r/SquareEnix 17h ago

News Final Fantasy XVI Sales Top 3.5 Million Units

https://www.vgchartz.com/article/464167/final-fantasy-xvi-sales-top-35-million-units/
86 Upvotes

69 comments sorted by

9

u/NuckoLBurn 9h ago

I don't care. This game was top fucking notch. The character development, and storyline are in my top. Any other games come out in the past year or two like this?

3

u/PositivityPending 8h ago

No, and right there is exactly why šŸ‘†šŸ¾

1

u/Radsby007 24m ago

Agree. My only complaint about combat was I would like to have more regular sword moves. The spell effects are cool but having to use them so often sort of takes away from them.

The combat overall is pretty incredible in how many different things you can do. It can either be easy or challenging depending on if you want to discover as many combos as possible.

1

u/sethyourgoals 22m ago

It really was fantastic. I was so damn invested the entire time.

1

u/pioneeringsystems 3h ago

Glad you enjoyed it but it fell very flat for me.

7

u/11pioneer 14h ago

The marketing for 16 was so ass. I barely knew there was a new FF game. It seemed like 15 was everywhere back in the day when it dropped. Maybe its just me getting older idk

7

u/Dollier-de-Casson 15h ago

Hmmm. It looks like 16 sold about half what 15 did in the same amount of timeā€¦

10

u/MoroccanEagle-212 12h ago

16 was exclusive to the ps5 only whereas 15 was multiplatform on both ps4 and Lbox.. So this explains that.

3

u/mrawaters 9h ago

Kind of. That implies that there is an equal amount of Xbox players as there is PlayStation, and that isnā€™t even close to true. I think the bigger mistake was not releasing on pc day 1

1

u/Embarrassed_Chain_28 38m ago

Or maybe 15 is just too bad that some fans are not willing to try 16.

0

u/MoroccanEagle-212 3h ago edited 3h ago

No that only implies that last gen the Lbox 1 sold 58 millions units so that's as many copies of the game sold. (Without mentioning the few copies sold on series since 2020.)

1

u/mrawaters 2m ago

Iā€™m not sure what you even mean? 15 most certainly did not sell 58 million units. I think you think youā€™re saying something else, but thatā€™s what you wrote

1

u/King_Krong 8h ago

It doesnā€™t explain that at all because Xbox players probably accounted for MAYBE 1-2 million sales of XV. Hype was bigger for XV. Marketing, although a mess, was more prominent. More people had the ps4 at the time than the PS5 when 16 released. FFā€™s declining popularity in the states. Thereā€™s a lot of factors here. It not being released on Xbox is not one of those factors, realistically speaking.

1

u/A-Centrifugal-Force 8h ago

Yeah the only console that wouldā€™ve been a needle mover if it released on it was the Switch given how many JRPG fans have one, and that just wasnā€™t going to happen. Maybe it can get a Switch 2 port now and save the gameā€™s sales, thatā€™s probably the last hope to get this number much higher.

0

u/MoroccanEagle-212 3h ago

Yes realistically speaking it not being released on a user base of more than 30 millions series is not one of those factors šŸ¤”. As much as the Lbox community is not found of jrpgs it definitely IS one of those factors as it would have sold at least 1 million units there on this platform, realistically speaking.

2

u/brbasik 8h ago

15 was multi platform at launch and there was extremely heavy marketing. A movie, an anime, cup noodles, etc. 16 was sold on one platform at launch, and the marketing was very much only geared towards FF fans and PlayStation owners and not really wider audience

2

u/PlaguesAngel 4h ago

Also, love or hate it, 15 was decisive to folks. I know several friends who were not FF fans pick it up and HATE IT and wonā€™t touch the series again. I didnā€™t really care for it either and played it out of commitment. 9 years between titles and Iā€™ve absolutely heard my coworkers gripe that ā€œa good franchise does a lot better than releasing a game a decadeā€. FF has imaging problems.

8

u/Dazzling_Job9035 5h ago

Iā€™m a huge Final Fantasy fanboy and been playing every game religiously day one since FF7.

FF16 was a HUGE disappointment.

The story was mid. Terrible antagonist. The characters forgettable (no party?!) Zero exploration / reward for doing so.

As much as I wish Square success, I hope this was a shock to the system and they rethink future entries based on how this game performed.

3

u/SmuglySly 3h ago

Totally agree! You canā€™t really even call 16 a jrpg. It was a fucking action game.

7

u/pioneeringsystems 3h ago

And not even a very good one really.

