I would not use FF Tactics as a good example of what Square wants. At a time when FF7 was selling 10 million, FF8 was selling 8 million and even FF9 was selling 5 million, FF Tactics had sold 2.4 million (by 2011 worldwide), beneath what even FF6 had sold in 1994. Tactics was not a very well selling game by Square's standards even during the SNES era
All good points. It boils down to three key points; development cycles take too long, the bean counters always have unrealistic expectations, and the pursuit of very slightly improved shiny graphics accomplishes nothing but to drive up cost and the aforementioned development times.
Back when Resident Evil VII came out, I watched the SBF (RIP) LP of it and I was amazed by the graphics, foolishly thinking "dude, these graphics are so amazing! We have finally achieved photorealism!", and then as the years went by, I slowly started to rebel against said photorealistic graphics because they are making games too expensive to make and they take FOR EVER to come out, sure, they have their place, I can't imagine a cel-shaded RE7, but more games should have stylized graphics, and it seems many people think the same thing.
@@Drago5899 Baldurs gate hasn't been a trash franchise with no good games for 20 years. Having no games at all is much better for your sales than 20 years of duds.
Exactly. So many big companies nowadays keep forgetting covid buff was a huge factor. That buff isn't going to keep going and that was a once in a lifetime situation for them.
And when regarding ff15 compared to 16. The marketing for 15 felt much bigger compared to 16. It's direct show compared to 16 is felt more out E3 the ff14 style live letters they did for 15. It was even being promoted heavily outside of its initial release date like the crossover with Tekken. Lastly, People were technically still aware of 15 because of its early developments as versus 13. It essentially getting the meme status similar to kh3 in terms of how long it was taking, thus causing this weird astonishment when it actually came out. 16 release relatively quick from its announcement compared to other big square titles so it didn't collect as much in people's mindshare compare to the forever developments like kh3 and ff15.
The phrase "Failed to meet sales expectations" means absolutely nothing when it's coming from Square Enix. If you took a shot every time they said that you would die of alcohol poisoning.
@@winter8920 It's sheer cope at this point. They know FF7R isn't doing well, they're just trying to deflect on this issue to avoid admitting the whole thing was just a bad idea.
Yeah no I agree with Pat. Timing was crucial. Because if you got FF7R 1 in 2016-2017 and got FF7R 2 in like 2021-2022, this conversation wouldn't even be happening.
This is the same company where the 2013 Tomb Raider sold 3.4 million copies in the first month and they still said it didn't reach expectations, their standards for a success have been ridiculous for years
Bro in the very first year that game went on a 50% sale less than half a year after it got out. In that same year later it got 75% sale. You really think they did it out of generocity and NOT because they saw low sales and realised they needed to somehow get more money?
@@thewraithwriter22 Because Tomb Raider was one of the most expensive games ever made when it released lol. Why did it cost so much? I sure as hell don't know, but Crystal Dynamics was absolutely blowing cash on that game before release.
Not sure why Pat thinks the older FFs were cheap to make. Do you really think the original FF7 was a cheap game to make at the time compared to other games of the period.
Pat just wants to keep parroting his opinion that every game should be like Yakuza. this idea that nobody cares about graphics is due to pat living in a bubble of niche game enjoyers. the vast majority of the FF community has been celebrating huge graphically intense games for an incredibly long time and asking them to just settle with upscaled PS2 games is fucking stupid especially when being at the forefront of fidelity has been SE's brand for decades. this is from the guy who desperately looked at steam charts to try and discredit Horizon only to find out that it was as popular as God of War on steam. love these guys but they have a serious misunderstanding on what is actually popular due to being surrounded by people who happen to think like they do. we are not past the days of the gang having no clue what Battle Royal was.
The problem with Square is that the only thing they still produce that makes any money is Final Fantasy. So when one comes out its expected to prop up the entire company. It's never going to be enough because theyre flopping in every other regard. At least the NFT guy is gone now.
