Square Enix: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Final Fantasy XVI Profits 'Did Not Meet Expectations' - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 November 2024 / 6,811 Views
Square Enix in a results briefing held on May 13 that was recently released revealed Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Final Fantasy XVI did not meet its sales expectations.
"In the HD Games sub-segment, we released multiple new titles, including major titles such as Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, but profits unfortunately did not meet our expectations," said Square Enix president and representative director Takashi Kiryu.
Kiryu added, "We recognize that issues remain in the Digital Entertainment segment. The HD Games sub-segment failed to better its profitability, posting operating losses in every year of our previous medium-term plan. In addition to this, we did not manage our title portfolio across the company as well as we could have, which I believe resulted in opportunity losses due to cannibalization between our own titles."
"In the case of the HD Game sub-segment, sales of individual games will remain the key variable, but we believe that we will be able to exercise some degree of control over that volatility by carefully curating our pipeline over the next three years," Kiryu stated. "By also working steadily to improve our profitability, we intend to offset the weakness in SD games to achieve overall profitability."
Kiryu concluded "we determined that we should rethink how best to deliver some of the titles we had under development to our customers."
Final Fantasy XVI released in June 2023 and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth released in February 2024. Both games launched exclusives on the PlayStation 5. Final Fantasy XVI did release this week on PC Steam and Epic Games Store.
Square Enix did announce Final Fantasy XVI shipped three million units in its first week. This figure included digital sale. However, the company have yet to announce any sales figure for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
Thanks, IGN.
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
This is the last time Square will remake a game into 3 seperate games im sure. Let's hope the rumoured FF9 remake will just be on one disc.
***Surprising no one
1) SE has ridiculous expectations
2) Yall took the Sony bag and limited your audience... Don't complain when no one want to buy a 1-3 year old port on PC or other consoles for full price.
Here we go again lol
I mean it was ridiculous for them to turn one game into three games. Who wants to buy multiple games just to replay a PS1 game lol
I said the exact same thing with Remake... but Rebirth was fking amazing
Itd a shame for rebirth as that was the best ff since ff10. They killed the sales but keeping it exclusive to ps5
Why are we still going for that? We all know (and SE made it clear) that it did not meet expectations...
I know some people, for some reason, wants this to be untrue, but it is clear by now that those 2 games underperformed... Which is also why SE is rethinking about those deals they are signing with Sony for exclusivity...
If a lot of entries in a franchise don't meet expectations, why do you keep making them SE. At this point it's very unlikely that FF17 will meet expectations.
Not being exclusive will help (although this will also mean little to no Sony support and money which FF16 got). But the IP itself is becoming less relevant. FFVII rebirth launch compared to remake made that obvious.
FF16 had a good initial launch but no legs to speak of and rebirth had a worse launch and is also not charting anywhere. The fans buy it immediately but outside of the fans (most likely already on PS) it's not very appealing.
Switch 2 increasing the sales is the best hope for FF17.
But they did make a profit? So release on other systems, make more.
those are some AWFUL figures. Only 3mil in seven days?? Embarrassing. Should’ve been like 100mil.
So, sarcasm aside I do find it funny sometimes about what sales FF7 has and popularity of games in general. FF7 is considered one of the greatest games ever, it was originally released on a console that ended up selling 100mil, plus PS3 and PS3 it was playable on, and it was released on PC too. According to this and the wiki pages, it sold 10mil on PS1 and in total over it's lifetime around 15million (I think it's more than that with digital versions over the years but it's what the wiki pages says).
That's impressive, right? One of the best games sales ever.
Palworld sold that many in 5 weeks.
To be fair, Palworld was sold at a fraction of the cost...and to a far more mainstream audience (who were mostly "following an online trend")....not to mention there are far more than 100mil PC gamers.
So, maybe a better comparison is Elden Ring, Pokémon ScVi, Hogwarts Legacy, and TotK all going on to outsell FF7's LTD just within a couple of days/weeks. (Splatoon 3, as crazy as it may sound, also outsold FF7's LTD PS1 figures within the first few months.) And if you want something even crazier? FF7's PS1 sales figures wouldn't even place in the top twenty best selling Nintendo Switch games.
Release them on the switch too then. That is all of Japan mostly, job done. Modern FF is also simply not that popular, make them like the old ones.
Final Fantasy 15 sold over 10 million copies.
And jack all on all others.
It is on sale like all the time.
Square always doesn't meet expectation lol,
Way back in 2013 with Tomb Raider nothing new here
Speaking as a person that played OG FFVII when it released and has basically no interest in these remakes. Its not the remake we wanted. Its actually pretty good in regard to visuals and gameplay. But the changes and filler content makes this feel like something different. It doesn't feel like fan service to me.
They both sold millions.. I’m guessing the expectations were higher than my caffeine intake on a Monday morning.
I just bought FF16 the complete edition on steam (has all the DLC with it) for $69.99. Gonna be real honest here, im liking this game a lot more than FF7 Remake (which I also really liked)
XVI wasn't great, it was decent maybe even good but it wasn't a great game. Rebirth was a sequel that most gamers played Remake on the PS4 and many of those haven't picked up a PS5 yet. It also didn't help that the graphics were pretty blurry on Rebirth which was a turn off until they fix it.
Its too bad, Rebirth was amazing, but I think Remake turned a lot of people off and they didn't come back
Yeah. As I was playing 7 Remake, you could tell how painfully stretched out the story was. Many chapters were simply a matter of moving Cloud from one end of debris to another end of debris with no story progress at all the entire chapter. And the side content was awful as well. I don't have much interest in Rebirth. I got my FF fill with 16 and went all the way to getting Platinum. I don't have much interest beyond that. Maybe on a super steep sale later down the road.
Rebirth also really went into incorporating minigames into the story. Moreso than Remake. At the time it launched there where over 50 million playstation 5 systems sold. A lot of people who played Remake did not care about Rebirth.
Sadly. The game is amazing, deserved to sell 10 million copies
Only rebirth
Yah Rebirth, 16 was a big let down
I was with Rebirth in mind, didn't realized they were also talking about XVI
XVI is fine though. It's a nice game, not great but god
FF (non MMO) will most likely never sell 10 millions in 2 years again. Going multiplatform will help, but not that much. Over 50% of potential buyers are on PC (which is bigger than PS5 and Series combined). Switch 2 could double the sales but that still wouldn't be enough. As neither hit 5 million FFVII Rebirth sold around 2 million at launch and might be even sub 3 million.
Maybe those depressed Japanese sales were a problem. You didn't need to just be PS5. Frankly you know what your home fan base plays games on and it's notnthe PS5
Final Fantasy has always had being grand high production value spectacles as its brand identity. It needs to look cutting edge but japanese gamers aren't interested in that anymore. That's why final fantasy got increasingly westernized. ff16 was made for a western audience in mind and was written and voiced first in english like the resident evil series.
In the case of XVI, if it was an actual rpg an not an action game, (in rpg franchise) It would have sold better
Yes, it's too similar to DMC
It was far too shallow version. It's like dmc from temu
DMC from Temu haha :) I likve that analogy.
Essay Pro