Square Enix: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Final Fantasy XVI, and Foamstars Sold Less Then Expected - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 03 July 2024 / 5,265 Views
Square Enix president Takashi Kiryu told analysts Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Final Fantasy XVI, and Foamstars all failed to meet revenue and profit expectations, according to Bloomberg.
Bloomberg's Takashi Mochizuki via Twitter reports Kiryu said initial sales for Final Fantasy XVI were in line with expectations, however, sales fell faster than expected and it fell short of the fiscal year goal.
Initial sales for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth fell short of expectations and the initial momentum did not reach an internal target set by Square Enix. Foamstars also fell short of expectations and the initial momentum did not reach an internal target.
Square Enix did not share sales figures for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth or Foamstars. However, the company is confident Final Fantasy XVI will be able to achieve its goal over the original 18 month sales plan. Also says Fantasy VII Rebirth and Foamstars sales aren't necessarily bad even though they sold less than expected.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Final Fantasy XVI, and Foamstars all launched as PlayStation console exclusives.
Square Enix in its latest earnings report said it will be putting less focus on releasing exclusive titles and shift its strategy to release more multiplatform titles for Nintendo consoles, PlayStation, Xbox, and PC.
The company will also be laying off staff in its American and European divisions over the course of the next month, according to employees who attended an internal meeting.
It isn't known how many will be laid off, however, publishing, IT, and Square Enix's Collective indie games are where the majority of the layoffs will happen. Those laid off will be informed this week.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
More Articles
Unless Foamstars sold 0, it did better than my expectations.
The fact it released at all should exceed anyone's expectations regardless of any sales at all lol.
I don't know if this is much of a factor but maybe they should consider doing a turn based mainline FF game again? Seems like the series has been in a decline since they moved away from turn based games.
i agree, turn based mainline FF. tired of FF7
I agree..
Imagine that. They used to be the pinnacle of of their genre, now it's a generic action game in a sea of action games.
They should definitely consider it. But wasn't XV one of the best selling in the series? I do believe it outsold the whole of XIII saga which was ATB which is technically turned based.
Even VG chartz have 15's (physical?) sales at below just FF13.
Not sure how accurate this is below but FF15 sold just over the amount of FF13 but the 13 trilogy sold next to 20 mil apparently.
https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy
But 15 it also says sold as many as 10 and which do you think is more liked? We've said this before that sales of a FF game based on genre is a stupid stat when it's Final Fantasy. 15 didn't sell well because it was action, it sold because it was FF and we'd not had one in 6 years and inreality we've had 1 mainline titles since... which was basically just DMC.
Final Fantasy sells well... well used to. :P
Hmm after a quick research it seems XV sold over 10M and the XIII saga over 11m. The data on VGcharts seems match the latest report (XIII saga sold over 11m in 2014 according to SE PC press release. 9.6M between the first two games and the rest for Lightning returns which flopped.)
The wiki page you attached counts the demo as sales and steam tracking websites which are highly inaccurate.
There are alyaws many factors for each game performance in the market. But the success of XV suggest that the action based combat might not be a big one. It is impossible to know which one is more hated as FF fandom are so varied and hard to track.
For being by far SE's biggest franchise, Final Fantasy sales should never be labeled as being "not necessarily bad" it should always be their big money maker releases. Makes sense why SE's new CEO is making such a drastic change. I'm sure he's betting on Switch 2 helping the most.
All the more reason to not limit the playerbase with a single platform tbh. Xbox, yeah probably just with a GP deal although FF14 is doing really well on Xbox. PC players have never liked delayed releases. And Nintendo gets some SE exclusives already, but no major AAA ones like FF.
Can't claim it wouldn't help when it's not something that has been done. I would want to see how a big FF release would perform when it releases on all platforms at launch.
FF15 is estimated to have done like 1.5m on XB1, but with Xbox Series now tracking behind XB1 I don't know if FF16 would have done quite that well had they actually released it on both consoles day one. But 1m+ lifetime seems likely for any mainline Final Fantasy on Xbox, and probably another 1m+ on PC, and I'd guess at least another 1m+ on Switch 2 once it's install base is large. Going multiplatform is definitely the right strategy for Square Enix, I'm glad they are doing it.