They can't make smaller games because of shareholder expectations. And those expectations are that a new game make _every conceivable dollar_ in _every conceivable universe, per fiscal quarter._
Pat forgot about another audience that FF7 Remake lost: the people who are waiting for the trilogy to be complete to actually play the complete experience. I wanted to get FF7R on my PS4 ASAP, just from that 2015 trailer. But when I discovered it would be a multipart series of $60 (now $70) priced games, splitting the story of a single, 40 hour game, my excitement died. Specially when they announced the DLC for Remake was only gonna be on next-gen. The fact that players have to spend almost 10 years since Remakes launch to get the full thing, go through multiple console generations, with no clear communication on when these games will be coming out also kept me from diving in.
I was 28 when the remake was announced and I’ll be maybe 41 or 42 when the trilogy is done and probably won’t care to do more than look up the cutscenes on RUclips at that point. I would have eaten this **** up at 28 though
@@TheJadedJamesthen you really didn't liked it as much and it was just a fade for you. i mean i'm hella poor. only got to play ff7r bc of a shared account with my brother and prolly will only play this trilogy when the PS7 pro comes out and the FF7R bundle gets on sale in my used PS6 but i am as exctited to play them now as when it was announced
Didn’t make your money back? How about… making more than one game… that you spend less money on, and they come out sooner because they’re not bloated with content?
@@4Wilko Capcom doesn’t need to. Their games are doing just fine currently. Square on the other hand haven’t released a good FF for 23 years, then they decide to reimagine and change one of their most beloved games and then surprised pikachu face over it when people don’t care.
@@arpadszabo661 I know they don't need to but I'm not going to like it. With rereleases filtered out comparing their current output to other eras of Capcom is really frustrating.
I think Intergrade hurt them in the long run too. It felt kinda bad faith. They already said they were going to ask you to buy at least three games to get the whole story. Adding this weird addon with weirder upgrade paths though PSN, etc. It was very strange and felt bad.
Big shock to no one: Selling a massive IP and limiting it to ONE PLATFORM is absolutely no way to get similar results to FF15 and FF14 which are available ON EVERYTHING
This argument doesn't work with FF14 since it was Playstation and PC only for most of its lifetime, as still sold gangbusters. FF14 sold well because it focused on delivering a fun to play, well performing and well written game instead of trying to render every pore on the skin of each character and every hairstrand.
PS5 had bad initial market penetration due to the chip shortage, price, and bad supply versus demand. They picked back up eventually, but PS5 games can only really be sold to PS5 owners, of which there's not all that many of compared to Switch or PC.
I would say I prefer the Blumhouse method, I think it is better to have 100 $3 million projects going than 1 $300 million project going. Will all 100 of those projects be successful or complete, no, but you can get one banger that basically pays for the rest (Paranormal activity), or some critical darlings like Whiplash. (Edit: I'm a bit of a dumb dumb) Going with a comparison that isn't Like a Dragon, look at From Software. There production cycle has slowed down, but still seem to be constantly publishing quality products every 2-3 years. Probably because they have a good understanding what to focus on and what not to, lots of character/enemy attack animation and detailed worlds, but short cutscenes and lip-syncing not so important. Final Fantasy games wants to do EVERYTHING up to 11.
Square tried this and it was losing them money. This is why they just pruned all of their studios projects and are focusing on fewer games but higher quality. Also yakuza cannot be compared to FF games. They reuse the same assets every year for years until they finally have to make a new map. Theres a reason the new majima game is re-using hawaii lol. Its cheap to produce and fast to make.
Square literally did this lol. Look at their steam catalogue its mostly indie style oldschool jrpgs. Maybe final fantasy just isn't in the cultural zeitgeist anymore and we don't get a other FF for 20 years.
Its not that Rebirth and 16 failed to meet expectations...they failed to meet expectations to cover for Squares failed products like Forspoken and Foamstars
More like they failed to justify the obscene amounts of time and money they poured into these games. FF14 already has those other flops covered, but when FF7 takes over a decade to produce and MULTIPLE console generations, it's going to need to reach a high bar out the gate.
From what has been publicly shared, it really seems like it's not the case this time. Both can be true at the same time imo. Yeah, Avengers, GotG, Forspoken and Foamstars must've bleed them a lot of money, but that doesn't change the fact that these flagship titles (FF16 and 7Rebirth) aren't selling much compared to their previous flagships and even compared to current AAA games. Avengers didn't make 7Rebirth a AAAA production budget with cutting-edge graphics and scope, it was Square themselves.
