Final Fantasy XV Has to Sell a Helluva Lot of Copies to Be a Success

honestly i think this one might have what it takes to hit that target

@FullbringIchigo Well look at it this way: if FFXV can't, I don't know what can.

I think this one can easily do that.

I know ff7 could probably hit that number in a heartbeat lol

Not being a 'fan' of the franchise, Its certainly not something I intend to buy. 10m+ units though is not that many all thins considered. It is releasing on multiple formats so has a big audience to try and reach.

Well, the Limited Collector's Edition sold out in hours for both consoles. The hype is pretty big for this game. I would say they have a good chance reaching 10 million.

Looking down and seeing 12 articles related to final fantasy it's clear pushsquare will be helping them reach the target.

This might be only my second FF after crystal chronicles. Never did get into FF as I just thought I had missed too many when I was younger!

10 Million is super ambitious, I don't see it happening in today's economy.

The game will definitely do very, very well though.

@ShogunRok
Brand it as Call of Duty and you'll get twice as lucky, brand it as GTA and apparently you'll get 5 times as lucky...

I see it happening, at somepoint. 5 million is more within reach.

it's very, VERY hard, it's a JRPG and even for Final Fantasy 10 millions is a lot of copies. But let's pray guys! For a better gaming future.

I can kinda see the game hitting the 10 million mark, since the game is part of a huge franchise and has been quite the story for a decade now, but 10 million is a lofty target. SE has treated this game like a cultural event rather than a game. You could say a series like Final Fantasy deserves it, but I feel Square is biting off more than they can chew here.

That's quite the goal there! It has a chance, but it'll be difficult to achieve. I'm doing my share!

Squeenix are mad. Wasn't this the company with unrealistic sales projections for hitman or tomb raider? Only ff7 has achieved 11 million sales.... EVER! That's one of the best games of all time with a great cast of characters. This is some boring teenagers with invisible weapons taking down an empire yawn. Get a grip squeenix I'm sure ff15 will be good if not great. But those projections are too high.

this is the most hype the franchise has been under since 8

@themcnoisy Teenagers? Do they look like teenagers to you? walks out the door Not saying another word.

Maybe that's why they're doing the FF7 remake straight after...

If the story is interesting it'll have no trouble.

Wow that is challenging. And dropping a kind of misleading demo probably doesn't help too much...

I played the demo and I am not as into the combat as I hoped. I think I will wait for it to go on sale.

Games like tomb raider, uncharted, and the witcher sell around 6 mill. I think this should do 10 mill. Maybe not at launch, but after some speacial editions come out they should be able to hit that number.

For one, he said 10 million to be deemed a success, not to turn a profit. Who knows what they actually need to break even, maybe 5 million? I think ten million would be there "he'll yea we are raking it in" number. When you consider the ridiculous hype, the film, the anime, the toys, the collectibles, and the limited editions, I don't think they will have any trouble at all making this a success. I also think the overall goodwill FF14 has brought them will certainly help ff15.

What's the PS4 vs Xbox One split - 9m to 1m?

I don't know if this game can sell 10mil or make a profit - BUT - does it have too? This took 10 years, but FFXV-2 and FFXV-3 will only take a year or 2 each. And then the 4k box set on PS5. And aren't they using the game engine for FF7, saving them money there? And maybe some DLC skins for the car? And maybe this does well enough people decide to go back and buy some of the older games?

There is a big pent up demand, the last truly good FF game was X on PS2. This could potentially get the ball rolling again.

@rjejr
In all honestly, I'm really hyped but, not exactly sure why. It's not based on any actual gameplay I've experienced. I have both demos, and they're good- really good. But, not great. Know what I mean?

This game is missing something. That It factor. It looks great in all the right places, but, Idk, maybe the story is what will draw me in. But I know past FF games, they had gameplay like WOAH, and that, coupled with a story sucking me in, was enough for greatness.

Guess what I'm saying is, will the gameplay actually be great like past games? Cause so far, it's just good.

Be prepared for FF15 PC Edition, FF15 Director Cut, FF15 GOTY Edition, FF15 Remastered....

After the damage done to the FF name with XIII? Good luck SquareEnix, you're going to need it.

@JaxonH I haven't played any of the demos yet, but I NEED this game to be good. FFX was great. FFX-2 was downright awful. FFCCTCB on Wii is one of the worst games I've ever played, which was hard to do after the horrific X-2. FFXI was online, which I don't do. You would have liked 12, 20 hours of story followed by 100 hours of monster hunting. I still call it FF:MH. FF13 was awful. Even the characters in it knew it was awful. I couldn't even bring myself to play 2 and 3. So I need this to be good. And from the moment I saw that Leviathan shot a few years ago I thought it would be. And I think it can be, b/c as good as XCX was, it was all about open world exploration, and now I'm ready for a linear story driven game. So for better or worse I'm throwing myself fully into the hype. I'd wait to get hyped for FF7 Remake but that won't finish until I'm too old to game. My kids can come visit me in the nursing home and tell me about it. FFXV is all I got.

@rjejr

Hahaha lol... Ok I gotchya lol

I did post in the other article though- I may have spoken too soon. After finishing the demo, I'm satisfied. The end boss was mint- I was just thrown off by the repetitive combat with Young Noctis. But my fears were put to rest after that final boss fight.

