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Square Enix output strategy | Discussion thread.
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Oh my, seeing a really dumb "no corona boost"-argument in some places on the internet. That makes no sense for a story-driven game. If anything, it should have boosted the overall sales for the trilogy, because more people should want to see how the story proceeds. That apparently didn't happen. Without FF7R being "boosted" by corona, FF7R2 probably would have sold even less. But there is no one-time-boost for the first episode that the second episode somehow doesn't benefit from.
In Europe it only did 4% more than XVI. Evidently it dropped in North America.
Still, these figures are believable considering data we have at hands and the lack of Square PR.
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Weaker tail than FF7R? Wow. And FF7R's tail was not great either.
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It didn’t, but also it followed a platform expansion model with every single release.
ME: Xbox launch, late PC port
ME2: Xbox-PC launch, late PS3 port.
ME3: Xbox-PC-PS3 launch, late Wii-U port.
Fun times.
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It's not unbelievable that FF7R2 sold less than FF16, it would simply be following the overall franchises trend.
Makes you wonder what could have been huh?
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The sequel arguments just doesn't make any sense to begin with. Like Spider-Man 2 had a bigger launch then both Miles and Spider-Man PS4 (nevermind the fact that Miles was a cross-gen covid release top it of). If anything a sequel should have a bigger launch, as people who bought the predecessor at a later, would be more incline to buy the sequel day 1.
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FFXV was shipment and was the best selling FF.
FF15 - 7M (21 months)
FF7R - 7M (39 months, PS+ in 10 months)
FF15 - 6M (2 months)
FF7R - 5M (4 months)
FF7 Rebirth is unknown. I'd put it on par or above FF16, below Remake.
Rebirth having higher than usual front loading is not that insane. How many ‘new’ players came into 7 for a complete remake? Final Fantasy is just increasingly confusing for a new player.
FF7R did not do that well and it’s legs were horrific. This is a direct sequel of a story based rpg. It was entirely predictable it would struggle. Why SE signed off on a trilogy is beyond me, I assume Sony money is involved here but it’s a very dumb decision. It’s even more dumb the games don’t seem to be one engine and set of models, crossing gen and going from quite linear to more open world is just really odd.
With the strong success of 15 they should have built off that. Now they are stuck building a third FF7 game (just wtf) and planning the release of 17 around that.
Strongly disagree. FF7 Part Two is a much bigger direct sequel which you need to play the first to delve into.
FF7R did not do that well and it’s legs were horrific. This is a direct sequel of a story based rpg. It was entirely predictable it would struggle. Why SE signed off on a trilogy is beyond me, I assume Sony money is involved here but it’s a very dumb decision. It’s even more dumb the games don’t seem to be one engine and set of models, crossing gen and going from quite linear to more open world is just really odd.
With the strong success of 15 they should have built off that. Now they are stuck building a third FF7 game (just wtf) and planning the release of 17 around that.
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Every piece of information on this game is absolutely bizarre, the discussion keeps getting taken from one direction to the next. The comparison is tired at this point, but the information we have from Japan and Europe shows it either outselling DD2 or being about even with it. And yet that game shipped 2.5 million in 11 days, and Rebirth is only selling "about half" of what 7R sold in a similar timeframe? I guess the vagueness of that leaves a lot of interpretation but ... considering it's been out for more than a month and the quote seems to be talking about its current sales figures, that'd be pretty bad if it wasn't 3/4ths of Remakes sales at this rate. Legs must be pretty bad.
ME hit zeitgeist in ways FF hasn't in decades. and it was in a more popular genre and aesthetic at the time.
given there aren't too many IPs that shown such growth in comparison to ones that don't, Mass Effect is more an outlier
For me there’s a significant lack of marketing but that could also be the marketing team struggling to work out how they transform each £€$ into sales to make up for it. Whose buying this game post launch who didn’t already buy it at launch?
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ME also had a strong ceiling and it’s sequel was a cross platform release whilst the first was exclusive on consoles for some time. You can play ME2 quite easily without playing ME1; in fact that’s a big reason for their decision to break from the first game with its opening.