Everybody forgets about Symbiogenesis, the NFT collectable art game. The former CEO pumped a lot of money into crypto. Last update was another investment in march '24. Looks like the grift isn't paying off for SE
"If we just set our expectations high enough, then we never have to pay our teams for success." Amazingly this mindset has somehow resulted in an industry where nobody pushes to succeed.
6:30 I think Pat definitely has a point here. If they had gone the more different route that also would have freed up space for an extremely faithlful 1:1 to the original, including the old fashioned turn based combat type remake and cash in twice with the same assets. Speaking of faithful remakes, I think the Resident Evil series could also benefit from making a Resdient Evil Classic remake series where they remake RE2 & 3 like they did for RE1 and then make a modern RE type remake for RE1. Those games are so different from each other that there's definitely a market for it.
"Turn based is old, busted, and shit and no one wants it ever again!" - Square Enix, mere minutes before Baldur's Gate 3 dropped a nuke on the industry.
Pat does himself a disservice by saying the (minor) changes to the story are the reason why the game didnt sell a billion copies. 50 million ps5 owners aren't choosing to skip rebirth because of the story. They're skipping it because final fantasy is lame and gay and has been for 20 years.
@@SeasoningTheObese It has been so cathartic seeing what has happened to the industry the past few years. The formats that had been left in the dust because these holier-than-thou devs and "journalists" kept saying were outdated and not that good, only for genre revival bangers to drop and sell millions.
I don't call 60 million PS5 a "low" adoption rate. Have you also considered that people could, hear me out, NOT want to play these games on ONLY PlayStation
as it turns out releasing a console that nobody can buy just turns consumers towards PC. And once you build your own pc, you really never do go back. After all, most console exclusives come onto steam, and the ones that dont can be played on pc in other various hilarious ways.
Dude, FFXVI only selling 3 million and still no sales update from Square is *low* for a brand of that legacy. This isn't Square being unreasonable this time. Where even *Pikmin* and *Super Mario RPG* is starting to outsell Final Fantasy is where Square is absolutely right to be concerned
it's Funny hearing these numbers for FF, but then cutting over to Fromsoftware and Bandai shocked that AC6 went beyond their expectations because they knew it wouldn't do Elden Ring Numbers, but it sold over 3 Million copies for AC6 and for a dead series that is the definition of Niche and in Niche Genre to sell that well is great considering the best the Series ever did was 1Million Copies and they already starting do more hiring for staff who work or have experience in the Mecha Genre to make AC Games. {Side Note AC6 makes up 72% of the Value of the AC Series}
I think what Pat said about "I hope you played the original FF7 in the mid 90s for you to really get this in your chest, because we expect you to have" rings with me. Never played OG FF7 and I started with Remake (despite knowing the most common known things like Aerith dying) I felt FF7Remake did a fantastic job explaining to me most of the plot and made me really hyped for Rebirth. Then the Yuffie DLC came out and as soon as the Deepground stuff happened I was completely lost plot-wise because it came out of nowhere and the game did nothing to explain it, as if I was supposed to know already of this. That was most of my experience with Rebirth. Sometimes I felt like the game expected me to know the things rather than introducing them to me, which in the end left a sour taste in my mouth.
You need play the original FF7, then play all spin-off, watch shitty Adventure movie, read the novels, play all mobiles games exclusive in japan and finally can play """"Remake"""" FF7. This is most bullshit KH if you want get it the lore and characters. Nomura is fucking insane.
@@theboihilbirt1277I will say that you do need to play the original FF7 and crisis core to really appreciate it, but the games are fully enjoyable on their own merit. They still have their own story to tell, a vast majority of it is still retained from the original game. Stop making it seem more complicated and worst than it actually is bro
That and limiting it to just ONE console and PC doesn't help either. Square wouldn't specifically mention Nintendo and Xbox of all things if they weren't regretting the Sony deal
@TrojanGamer10 I doubt Xbox version will really ever happen but yeah Square missing the Switch is extremely dumb. I bet if they release a trilogy version for Switch 2 they would make gangbusters
@@TrojanGamer10 The LEAST they could've done was make sure Rebirth was on the PS4 as well, so people wouldn't have to buy yet another console just to keep up with the story. I don't get why they thought a game as polarizing as this would be a system seller.