Multiplatform will help but they're still fundamentally dealing with a decline on Playstation whereas other franchises have blossomed. VII R sold less than half it's AAA competitors like Horizon, God of War, Uncharted etc,
That dynamic is something which won't suddenly be fixed with multiplatform releases, they also need to make changes on the creative/marketing side.
Nobody asked for Foamstars. This is what you deserve when you have sales expectation from a game nobody asked for. They're better off using that funding and use it towards something like bringing back Parasite Eve. There's so much hype for remaking old horror games.
Did anyone ask for Hades that was just 'another rogue like'? We have enough of those so why try, right?
People were saying "Oh it's just Splatoon." Yes, and not on Nintendo console. Nintendo have faith in the concept and it sold loads so, SE tried and it didn't it seems. Sad really.
I do not hold that against them for trying for sure. But is resorting back to just remakes or the same tired IPs the answer?
I understand your point. But when you have serious expectations on new IP then you need to dial it back. The only reason I suggested Parasite Eve is that the way Square has been talking these days is like they're in need of some serious cash, so why not go a safer route right now until they can afford to take a risk. I agree with your comment in a creative perspective, but as a business perspective when Square just complains about is sales then I felt they did the wrong move.
SE expectations always seem high. Even from the past when they said things like Tomb Raider selling millions wasn't enough millions. As an Publisher making big scope games they've got to do a lot to get these games out there, known and bought, so dialing it back might not always be an option.
But don't get me wrong, I do completely agree with your on the points about safer route. Maybe instead of going all out on a new idea, make it more of a niche title that picks up the pace with good feedback and word of mouth? And then stick to their big franchises for the money right? But they sold their western titles/library for what might be considered tiny amounts.
Yet, they seemed to do that with things like Diofield and Valkyrie games recently and prehaps they do need to rely on older proven titles again.
Alas, it's hard to say.
I'm curious to know what SE's expectations were for dragon quest monsters the dark prince
The game did quite well in Japan from what I heard, but didn't see much after that
Games are too expensive at 70 bucks,
Splitting it into three parts didn't help the sales numbers at all,
And the fans are either too tired, slow and old to play ff7 remake trilogy,
New generation just wants to play shitty sports games , trashy cod games and garbage Fortnite
That’s not what was said in the official meeting report.
That journalist is misquoting or twisting the official transcript of that fiscal report.
I was always concerned about potential FF7 Rebirths sales for a number of reasons , the obvious downsides of splitting the game up meant that it stood a good chance of following in the footsteps of the many games whose narrative is spread across multiple releases where that single narrative spread becomes an impedance to those who didn't play FF7 remake , so you end up with not gaining enough new buyers to make up for the drop of players that naturally occurs in releases of this nature something that is also further impacted by the time taken between releases, so my question is with no real clarity from SE around those sales we don't know whether or not they took those factors into account or used their notorious Tomb Raider sales expectations as the blueprint.
Yeah, especially when they're spread out across different systems. Albeit in the same family of systems, but I for example still haven't picked up a PS5 since there's no game besides this one that I want to play and can't play on PS4. When buying digital versions you tend to get the PS5 version added for free, so why not. I will get a PS5, but might as well wait for Pro at this point.
Although I think they did something to alleviate the issue for people who didn't play the first FF7 Remake. They sold a bundle that included it (the Integrade version) for free when you bought FF7 Rebirth digitally. But I imagine a lot of people wouldn't know that unless they happened to see it in the PSN store. And they probably wouldn't be browsing the game unless they were already planning to buy it.
I think they may have painted themselves into corner for Switch 2 support as well. While Remake should work fine on Switch 2, certainly at 30fps like on PS4, Rebirth is struggling even on PS5. It holds 60 fps in performance mode, but the visual downgrades were a lot more notable than people expected. Even in graphics mode, the the original FF7 Remake on PS4 looked notably better in key areas like character models and sharpness.
I don't know how much they expected Foamstars to sell when it was an online only game that was free on PS+ the month it released.
What does Square expect when they release them on 1 platform.
Glad they realised this mistake moving forward.
In regard to Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, its probably due to the first remake title being boring.
Essay Pro