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As a huge Mass Effect fan, I cannot disagree any harder. Like one of the big selling points of Mass Effect 2 prior to release was importing your Mass Effect 1 into the sequel, so that your choices and relationships would continue in the sequel. Like Mass Effect 2 didn't even get a recap of Mass Effect 1 until the PS3 release of Mass Effect 2 a year later. Where as FF7 Rebirth manage to include a recap of the previous game.
Like even then, I stated earlier that Insomniac's Spider-Man games are practically proof that this argument is just doesn't work. Spider-Man 2 follows up on multiple plot threads and character arcs from the first game and the Miles Morales spin off game. Yet it had a bigger opening then either game.
I mean if ME2 sold more then I don’t think the save factor is really worth great discussion here.
Spider Man 2 opened extremely well but it’s still a Spider Man game. They sell because they let you feel like Spider-Man swinging across the city and beating up guys. An RPG sells because of its storylines.
If I was SE upper management I would be counting down the days until finally moving off this exclusivity deal. It has done them no favors & has stifled whatever plan(s) they have as company using FF.
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I mean sellthrough being half of Remake is in roughly the same area as DD2 numbers (accounting for potential extra physical stock).
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I realized that when writing my comment, but there was still something off about it to me, and I guess what it is is that it's much more likely that Rebirth was at least a few 100k above DD2 given that it outsold it in UK and vastly outsold it in Japan - putting it's 11 day figure closer to 3M. And considering 7R didn't even ship 5M till almost 4 months after its release .... I'd think 3M in 11 days, even if obviously much slower than 7 Remake's 3.5M in 3 days, would be closer to 3/4th of the games sales than about half.
It really just goes to show that either 7 Rebirth has some unsold stock or its legs really really collapsed, which we kinda saw in the U.K. already but it really is surprising.
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We'll have to wait and see where the Switch 2 ends up spec wise but still, Remake should have shown up on the Switch. Unless Sony was very specific on their deal I don't see a good reason at all why it skipped. Witcher 3 made it, Hogwarts last year and Kingdom Come just recently but a very linear unreal engine 4 game can't?
Seeing the types of statements we have from just this year alone. Wouldn’t be shocked if they didn’t think about it until about a decade from now where someone just randomly throws out doing a Nintendo port.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 released on Steam as well, which sales don’t appear on rankings. The first game was big on PC, especially in countries where we don’t have charts, like Asian countries. It’s safe to say many sales came from there.
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I am the biggest obstacle for Rebirth on Switch 2 will be the cart issue. The game is on two 4K Blu-ray discs on PS5 and has a size of 150GB. Like Switch 2 could be very powerful, but the cart prices could affect what games come to the platform.
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Its not possible to release on 2 cartridges?
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Publishers aren't willing to spend the money now just to get higher capacity cartridges. You think they're gonna spend money on 2 or more high capacity cartridges next gen?
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I dont know, they released Rebirth on two bluray discs, i dont know if the cartridges are that more expensive
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I'm not entirely sure, no publisher on any cartridge base system console ever did that to my knowledge. Even carts are still likely gonna be more expensive then a blu-ray disc for third parties. Like the rumor price I've seen toss around for 32GB Switch carts for third parties is 20 dollars per a cart. Where as a Blu-Ray disc is like a couple dollars.
Publishers will do what they do now which is put some of it on cart & offload the rest to the consumer. I don’t think carts are what is gonna keep Rebirth off of Redacted. The bigger issue is them not doing it or pulling a “I would love to put games on Switch” Harada.
They probably can reduce the file size by a little bit (removing the recap video, , reduced assets model quality, compress some stuff here and there) but we are still looking at a 256 GB cart..
SE probably want for the consumer to be able to play the game without online download since they released FF7 Remake and Rebirth on two disks on PS4 and PS5.
That is a really interesting thought experiment.
If Sony came along and paid for 10 years of console exclusivity from 2020 onwards that covers the remake trilogy and at least 2 numbered releases with carve outs for spin-offs like Crisis Core and CHAOS.
Sony doesn't need to maintain a Japanese studio outside of Polyphony (Team Asobi will probably be shuttered after it's current project since Jim won't be there to protect it).