I've had this weird thought in my mind lately, but I feel like this push for higher fidelity in pixel count specifically to emulate real life almost pushes this idea that we can't immerse ourselves in settings unless we're able to view things with a magnifying glass. But then I look back and remember people were able to do that nearly 2 decades ago because of how impressive it felt at the time. Instead of continuously pushing further towards technological leaps that get less impressive with each generation, why not train ourselves to settle for what we already have? You can push your tech in other ways that push towards that immersion, such as with dynamic systems. Destructable environments, complex AI, interactive buildings and homes, etc.
@@leithaziz2716 what people always say is that good ai and so on is really expensive, so they can't do that, but i wonder how true that really is. if you look at the credits for these big games there are a ton of people involved in the art and design/scripting side of things, but the size of programming teams hasn't really increased much since the late 90s. i know good programmers earn a lot, but surely good artists do too? i think it's probably because impressive graphics are a thing you can immediately see and assign value to, whereas the benefits of good npc ai and so on are much harder to quantify
@@leithaziz2716 The original Deus Ex from 2000 let you open and close individual drawers in desks and cabinets and many games nowadays don't let you do that, it's EMBARASSING. That game is still really immersive to this day.
I was entering high school when FF7 came out. I was obsessed with it. I had multiple saves with over a hundred hours each. I would theorycraft materia setups with my friends in homeroom. The first thing I did when I got a PSP was set it up to emulate FF7. I was *the* target demographic for a remake of 7. I'm now 37 years old. In the time I've been waiting for that remake I graduated high school, dropped out of college, became depressed, overcame depression, moved out of my parent's house, had a career in the trades, bought a house, and started a new mid-life crisis career. If they wanted me to care this needed to come out at least a decade ago, be one game, and not cost $200+.
I'd love to see a study done on FF15 and why it sold SO much. The hype prior to its release was high AF, but word of mouth on the game was polarizing from my experience, specially considering the amount of out-of-the-game media you "had" to watch to get the whole experience, and the barebones gameplay (at release at least)
FF15 being the mess it was is probably at least a bit of the reason the newer games aren’t selling as well. A lot of new people must have had it as their first Final Fantasy and were put off by it being ludicrously unfinished. FF 16 being Game of Thrones, after that series impaled itself with a rusty, shit covered sword, didn’t give that game any help.
Look up "FFXV and the Marketing of Doom". They spent a LOT of money on celebrity voice acting for the Kingsglaive tie-in movie and had to make up for the development costs of FF Versus XIII starting on PS3, changing game engines twice, the creation of Luminous Engine to support the PS4 release, etc. And Luminous then spun off into its own studio, Hajime Tabata quit 2 years after the game released, they essentially announced the game's death (and PC support with it) on its second birthday, and Forspoken flopped.
