The sales of this title is worrying

[K.o.K]

giving the fact that it came out on PS4/5/PC and exclusively on EGS for a year it's now not one of the most played games on EGS and PS4/5, did Sony harm the sales with the exclusivity and is 7Rebirth gonna flop like FF16 ??

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/collection/most-played

https://ps-timetracker.com/statistic/last-30-days/PS4

[Koby]

Single player games tend to drop off on players over time. There isn't any reason for people to endlessly play it every day, so of course given it's many years after release now, the player count will be low.

The sales of this title did fantastic. There is nothing to worry about.

[Weltall8000]

They sold over 7 million copies.

XVI didn't flop critically or commercially. We don't know the numbers beyond a few data points early on, but it sold over 3 million in under a week and topped the PS5 sales charts when it dropped. At least at the time, it was the best selling PS5 game to date.

These two titles did not sell poorly.

[K.o.K]

Originally posted by Weltall8000:

They sold over 7 million copies.

XVI didn't flop critically or commercially. We don't know the numbers beyond a few data points early on, but it sold over 3 million in under a week and topped the PS5 sales charts when it dropped. At least at the time, it was the best selling PS5 game to date.

These two titles did not sell poorly.

7mil is bad for a game that was hyped so much for over 20years

[DBZ_KAKAROT]

Those things you mentioned certainly didn't help sales, but I believe there's more factors to consider. I think politics has a major role in slowing sales down. In an era where games are either too woke or not woke enough, this title falls right down the middle. For the left it's not woke enough, for the right they're still upset over petty things like Tifa boobs. Believe it or not, for shallow people these factors are deterrents on their purchase. Granted for the left they're mostly activists and not consumers, so big mistake catering to them if they're not going to buy your game anyway, but then again they also have to bend the knee to Sony policies and ESG ratings. So they really are forced to find a balance. Then there was the pandemic, which this title was released during the heart of it, which certainly didn't help sales, you could argue alot of people were home, but you also argue many people were frugal with their spending considering many people lost their jobs. Then it took 2 years to finally release on PC, and on the worst platform to boot, Epic. By then many either 1. lost interest 2. played it on Sony 3. caved and bought it on Epic or 4. pirated it. By the time it reached Steam, clearly most people lost interest. Then there was the $70 price tag which came with it's own criticism, and lastly this criticism was embraced by purists/trolls to champion their own defamation campaign, beating on a dead horse. Keep in mind none of the factors matter if you're above all of this nonsense, but alas people are influenced by the most hackneyed things, things like hype and fads matter, but for me none of these things impacted my decisions or choices. I do hope SE learned from this and seize the opportunity for their future endeavors, so I'm not too worried about history repeating itself.

[K.o.K]

Originally posted by DBZ_KAKAROT:

Those things you mentioned certainly didn't help sales, but I believe there's more factors to consider. I think politics has a major role in slowing sales down. In an era where games are either too woke or not woke enough, this title falls right down the middle. For the left it's not woke enough, for the right they're still upset over petty things like Tifa boobs. Believe it or not, for shallow people these factors are deterrents on their purchase. Granted for the left they're mostly activists and not consumers, so big mistake catering to them if they're not going to buy your game anyway, but then again they also have to bend the knee to Sony policies and ESG ratings. So they really are forced to find a balance. Then there was the pandemic, which this title was released during the heart of it, which certainly didn't help sales, you could argue alot of people were home, but you also argue many people were frugal with their spending considering many people lost their jobs. Then it took 2 years to finally release on PC, and on the worst platform to boot, Epic. By then many either 1. lost interest 2. played it on Sony 3. caved and bought it on Epic or 4. pirated it. By the time it reached Steam, clearly most people lost interest. Then there was the $70 price tag which came with it's own criticism, and lastly this criticism was embraced by purists/trolls to champion their own defamation campaign, beating on a dead horse. Keep in mind none of the factors matter if you're above all of this nonsense, but alas people are influenced by the most hackneyed things, things like hype and fads matter, but for me none of these things impacted my decisions or choices. I do hope SE learned from this and seize the opportunity for their future endeavors, so I'm not too worried about history repeating itself.

I just love how SE in bloody 2024 still thinks "Console exclusive" is gonna make people go "ooh it's magical let's go buy that console" not knowing they are the only ones with these console exclusives coming out missing the giant mountain of sales on PC nowadays with SteamDeck and many PC handheld that could've easily put 1mil sales in SE pocket 1st month let alone many more sales when it's on sale, the best example is BG3 coming out selling mostly on PC and making every other RPG in 2023 look like an indie game in terms of sales, that being said the value of Final Fantasy single player titles is getting less and less interesting, FF16 sold 3 mil and they celebrated it, not knowing it was people interested in the new title for a new chance o see where this series is going, FF7R won't be selling a lot more, heck the install base of PS4 didn't help FF7R much, now imagine FF7R on PS5

[Xengre]

Originally posted by K.o.K:

Originally posted by Weltall8000:

They sold over 7 million copies.