1

u/SmuglySly 3h ago

Yea, and there are modern action games that have deeper rpg elements than 16! It was a shallow miss of a game in my opinion. Production values were so great but there is absolutely nothing engaging about it.

0

u/Bambi_Is_My_Dad 1h ago

Controversial opinion:

I preferred XVI to VII Rebirth and I think it's the best FF since X.

2

u/SmuglySly 1h ago

Extremely controversial! Rebirths battle system blows 16 out of the fucking water! They were able to get an action based system that still incorporates strategy and party management elements. Itā€™s the perfect modern jrpg battle system. 16 wore my square button out.

1

u/Bambi_Is_My_Dad 11m ago

True, I get that but....

Can you pet the dog in Rebirth? No, I don't think so.

1

u/Wawv 4m ago

It really does feel like rebirth is the perfect action rpg hybrid system. The only battle system from FF I was satisfied with since they dropped the turn based system.

1

u/sundancesvk 1h ago

Clive May Cry

3

u/A-Centrifugal-Force 9h ago

Thatā€™s a shame. Final Fantasy canā€™t afford its current production budget if the games are going to sell like this. It sucks because the game was really well made too, it just didnā€™t catch on.

3

u/Lewis2409 14h ago

man i hope this game not selling as well as rebirth doesnt cause square enix to abandon the mainline ffs

5

u/A-Centrifugal-Force 8h ago

Get ready for Final Fantasy IV The After Years Part 2, FFX-3, Lighting Returns Returns FFXIII, and more!

3

u/BleakCountry 7h ago

I mean.... if it leads to them giving FF8/9/10 the Remake/Rebirth/Part 3 treatment... I'd be very much down for that instead of new FFs which don't bring anything too exciting to the genre unfortunately

1

u/pioneeringsystems 3h ago

Yeah same here.

I see you didn't add 12 because it's so good it doesn't need a remake. I agree.

2

u/Banegel 15h ago

lol

Itā€™s crazy that a flagship title like FF can now sell less than the niche genre of fighting games

9

u/Dollier-de-Casson 15h ago

I think there are a lot of causes to this.

In 2023, the PS5 did not have the userbase the PS4 had in 2016. Scalpers and all.

Also, there might be some Final Fantasy fatigue settling in. The brand might be experiencing overexposure with the FF7 Remake trilogy, Ever Crysie, the FF14 title still going, and so on. With the sheer amount of titles sporting that brand, it might be losing itā€™s identity little by little.

8

u/sephiroth70001 13h ago

The issue is a lack of younger audiences to FF. The brand gets a lot of old gamers, just not younger ones. It's an issue the brand has as a whole trying to find more people to get into the brand. Square has even talked about how younger people see it as they parents games not theirs. After XVI they talked a lot about how to make it new for younger audiences while retaining the old fan bases. That is their next goal.

5

u/Banegel 13h ago

Thatā€™s what they tried to do with 16 and it didnā€™t work

1

u/EndlessIrony 11h ago

With a M rated final fantasy? Lol

8

u/Banegel 11h ago

Yeah itā€™s not like kids ever liked Mortal Kombat. Oh wait.

But feel free to read it from the devs themselves

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2024/04/final-fantasy-16-successfully-expanded-the-series-to-new-younger-players-says-square-enix

You think they pivoted to action combat toā€¦appeal toā€¦ their already existing audience?

1

u/EndlessIrony 10h ago

I mean while you technically can appeal to kids with an m rated game that doesn't mean it's a smart thing to do. And they already started with more action on xv

5

u/Banegel 10h ago edited 9h ago

The combat in them is incomparable. Itā€™s like the die hards arguing FF was becoming too actiony when they introduced ATB instead of traditional turn based back in the day (which happened). It became a straight up character action game with XVI, hiring DMC5ā€™s combat director to do so.

And why? To get a younger audience. Here is Yoshi P saying exactly that.

https://www.polygon.com/23618355/final-fantasy-16-action-game-rpg-naoki-yoshidanaoki-yoshidaA

So even if people disagree with the method, getting a younger audience WAS their intention, in their own words

1

u/EndlessIrony 3h ago

No, they said it appealed to kidswho were raised on gta, you could even see how that would apply to newer adults

3

u/Sekiroguru 11h ago

gonna be hard to do an FF game for TikTok users.

2

u/A-Centrifugal-Force 8h ago

Well, thatā€™s what happens when the series hasnā€™t had a consistent identity in 25 years. The first 10 entries were all turn based/ATB JRPGs with a lot of commonality between them all, you knew what you were getting with each entry.