I think there's a lot to considerate when is about these 2 games and and their "low sales": 1) Them being PS5 exlcusives kinda hurt the availability aspect for the consumers, complete hurting the Microsoft/Xbox users in the process. 2) Maybe people didn't like the "changes" that were made in FF7 Rebirth's story when compared to the original PS1 game, and those story changes were spread like fire by all the internet through social media. 3) Maybe people didn't like the gameplay of FF16, that fact is a action hack n' slash rpg, that's Square's Devil May Cry in a way is something that didn't "click" with a lot of people, like the fact that there's only 1 playable character (Clive) instead of a full party, or that you have many "options" for doing combos or attacks to the point of confusing people, etc. all of that for sure alienate a lot of FF fans, so maybe people only wants a more "traditional" rpg and/or action rpg, rather than a "DMC the RPG" type experience (not everyone is Woolie after all). 4) The fact that not that many people still have a PS5 yet and they don't consider to change/upgrade to the new hardware, because there isn't that many "offers" in terms of games to play, the lack of exclusives, cases like the one of Concord have effects in the people POV about the console and Sony itself, or that people don't think about getting a new console only to play 1 single game (not everyone is Maximillian Dood with FF7 Rebirth and the PS5 Pro after all). ...and many more other possible reasons of why this 2 game didn't sold as expected, which is a shame because they're really good games,
the problem with xvi isn't that it was an action game, it's that it wasn't a very good action game, and it was also at the same time trying to be a not very good rpg. if it could have pulled at least one of these halves off, i might've liked it better than i did, it might even have been cool despite the entirely mid story and underdeveloped characters. but between bland and repetitive encounter design, criminal overuse of qtes in the big setpiece boss fights that absolutely killed any hype they were trying to build, and how shallow and tacked on every single rpg element came out, the reason people didn't like the gameplay of xvi is because it just wasn't very good. don't get me wrong, there are incredibly annoying final fantasy fans who just whine about it because it isn't turn-based, as if the series suddenly stopped being turn-based in 2023 and not twenty years earlier (or, arguably, thirty! but that's off topic), but just because people who should have been playing dragon quest this whole time are wrong when they complain about final fantasy gameplay doesn't mean that xvi's gameplay was any good. hell, after i rolled credits on xvi i was worried i was just getting too cynical with the way everything it threw at me failed to grab me, i couldn't even remember any of its music that people were talking up so much. but then i started playing dmc5 immediately after and loved everything it had going on, so i do feel confident that the problem was xvi and not me.
The lack of sales for Rebirth is unfortunate if only for the fact that a lot of people didn't experience its combat. Whatever the game's other faults may be, combat is _sick_ ! The customization, abilities, team attacks, etc. I'm really curious to see how they iterate on it going forward.
This ain't the 90s, story matters to a lot of gamers. If you're going to sell a game on being a remake, remake it. If you're gonna make a different game, make a different game. This game probably wouldn't have sold half of what it did if it didn't bait and switch by putting on an FF7 costume and it made its situation worse by not actually being FF7.
@@alastor8091 Frankly I don't think a story like this would've sold even in the 90s. Hell, if anything a game like this would've probably been recieved WAY worse back then; Square already set the bar for storytelling high enough by that point for this to be acceptable.
It's always really funny when Woolie comes in knowing NOTHING about the subject and just kinda BSing his questions Like a reporter who did no research whatsoever before the interview
@@blakesummers3764 The first FF7 Remake game was always going to sell, and the sequels were always going to sell less, because making it a trilogy was a stupid idea
@@TheJadedJames Sequels always sell less if the game follows a story you must play in sequence to follow. RE sells well because nobody fucking cares about the story.
i'm pretty sure how Dragon Quest games get made is the executives all bow real low to Yuji Horii and then he takes the entire team into some sort of development temple and shuts the door, and then no one enters or leaves until one day white smoke appears from the chimney and a new Dragon Quest game is released
I feel that the FF7 Remake trilogy will make more money after the entire trilogy is released. I could see a decently priced bundle of all 3 games selling well. and in the long run could be quite profitable.
I like where Rebirth/Remake went but I'm a PC player VEHEMENTLY against giving Sony any money for a paper weight. I would have paid full price for Rebirth if Squeenix didn't try to fuck me with exclusivity deals. Wonder how many people are in the same spot.
Indeed. When I was willing to pay for a PS5 they weren't available. Now that they are, I don't care. There are very few games on it that I want to play to warrant spending the money and the few that I do want to play will be released on PC eventually, so I'll just wait.
I bought a ps5 just for FF XVI and FF VII Rebirth. And FF XVI was meh, but okay I guess, FF VII rebirth is the biggest cultural disgrace in history that destroyed the most well known death in gaming.
not enough ps5 owners who are also jrpg fans who also already beat ff7r i guess? i don't even own a ps5 (or any other console atm, might get a switch sometime), it's not my fault, square :] . i'll get it on pc
If I knew FFXVI would come out on PC anytime soon, I would have put that money towards that instead of Black Myth Wukong. I think they should have announced it sooner
They can talk about the remake all day, but the fact that 15 (the one with the car, the one that fans “like”) did better than 16 is wild. This is going to make SquEnix (and I’d think Sony too) take a hard look at where things stand. Because Sony “won” the console generation, but the install base just isn’t there. There’s no way the SquEnix board just declares: “We’re okay with selling fewer units in the name of exclusivity.”