XVI didn't flop critically or commercially. We don't know the numbers beyond a few data points early on, but it sold over 3 million in under a week and topped the PS5 sales charts when it dropped. At least at the time, it was the best selling PS5 game to date.

These two titles did not sell poorly.

7mil is bad for a game that was hyped so much for over 20years

7m is really high for a JRPG title (the genre is not as mainstream as some others like CoD, League, Fortnite, etc. type games) that only released on three platforms 3 years ago, two of which were two years ago.

You should actually look up JRPG sales figures. You might be surprised.

Heck, the original FF7 only has a mere 14m sales decades later. Final Fantasy 8 has a 9.6m sales, Final Fantasy 15 at 10m, and FFX + X-2 (combined) 20m.

Meanwhile, all the other Final Fantasy games have similar sales to the Remake or far less, often less than 4m.

If you look on VGChartz and check by RPG you will find FF7 as the top selling JRPG and then the ones I mentioned above as the list just gets lower and lower. JRPGs simply don't sell like mega-blockbuster titles. They do well enough, but they've never historically been as high as you seem to think they are. (Note: I'm not counting Pokemon as your typical JRPG, but if we're being technical...).

Overall, Remake did fairly well. I do think they would have sold more with a more even release and that the exclusivity did bring some degree of harm but hard to say without full proof which can't really exist since its one or the other. Hopefully, they release the PC version much sooner this time around after the three months...

Worth note is FFVII Remake did have some degree of limitations that turned some off where Rebirth goes 1000% pushing to fix those issues, make it more open world styled, PS5 next-gen only to not be held back, tons of content, better pacing and combat improvements, etc. building off where episode 1 could have been better so it may very well see even greater sales.

Originally posted by K.o.K:

Originally posted by DBZ_KAKAROT:

Those things you mentioned certainly didn't help sales, but I believe there's more factors to consider. I think politics has a major role in slowing sales down. In an era where games are either too woke or not woke enough, this title falls right down the middle. For the left it's not woke enough, for the right they're still upset over petty things like Tifa boobs. Believe it or not, for shallow people these factors are deterrents on their purchase. Granted for the left they're mostly activists and not consumers, so big mistake catering to them if they're not going to buy your game anyway, but then again they also have to bend the knee to Sony policies and ESG ratings. So they really are forced to find a balance. Then there was the pandemic, which this title was released during the heart of it, which certainly didn't help sales, you could argue alot of people were home, but you also argue many people were frugal with their spending considering many people lost their jobs. Then it took 2 years to finally release on PC, and on the worst platform to boot, Epic. By then many either 1. lost interest 2. played it on Sony 3. caved and bought it on Epic or 4. pirated it. By the time it reached Steam, clearly most people lost interest. Then there was the $70 price tag which came with it's own criticism, and lastly this criticism was embraced by purists/trolls to champion their own defamation campaign, beating on a dead horse. Keep in mind none of the factors matter if you're above all of this nonsense, but alas people are influenced by the most hackneyed things, things like hype and fads matter, but for me none of these things impacted my decisions or choices. I do hope SE learned from this and seize the opportunity for their future endeavors, so I'm not too worried about history repeating itself.

I just love how SE in bloody 2024 still thinks "Console exclusive" is gonna make people go "ooh it's magical let's go buy that console" not knowing they are the only ones with these console exclusives coming out missing the giant mountain of sales on PC nowadays with SteamDeck and many PC handheld that could've easily put 1mil sales in SE pocket 1st month let alone many more sales when it's on sale, the best example is BG3 coming out selling mostly on PC and making every other RPG in 2023 look like an indie game in terms of sales, that being said the value of Final Fantasy single player titles is getting less and less interesting, FF16 sold 3 mil and they celebrated it, not knowing it was people interested in the new title for a new chance o see where this series is going, FF7R won't be selling a lot more, heck the install base of PS4 didn't help FF7R much, now imagine FF7R on PS5

Games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Palworld were unexpected super successes and not your normal fair. They're not results devs can just get because they want to. Even Microsoft felt they were worth like, iirc, 5m to pay to have the game free on Game Pass (boy was that estimate wrong).

FF16 was a PS5 exclusive and the PS5 is still a maturing install base. They are bringing it to PC, though, which should help some of the limitations it ran into on PS5 and support sales with additional consumer install base. FF16, itself, isn't regarded as a bad game. 3m sales in a few months isn't bad, either, to be fair.