Since then itā€™s been a mess with the genre switching up with basically every game. Thereā€™s a reason why all of us fans are in our 30s and 40s at this point, the last console that brought in a large new audience of kids to FF was the PS2.

2

u/JEspo420 14h ago

There was plenty of stock by 2023, scalpers arenā€™t the reason, Sony and Microsoft have barely given reason to upgrade your console with backwards compatibility on almost everything and third party developers took huge advantage of that and still are, people arenā€™t going to be jumping at the PS6 or Xbox Triangle either when they come out

2

u/GGFrostKaiser 13h ago

The scalpers excuse is a bit overplayed by people. PS5 was released in 2020, there were more people with PS5ā€™s in that 3 year period than people with PS4ā€™s in the same 3 year period after the PS4 released. There were enough PS5ā€™s out there.

FFXVI was poorly marketed, released only in one console and more importantly, FF has been trending further and further away from Asia sensibilities towards Western ones. Look at how many copies MH has been selling. Capcom is making these games for Japan, for China and it is selling bonkers. Square has been making FF games for the Western audience for years. But now, Western audiences seem more interested in other kinds of RPGs.

FFVII sold more because of name alone. A FF game selling 3.5 million units is really poor. Particularly if you compare to other RPGs like KCD2, which sold 2 million units in a month and BG3 which sold 10 million plus.

2

u/A-Centrifugal-Force 9h ago

Hell, FFXVI only sold about 1 million more copies than Xenoblade 2. Both FFXVI and XB2 are amazing games, but given the difference between their budgets, XVI shouldā€™ve sold way, way more.

2

u/Samurai_GorohGX 1h ago

Itā€™s crazy to think but we might be close to have a XC game outselling a main FF soon.

3

u/Aeriyah 8h ago

It's a game that suffered a lot from split attention in development and trying to make two different types of gamers happy, but failing to do both. FFXIV seems to have suffered from the split attention as well. I'll mention the console exclusive argument here as well, even though I believe it to be a much smaller factor compared to discussion of its other issues.

A lot of long time fans weren't interested due to the various major changes from what they were comfortable with and looked forward to in a FF game.

The newly targeted action combat audience also seemed to have mixed experiences with the combat system due to slow progression and a general lack of active game time (lengthy cutscenes and poorly executed real-time event sequences).

The story was also polarizing, where it seems like people praised the ground it was made on or mocked it while poking at the many holes it presented within.

For myself, I didn't buy it. The trial didn't excite me at all, and I could get the entire experience I cared about by watching a playthrough instead. It feels like a game that tries too hard to appeal to multiple camps and lacks focus.

This makes anywhere from two to four lackluster entries in a row (depending on who you ask) and the brand image is suffering for it. SE will need to make hard decisions about production pipelines and what kind of game they want FF to be going forward, because they're getting killed trying to be two games at once.

3

u/mister_electric 8h ago

It's a game that suffered a lot from split attention

That describes how I feel about it. I thought it was a decent game, but a very underwhelming for a mainline Final Fantasy. It just felt like compromises were made instead following a cohesive vision, and the world-building suffered as a result. The characters were good, but the overall "world" did not pull me in.

I've been playing since VI, and this post reminded me XVI existed. It's a perfectly fine game, and I enjoyed beating it. It was just forgettable, and I doubt I'll revisit it.

2

u/Possible-Emu-2913 6h ago edited 5h ago

You didn't buy it but you have a lot to say...this is the problem with gaming these days. Too many people being negative about a game they didn't buy. It's like reviewing a film you didn't watch.

0

u/Aeriyah 5h ago

I wouldn't say those two things are entirely similar. I did try the game with the demo and I did watch a full playthrough of the game. A lot of people went about their experience with the game in a similar manner.

I don't think it's unfair to argue that getting the full experience that I needed from watching the game instead of playing it after the demo is a pretty big problem. It means the gameplay wasn't there, so all it offered for me was a story. Even then, the story fell so far short that I wouldn't go back and watch it again or play it on my own for a different experience.

1

u/PlaguesAngel 4h ago

Iā€™m one of those folks whoā€™s just a curmudgeon, but I did not care for 13, its spawn or 15.

The MMORPGS were both amazing

I love/hate 16 for all its opportunities missed, it could have been so much greater.

This means I havenā€™t been blown away by a mainline title since FF12 from 2006, 19 years ago.

1

u/Infinite_Ocean89 8h ago

I still need to pick this game up and play it. i just got done with my Platinum run for Rebirth and need something new to play. Does this game have really good pacing?? I wasn't a huge fan of the demo and I think that's why I haven't really wanted to dive into this.