Pat is right about the development time for the FF7 Remake trilogy being way too long. A series should not get announced and then have to span multiple console generations to complete a trilogy. It's kind of the embodiment of everything currently wrong with the industry with it being teams of thousands and ungodly amounts of money. I went from the start of my 20's to the start of my 30's for 2 games with the last one not even being that enjoyable. I mean we got 3 quality Resident Evil Remakes from the span of 2019 to 2023.
Me, a Silksong fan: (I'm in my 20s, but it's weird to realise a quarter of my life has been spent waiting for a game. It's a unique feeling. Fighting game sequels can also take a decade, but that's because they continue supporting current titles, so I don't mind)
Long? The wait from Remake to Rebirth was 4 years which is shockingly fast considering how big the game is and how most new games take 5+ years to come out now
RE remakes aren't full rpgs with a party of 6 unique characters and multiple open maps while not cutting any levels or content from the ps1 game unlike REmake 2 and 3
@@MurakamiTenshi idk ps5 is really popular. the ff brand is just not that mainstream anymore sadly. The trend goes to games like baldurs gate that give you a lot of options. FF is more classical in that way. I think ff15 did a lot of damage to the brandbecause it was a mess. even tho i loved it but i love almost every ff game
PS5 has over 50+ million active users. sorry but this is just SE cope are you saying Rebirth somehow magically couldn't sell more then 5M to 50 million people?
If they wanted me to play Rebirth, maybe they should've made Remake tell like a cohesive and satisfying story that a new player can get into. Not like 1/3 of a story or whatever full of padding and time ghosts and canon fan wank. If all you've got is "this is a very expensive game", how are you gonna get people to play? They got a lot of people to try Remake 'cause the original FF7 has a ton of fans that talked it up, which drummed up a lot of interest. Of course you wanna see what's going on if so many people love the game. But I'm not going in for more after that game, man. I had a bite and did not like what it tasted like. I don't care what's gonna happen next. Who's gonna throw 70 bucks at the next one if they feel like that? Obviously I'm not speaking for everyone but judging by sales I'm not alone either.
True. I played the original many times, and remake was not for new players. I was confused even this way, but its obvious that was made with the expectation that everyone who will buy this already played the OG. But there is 2 issue with that. 1. That’s not the case and many people barely understand what’s happening. 2. Those who played it don’t want a reimagining
This was me. Never touched FF7 and was excited to finally play such a gassed up story. Unfortunately Nomura wants to make an Evangelion Rewrite instead. Maybe in another 30 years I'll get an actual FF7 remake...
FF7 remake was literally the only reason I bothered to get a PS4, and when Rebirth came out on PS5 I was like "Well f*ck me then". So I am waiting till FF7 part 3 Revengeance comes out so I can buy the whole thing on a single console, that's all that is to me
I know the focus was mostly on FF7R but, I think newcomers to FF aren’t hooked with FF16 because it just doesn’t get recommended on RUclips or overwhelmed with the other FF because they don’t know the series is like an anthology. (In addition, I think the current gaming climate plays a role with the censorship controversy of FF7R too) I think the lack of “moments” that hooks laymen people played a role in low sales. I had FFX on my PS2 but I didn’t really spend much time on it. Then I watched the Wakka Files and I rebought FFX/2 on Steam because of it. I don’t even know what ff16 about. I bought strangers in paradise because I’ve seen clips of Jack but I’ve never been recommended any shorts nor video on FF16 other than Digital Foundry’s stuff. I still get Dragon’s Dogma 2 stuff much more frequently with the sphinx or open world shenanigans. Digressing but, I like FF as an art gallery than a game series. 18:24 I also agree that games are too big (including file sizes). It’s quantity of hours vs quality of hours. Sonic Adventures 2 was shorter than Frontiers or the devilish 06, but I had way more fun and satisfaction with Adventures 2. Space Marine 2 is shorter than most games nowadays but I still came out satisfied and wanting more.