I think we're in for something special after all rjejr

I think it will be good, and sell over 10 million and be profitable. But I don't think it will be a crazy runaway success for Square Enix until they start to release 15-2 and 15-3.

So that's $600 million in lifetime sales they need? Seeing as they cleared $7.5 million in let's say a single hour or so selling out the Ridiculous Edition alone, I'd say they're on track so far.

This is the first time i've ever been truly excited for a Final Fantasy Game.

It may sell well but no chance of that many. I reckon the Platinum demo put off a lot of people who were unsure about this game.
I just tried to play the demo again (especially the end part with older Noctis and with all the collected weapons) to see if I was missing something from the combat, I mean, it can't be that basic can it? But it really is.

@AyanamiReign
It raises more fears for me, it's just using the/modified XV engine, as a cheap cash in to recoup cost for XV/make more profit.

But then I am a cynical old fart in gamer terms now.

To be honest, I don't really care how much it sells - and the nature of the topic is very telling about how some companies measure success. If it manages to capture an inimitable spirit and wonder that the series has in the past, THEN it'll be a success.

Will they ever learn?

At the end of the day, after all the hoopla and sideshows and everything, day one buyers will buy it BUT to hit 10 million, the game will need to be good. I mean really good to make it that must play experience that non FF'ers (like me) would go, yes I want to get on that bandwagon. Some CGI films won't do that for me, it becomes a case of is this a game I want?

@rjejr if it meets XCX tier I will be perfectly happy. 😊

Honestly, I don't see how FFXV can hit that number, no matter how good it is. FF7 was a properly groundbreaking title that put FF itself into the mainstream. People bought it because it was that one experience you had to buy a PlayStation for. I know I did. People may argue its merits now but it's easily one of the most important and influential games of all time. It was the right game at the right time and it's reaped the benefits ever since. Unless XV hits that same cultural level I'll be amazed if it gets to that number. It's not impossible, but it's not likely either. I really hope it does well though - for what it's worth this is the first main FF entry (other than XI and XIV) I've pre-ordered since IX. Fingers crossed it turns out well.

Need to try the demo but I am not excited at all for this one.

@JaxonH My best guess would be they spent less time on the gameplay than the graphics and the story, like XCX sacrificed story for world exploration. Not that it had any chance being as good as XC anyway, that story was near perfect. It may have been perfect. Even the voice acting was good. So this story will be close to XC, less exploration than XCX, better graphics than either, linear and easy to understand. I think there are still things in XCX and XC I don't understand. Did you know we could exchange items among our party in XC? I only found that out months after I finished it. I didn't do many heart-to-hearts in XCX b/c I hated kicking people out of my party and having to find them again. And getting pets by customizing them in the hangar wasn't exactly obvious. I think XV will be obvious, w/ an opening 12 hour slow going tutorial like in FFX. I think SQ knows FFX was the last good FF game so it will be modeled after that. Though I hope the mini game is more like Triple Triad than Blitzball.

@BladeRider Well FXV better sell better than XCX, that's sitting at 770k, only 3/4 of a million. Though that was on a 11mil install base, so about 1/5 of PS4 and X1 combined. Oh, and Sqeunix did more promotion in 1 night than Nintendo did in 2 years for XCX, they let it die on store shelves, even releasing it after Black Friday in the US.

As for a game comparison, see post #46 above this.

10 million should happen within the first year, IMO.

@RPE83 An interview from August says the VII remake won't be using the XV engine (www.novacrystallis.com/2015/08/gc-2015-final-fantasy-xv-interview-with-hajime-tabata/), but even if it was, the word "cheap" is such an antithesis to the XV engine that I'm surprised putting them in the same sentence doesn't cause a matter/antimatter explosion.

The entire concept of a game "engine" is centered around reuse. Cynicism indeed, to condemn a game for theoretically using an in-house engine, in development for the better part of the last decade, that's not even been fully used in a single released game yet (from what I can find, FFXIV is the only game besides XV using it, and is running a "scaled-down" version).

@Fath
Cheerfully withdrawn, and rephrased :
"It raises fears for me that the Final Fantasy 7 remake was just an exercise in purely extracting the highest possible return from the protracted development of the engine for XV, by trading further on the name and goodwill of the beloved installment, with the knowledge that any ill thought out tat shiny looking tat with "FFVII remake" on it will sell a certain amount."

Naturally, I now know this to be incorrect, thanks to your link.

The cynicism comes not from the reuse of an engine, but the use of the same engine to bang out thoughtless iterations from that engine with some new window dressing but decreasing quality (See Rock Band, Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty as poor offenders) . In the case of Fallout 3 and New Vegas, or GTA and Bully, or Red Dead Redemption there was clearly some improvements and thought behind the engine upgrades / tweaks and I felt there was a genuine desire to make a new good game based on an engine, not flog something to death and killing the golden geese.

Appreciate my off the cuff remarks didn't really eloquent this!

@RPE83 Fair enough, and thanks for not taking my morning rant from last week personally! Here's hoping the remake of VII ends up surprising you once we see more of it, then.