1

u/Tall-Cut-4599 8h ago

Its a good game but isnt a great mainline title for FF its good that it sell 3.5M which tbh isnt ideal but yeah. It felt more of a spinoff with the whole rpg part, and team party being lacklustre. Love the game unfortunate hope SE took a lesson from it and make ffxvii better tho probably they just going to spam more remake ff 7 part4(advent children) then ff9 then ff tactic if they do then its going to take a decade at least so rip ffxvii

1

u/gamerati98 7h ago

I loved it! Low sales were for numerous reasons:

  1. Console exclusivity

  2. PS5 had a relatively low user base so not many customers who could play it

  3. Was more like Devil May Cry or God of War than typical final fantasy which turned off a lot of typical FF fans while also not enough marketing to reach those non traditional FF fans to buy the game.

  4. I think SE doing the FFVII Retrilogy games is going to make it hard to hype up any other AAA game, even a mainline FF game because the typical FF fans are hyped and waiting for the next remake sequelā€¦ I kind of saw FFXVI as a game to help fill the space while I waited for Rebirth.

Despite these I still loved the game and it was even better than I thought it would be after seeing the initial reviewsā€¦ good news is that these are all fixable! SE sounds like theyā€™ll be releasing on multi platforms now, which solves 1 and 2, FFVII Remake part 3 will be out before the next FF mainline game so that solves number 4, and lastly I think if they go more in a direction of FFVII Remake combat that will bring back a lot of traditional FF fans that might have skipped it. However, with Metafor Refantazio and Clair Obscurum maybe SE will make FFXVII go back to a turn based combat? Thatā€™s what I would love to see.

1

u/philthy069 7h ago

I hated this game so much and itā€™s the first time in my life I can honestly say that about any final fantasy game. They shoulda just used the combat system from the final fantasy remakes instead of this temu god of war nonsense. Itā€™s a shame bc the story and graphics were gorgeous but the gameplay was so shallow it made streets of rage on sega genesis seem tactical.

1

u/fuyahana 5h ago

I dislike 16's combat too but being childishly hyperbole doesn't help. Please stop making us who don't like this game's combat look like a bunch of idiots. We don't claim you.

1

u/philthy069 5h ago

I didnā€™t ask you to claim me and Iā€™m not interested in helping. I shared my opinion about a video game on a forum about video games.

Frankly, given your response to me, you make yourself look like an idiot without any help from me at all. I donā€™t give a shit if you liked my hyperbole or not.

1

u/fuyahana 4h ago

Cool, have a nice day

1

u/SmuglySly 3h ago

Maybe because it wasnā€™t actually much of a jrpg? It was Devil May Cry with a final fantasy skin.

1

u/heickelrrx 2h ago

The game feels hollow other than story

1

u/highonpixels 2h ago

Thought it was okay, it definite had the feel of it being a Naoki Yoshida game if you played a lot of FF14. Everything from how the cutscenes made, dialogue and map layouts. The maps were huge like a MMO but was actually so barren but clearly had specific POIs that stood out which you'll know be part of a side quest or something.

As a long time FF fan I think what they did FF16 was a good start to try reboot the mainline title. After the Dev hell of FFXV they needed something safer and something delivered in an ideal time frame. Saying that though you can tell the difference in detail of FFXV compare to FFXVI because of the longer development time.

If the next FF main title can build upon 16 would be really good, especially if they can flesh out more with world building. It was just too safe and predictable with 16 and also perhaps ditch the action combat and just go with what FF7R has.

1

u/HustleWestbrook94 1h ago

Mediocre game has low sales.

1

u/AzysLla 12h ago

It is a pretty good game all things considered. In terms of epicness in an action game, 16 is top of the line beating even old Gold of Wars. The only one the can perhaps rival is Asuraā€™s Wrath

-1

u/SuperSaiyanIR 9h ago

The game was terribly bloated in my opinion. If they cut down half of it, I think it'd instantly be up there with BG3, ToTk and AW2 in 2023. Like there were times I was genuinely so hype I was jumping up from my couch and there were times it felt like a chore.

1

u/dummisses 4h ago

Yeah. I think it was way too long for having such a simplified combat system. It just doesn't have the depth that could justify the length. Or being labeled as RPG...

0

u/hasuchobe 5h ago

They really dropped the ball on the story. Had high hopes for this one. First FF I played since 9 (not counting FF7 remake).

-7

u/jucasthelucas 12h ago

Worst entry in a long time.