Ff16 suffers from mmo pacing. It's a fine game, it rivals other action games easily, but it has a unique problem of being questline focused the same way ff14 is, which works for ff14 because the msq is not the only thing you are doing in that game.
@@Vanity0666 Yeah im going through it now (bout 2/3s through), I dont mind the story so far and i like the characters but the game suffers from tremendous bloat thats beginning to wear on me a bit. Unnecessary crafting system that still ends up mostly being linear. Like 70% of the side quest (some main quest as well) could easily be cut and change nothing and ignoring them is not easy cause the other 30% I feel are worth doin and I dont wanna accidentally skip any good ones. Weapons and Items in this game are extremely unfulfilling to upgrade due to them just being small incremental stat/damage boost. The amount of QTEs in this game is a meme (like why does every other door need me to hold down a button to open it; its absurd) and very inconsistent. I still lean more positively towards 16 still and I love 14 but it feels like they took a lot of the absolute worst parts of what is usually required in MMOs and put them into a game that shouldnt be constrained by the limitations or problems of a MMO.
I understand exclusives are the main appeal of consoles, but when your games budget is that big you NEED to get that product on as many platforms as possible to even have hope of making a profit.
On top of all the reasons you guys mentioned a bunch of people are also waiting for it to release on PC because that's where they played Remake, and it's still not there yet.
It is, but they actively turned off sections of it's possible audience, both of those that didn't want Kingdom Hearts nonsense in their remake and people who were getting it because they thought they were getting to finally play a modern version of the game everybody jizzed about for 20 years, and instead left confused as fuck only to find out all that shit wasn't in the original and it's a weird meta sequel where you needed ot have played the original. So they made sure their audience for the second was guaranteed to be smaller than the first, and then put it only on PS5. Somehow they managed to be so stupid as to do it again as well, since the second still has the stuff that makes the story of the original impossible to remain effective (such as Zack being alive and all the Sephiroth and time ghost shit), but still tried to have their cake and kept all the major events the same. So now the people that stuck around because they were excited to see what they possibly had planned got "FF7 but worse and makes less sense" as their reward for it.
No. It‘s not surprising - It’s only on PS5 - It’s a direct sequel to a game with a controversial twist - Final Fantasy 7 is pushing 30 years old and FF7R is too reliant on you remembering it clearly (which could have worked if it released in 2010, but not to today when you’ve got to be 34+ to have played FF7 when it was new). FF7 Rebirth is the most expensive niche game ever game
@@TheJadedJames I think the biggest thing is that they severely overestimated how many times they could cash in on people's nostalgia. Most people do not finish games. We know this just by looking at achievement statistics. I think a lot of Remake's sales were people who remembered playing FFVII over 20 years ago, played the first few hours, and then never touched it again. Their nostalgia trip was satisfied for a couple of days. Why would any of those people bother to buy Rebirth?
@@enterprise9001 You can make direct sequels that are somewhat inaccessible to people who didn’t play or finish the original thing. But FF7 Rebirth is an even more extreme versions of that than something like Mass Effect
Sony squareenix and microsoft. xbox doesn't have exclusives which means theres no reason to own a console but more people can play the games. Squareenix & Playstation has exclusives they'll hold on to which are not making what their exceptions are because they're locked behind their console (until it gets released to later platforms)
From what I've heard, the numbers Squeenix are using are *supposed* to be taking into account each game's exclusivity period. However, they really can't be doing themselves any favors by locking all the PC players out of the hype machine for 7 Rebirth. 16 is available on PC now, and I've basically heard nothing about it. It's honestly made me reconsider where it lives on the list of my purchasing priorities.