If the deal was generous enough for Square it takes all the risk out of producing and promoting their most money hungry franchise and they probably get to keep most, if not all of the profit to boot.
Probably seemed like a good idea at the time to Sony with FF15 selling 10 million copies and 7 Remake having Holy Grail status at the time.
It's a symbiotic relationship.
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if Rebirth is 150GB, I don't see why they can't shrink it down to under 128GB. we've seen higher shrinkage ratios on switch already
That wouldn't really work as it would mean a mandatory install anyway, so they would be better off just making a 64gb cart + mandatory download. But if Switch 2 supports 128 gb carts it would certainly be feasible.
Going from 4k video files to 1080p ones would already save a lot of space. Also, the downscaling of texture quality for it to run there would also shave a lot on the file size. The most problematic part would be audio, as the game has A LOT of voice work... But maybe making either English or Japanese audio available with the other one being available via free dlc would be a good idea too.
Anyway, do we even have any idea of how much storage will the Switch 2 even have? Maybe those bigger games will have problems selling there digitally if they require an storage expansion to just be installed.
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Even from Square Enix. FFXII went from 40GB (PS4) to 50GB (Steam) to 13GB (Switch) for example.
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To be fair though the original FF12 was only 4.6GB, though the Zodiac Age does show just how much a boost in asset, video, and audio quality can increase a game's file size.
The usable space for a cart is lower, around 119 GB. Hence it may require a larger cart. But I agree with the other posters, it may be able to fit if the file size is reduced to be lesser than 119GB.
Well then they have a choice of either trying to fit it in a big cart or doing a mandatory install. There is only three options here to choose from & they can choose to get something rather then nothing.
The bigger issue I have is that it doesn’t really address a key issue they brought up about five years ago. Both them & Capcom have mentioned how hard it is to recruit staff for these types of projects. Nomura complained about not having enough experienced staff to even start up 7R-1. The money is nice but this will be a persistent issue for them so long as they continue to ignore it. Meanwhile it is only getting more competitive between the various Japanese & Chinese companies for developers. It will only get harder to reverse the trend if all they ever show up with is a bag of chips.
As a newcomer to FF7 who hasn't played or watched or experienced anything about this particular game until 7 Remake and Rebirth, I feel like I'm on two difference sides of a fence.
As far as the actual JRPG gameplay, Rebirth is fantastic. Even if the open world is a bit tedious to traverse in later areas, I've never not enjoyed the locations, doing Chadley's intel, finding fat headed baby chocobos to pet. The minigames are a bit much but a lot of them are still fun.
Narratively though I have no idea what to make of these two games lol. Rebirth feels a bit like KH3 to me where a lot of the story just feels like filler. It's got great party and character building and a lot of background info on how they got to this point as well as the subplot of how Shinra ruined a lot of people's lives but the actual main plot progression has just been kinda making excuses for us to go to these places. I have to imagine that the chasing of robed men to find Sephiroth probably made a lot more sense when this was the middle part of a 30 hour game and not an entire middle game itself. All the locations and characters must be great fanservice for OG fans but as a new fan they're just tossing characters like
at me with little or vague introduction and I'm just trying to make sense of their actual role.
As far as the actual JRPG gameplay, Rebirth is fantastic. Even if the open world is a bit tedious to traverse in later areas, I've never not enjoyed the locations, doing Chadley's intel, finding fat headed baby chocobos to pet. The minigames are a bit much but a lot of them are still fun.
Narratively though I have no idea what to make of these two games lol. Rebirth feels a bit like KH3 to me where a lot of the story just feels like filler. It's got great party and character building and a lot of background info on how they got to this point as well as the subplot of how Shinra ruined a lot of people's lives but the actual main plot progression has just been kinda making excuses for us to go to these places. I have to imagine that the chasing of robed men to find Sephiroth probably made a lot more sense when this was the middle part of a 30 hour game and not an entire middle game itself. All the locations and characters must be great fanservice for OG fans but as a new fan they're just tossing characters like
Cissnei, Zack, Cid, Glenn
Note: our FF7 Rebirth user numbers include players of the free demo
It's there no way to differentiate them? Will there be double counting if a player played the demo and then proceed to buy and play the full game?
