor calls.

Comes down to different regulatory requirements. Publicly listed companies in for example the US or lots of European markets need to have fully publicly accessible calls - which enables transcripts from third party or first party services. Japan/many other markets don't have the same regulations and calls are effectively closed/invite-only instead of fully publicly accessible.

 

[Terraforce]

Confirmation of what? Poor legs?

Where in the world did you get "poor legs" from that? That sure is a way to spin it.

 

[SinCityAssassin]

Obviously there's a bit of contention here on what is considered a poor sales pace or not, and whether said sales pace is ultimately involved with the company's current straits. I would have to keep in mind that even if there are sales expectations that could be met with Square's internal forecast ranges, it was not enough to offset everything else that has gone wrong with how the company has been doing financially. This was a title that was propped up to be a milestone game, a massive tentpole event. Instead it was a general AAA release where it performed just okay, and investors are not happy that it's not the explosive cure-all they were expecting.

Like in the end of the day it's really not about if FF16 was a bomb or if it was a success. Because at this rate it will never be a success enough.

 

[Fularu]

Where in the world did you get "poor legs" from that? That sure is a way to spin it.

Should I add a /s next time so that you can grasp that the original tweet was completely pointless?

Also FFXVI is showing terrible legs in every market.

 

[Kai_Mao2345]

Should I add a /s next time so that you can grasp that the original tweet was completely pointless?

Also FFXVI is showing terrible legs in every market.

Yea XVI has fallen off top 10s and 20s at various charts in Europe and it has left the Japanese charts’ top 30. I don’t know about you, but even leaving the Japanese top 30 charts 3 months after launch has to be unheard of for any previous mainline Final Fantasy game in Japan. Sure it’s all physical units in the sales chart in Japan, but it’s still concerning even as the PS5 is selling around 30-40k units a week. It shows that both Final Fantasy’s brand power in Japan is the weakest it’s ever been and that Sony is struggling to gain any traction in Japan with the PS5 despite it selling 30-40k/week. It’ll be interesting to see how VII Rebirth does in Japan.

 

[Terrell]

Yea XVI has fallen off top 10s and 20s at various charts in Europe and it has left the Japanese charts’ top 30. I don’t know about you, but even leaving the Japanese top 30 charts 3 months after launch has to be unheard of for any previous mainline Final Fantasy game in Japan. Sure it’s all physical units in the sales chart in Japan, but it’s still concerning even as the PS5 is selling around 30-40k units a week. It shows that both Final Fantasy’s brand power in Japan is the weakest it’s ever been and that Sony is struggling to gain any traction in Japan with the PS5 despite it selling 30-40k/week. It’ll be interesting to see how VII Rebirth does in Japan.

It will also mark the very first time that a mainline FF game is looking likely to not even chart in Amazon's annual Top 100 sellers in video games list for both the US and Canada in its launch year since 2001 when that data was first made available. Never mind that all prior entries that launched between 2001-2017 made it into the Top 10 in their launch year (with FFXIII being the exception due to the strength of 360 in the US, but still hit Top 10 for the PS3 SKU in Canada). Digital sales likely play no small part in that, but it's not like FFXV would have gone unscathed by that same thing and it still made it happen on a similar North American install base, so...