[K.o.K]

btw the recent trailer did only 500k views on youtube after 3 weeks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUaWUyaeXhs

[Lucus]

Originally posted by K.o.K:

I just love how SE in bloody 2024 still thinks "Console exclusive" is gonna make people go "ooh it's magical let's go buy that console" not knowing they are the only ones with these console exclusives coming out missing the giant mountain of sales on PC nowadays

except you are missing the part where every year children become adults and then may have the money to buy a PC/console. most of a games sales are in the first few weeks. if they can hook enough new adults who don't have patience with no preference between console or PC then it's worth it to them.

as long as they hook in enough new customers to drive console sales they will keep doing it.

[Weltall8000]

I'd be shocked if Rebirth didn't sell 500,000+ copies day one. Trailer views don't seem like a great indicator of interest/sales levels for the final product.

I wouldn't have even seen that video if not for it being posted on this forum. And I already pre-ordered.

As for moving consoles, exclusives do. For myself, I have bought consoles for individual games, let alone the expectation of several exclusives. I buy Nintendo systems because it is the only place that I will get Mario and Zelda. I bought a PS1 for FFVII. Having played FFVII Remake, if I didn't already, I would be tempted to buy a PS5 for Rebirth and forgo the wait for the PC port.

[K.o.K]

Originally posted by Lucus:

Originally posted by K.o.K:

I just love how SE in bloody 2024 still thinks "Console exclusive" is gonna make people go "ooh it's magical let's go buy that console" not knowing they are the only ones with these console exclusives coming out missing the giant mountain of sales on PC nowadays

except you are missing the part where every year children become adults and then may have the money to buy a PC/console. most of a games sales are in the first few weeks. if they can hook enough new adults who don't have patience with no preference between console or PC then it's worth it to them.

as long as they hook in enough new customers to drive console sales they will keep doing it.

U may have a point, now tell that to Konami and Capcom, none of them did console exclusives without PC release day 1 since forever

[Xengre]

Originally posted by K.o.K:

btw the recent trailer did only 500k views on youtube after 3 weeks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUaWUyaeXhs

Dude. Okay. Too desperate at this point. C'mon. smh

If you sort by views and this year on YouTube you will find they have multiple trailers for Rebirth wiht millions of views and you will notice they're frequently duplicate trailers causing the views to be split between them because Square Enix releases, then Sony will re-release the trailer same day, then IGN, and everyone else so you often end up with 3-7 trailers with several hundred thousand if not millions each.

Its no surprise you ignored my post. The cope is real here.

I'm not a fan of the exclusive, either, and will not buy a console for one title but it is what it is. They feel the extra money is, unfortunately, worth it from Sony and they may hope fans double dip that bought it on console as well as PC (though being next gen only this might be less effective this time).

[K.o.K]

Originally posted by Xengre:

Originally posted by K.o.K:

btw the recent trailer did only 500k views on youtube after 3 weeks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUaWUyaeXhs

Dude. Okay. Too desperate at this point. C'mon. smh

If you sort by views and this year on YouTube you will find they have multiple trailers for Rebirth wiht millions of views and you will notice they're frequently duplicate trailers causing the views to be split between them because Square Enix releases, then Sony will re-release the trailer same day, then IGN, and everyone else so you often end up with 3-7 trailers with several hundred thousand if not millions each.

Its no surprise you ignored my post. The cope is real here.

I'm not a fan of the exclusive, either, and will not buy a console for one title but it is what it is. They feel the extra money is, unfortunately, worth it from Sony and they may hope fans double dip that bought it on console as well as PC (though being next gen only this might be less effective this time).

Sure, hopefully PS5 can push enough copies of this title to save SE from another disappointing financial report where everything other than FF14 under-performed

[Weltall8000]

More that SE has unrealistic expectations. Still doesn't touch on the reality that VII Remake and XVI both sold well.

[Shock_&_Awe]

I'm not exactly sure why one would expect a 3 year old game to suddenly chart on Epic or PlayStation (even longer than 3 years), but I suspect Rebirth will be fine. It's pre-orders are following a similar trajectory as FF16 last time I checked, there is a State of Play today focused solely on Rebirth, the demo is also releasing today, and it has won a few "Most Anticipated" game awards. It's still a month out and most retailers don't have the deluxe edition in stock.

Now I don't think it's going to break crazy records, but I think it will do well and if the game is as good as it seems, word of mouth will also likely increase sales.

[Creomortis]

Damn has it been 3 years? I haven't bought because of time/price/waiting for second part to come out at least. Maybe I should just wait until p3.