FF will just go from a series totally dominant in its genre to be just a slightly bigger JRPG franchise among others in the future. While FF outsold Xenosaga games by 10 times in the past, these days it will do just a bit more than double the amount of sales the likes of Xenoblade, Tales of series etc etc games sell.
The original FF7 was mostly filler from around hour 6 to hour 20-25, which is basically what Rebirth covers. The party would go to a town hoping to find Sephiroth there. Once there, they would get caught up in a 1-2 hour subplot that had little-to-nothing to do with the main story. At the end, they'd get a hint that Sephiroth was possibly in the next town over. That repeated until they'd visited most of the world map. I always thought that was a major flaw in the original game, but most people never brought it up as a problem. I haven't played Rebirth yet, but the problems you're bringing up sound inherited from the original.
Sure but I think it also illustrates that these massive filesizes on PS/PC are also a consequence of devs generally not bothering to optimize data reduction past BD limits for PS or at all really on PC. Even just eliminating dummy data and unused files in a lot of cases, nevermind using asset compression well.
SE has other examples too like DQXI (30GB PS4, 40GB PC, 13.5GB Switch) or NieR Automata (44GB PS4, 50GB PC, 11GB Switch), not just the FFXII remaster. Saying games are "too big" to port is an old argument that's been disproven repeatedly already.
edit: here's an article on SE talking about porting DQXI from PS4 to Switch. They placed an emphasis on asset/movie compression to make the filesize fit (and also improve loading), which is amazing considering XI S adds a significant amount of new story content, JP voices, multiple soundtracks, etc.
『ドラゴンクエストXI S』はいかにUnreal Engine 4で最適化されたか？ “UNREAL FEST EAST 2019”のセッションをお届け | ゲーム・エンタメ最新情報のファミ通.com
2019年10月6日、パシフィコ横浜で開催された“UNREAL FEST EAST 2019”にて、『ドラゴンクエストXI』をテーマとしたセッションが行われた。その様子をお届けする。
s.famitsu.com
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HDD based games had to have repeat copies of assets due to the nature of how mechanical drives seeks data, which is what bloated a lot of the file size for games. It's the same with PC games that don't require an SSD and have to account for HDDs.
That's the reason why a lot of PS5 games are either equal or smaller in file size to their PS4 counterparts, despite having 4k-ready assets and video files. Case in point: GOW: R is 23GB smaller on PS5, in comparison to PS4. It's not about a lack of optimization, it's just that the nature on both flash memory and SSDs allow for not needing duplicates on disk, which along with the reduction of asset quality (mainly lower resolution textures/videos) allow for massive reductions in file sizes on switch like you exemplified.
And on Rebirth: it's already a PS5/SSD game, it won't see the same reduction in comparison to PS4/HDD games, as that amount of data is mostly due to asset variety, not repetition. I mean, there are 7 reasonably large open-worlds of sorts in the game who share very little in terms assets between them and also have a lot of variation inside of each, so it adds up.
They most likely can reduce it to fit a 128 GB cart, but 64 GB is not really realistic. Which is why Nintendo should be working into making 32 and up carts a lot more affordable for devs than they are now or have at least 512gb of internal storage on switch 2, to allow for less prohibitive mandatory installs than on current Switch.
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Ahh thanks for the clarification! Good to know
Dummy data isn't just for HDDs, it helps reduce loading and seek times for any media that reads from a disc, card or drive. Dummy data isn't the only area where big gains can be made on filesize optimization either, look at that Famitsu article on DQXI where dummy data wasn't mentioned, it was all about smart asset, fmv and shading compression.
If FF7 remake series is too big to be ported to Switch 2 that would mean almost no new AAA games will get Switch 2 ports. I mean FF7 remake is a PS4 game even.
I don't think any of the FF7 remake games will come to Switch 2 though, because i think they are permanent PS console exclusive games. The only ports that will happen is PC ports.
I don't think any of the FF7 remake games will come to Switch 2 though, because i think they are permanent PS console exclusive games. The only ports that will happen is PC ports.