Everyone keeps pointing at issues like "Oh the exclusivity limited the sales" or "Oh, Rebirth is a sequel to Remake, that's why it's selling less" but that's ignoring the fact that FF7-10 sold like gangbusters while limited to a single platform and even as far as sequels go, Rebirth is selling worse than FFX-2 and the FFXIII sequels. I think there's an Occam's Razor here that people aren't talking about: FF didn't get popular because of its substance, it got popular because of its graphical edge over its contemporaries. The games were good before 7 but it would be naive to ignore the power that those FMV cutscenes played in the marketing campaign for the game, same with 8 and 9 and 10. But now? FF is just another AAA series among MANY that looks gorgeous. They have no unique advantage in graphics anymore and so they're losing market share to games that look just as good if not better. This isn't a solvable issue, FF can't really back out of the AAA business model that THEY invented and pioneered and popularized. The answer might be that FF becomes a more infrequent thing and Square has to rely on other IP that aren't saddled with as much baggage
I agree with almost all you're saying. I do think this console generation has hurt gaming in general because of disruptions during early hype cycles and people just reprioritizing. Lots of people who would buy something during hype for it, will maybe rethink things months and such on. I'm not making a judgement on if that is good or bad, just that it seems to be a part of it for all gaming at the moment. Momentum and inertia is a thing.
I think the biggest reason why Rebirth only sold 2 million units was because it was a sequel to a controversial game. If it was a direct sequel to a popular game it would have sold better. Remake alienated people whether they were new to the franchise or returning fans. The only people who came back were the few returning fans who weren’t alienated. If Square Enix made a faithful remake in 2020 they’d have outsold all the Resident Evil remakes, because new players & old fans could play them. But the developers at Square were clearly bored with the idea of a faithful game remake and rebelled against it to their peril.
@@TheJadedJames I think that's maybe looking too hard into it. If controversy was enough to kill game sales, than XIII would have tanked XV's sales. Hell, XV's dev cycle would have tanked XV's sales. And being a sequel doesn't really justify it either when plenty of sequels have sold better than their predecessors. I think the basic issue is that FF doesn't have a very compelling pitch for AAA audiences now that they have so much AAA competition
@@skieth9999 That’s a false equivalence. FF7 Rebirth is a direct sequel. Not liking FF13 is irrelevant to the purchase of FF15 because it is an anthology and you know the new game is doing its own thing. FF7 Rebirth is declaring “We aren’t doing a remake. It’s a multiverse sequel or whatever.” So you’ve got to be on board with that story decision to be on board with the new game.
@@TheJadedJames I'd argue two points: First, the average normie that makes up 70% of the better selling FF games' buyers don't know they're not direct sequels. That's actually something that people who only buy the Flavor of the Month big AAA game don't care about. And again, there are plenty of direct sequels that do fine, if not better, than their predecessors. Games like Witcher 3 did better than Witcher 2, for instance. Second, even if we want to do an apples to apples comparison, Rebirth is doing worse than other direct sequels to FF games. FFXIII-2 sold 5 million units world wide, 1 million just in Japan
You aren’t gonna get PS4 sales numbers with the PS5 install base. I’ve also never disagreed with someone more about a video game. Wanting evercrisis style over what we have gotten in the remake series?? Dude has to be drunk. Edit: I guess I see his point though. Still a hard disagree. - takes a shot to get there -
the install base for PS5 is still around over 50+ million active users. PS5 and PS4 actually have pretty close numbers to users. there is really no excuse for Rebirth selling poorly outside of SEs decisions.
I guarantee you that Square Enix’s executives are dumb enough to NOT include the exclusivity money in the sales of the game. They probably went “cool, free pile of money” and blew it on Babylon’s Fall and forgot about it. Then, when the new Final Fantasy games come out as exclusives and sell less because of it, they lose their minds and are confused why the game is making less money.
I mean lets be honest first n foremost balders gate 3 absolutely crippled ff16's long term sales ontop of 16 just flat out abandoning its rpg roots while bg3 embraced it
Bg3 being a competitor is absolutely true. People with full time jobs (people who had the original 90s/00s final fantasy hype experience) aren't going to have the time to play two full 100+ games and bg3 appeals more to the classic rpg sentiment than FF7R2
I’m going to be real, as someone who fucking hates turn based games, I absolutely welcomed FF7 Remake; HOWEVER, I bought BG3 because it just seemed like more game, and the idea of making your own adventure like what BG3 offered was irresistible. That softened my stance on Turn Based, but the main reason I just didn’t get FF7 was because there was so many other games I wanted instead and it was expensive.
@@clockworkphysicistI’m not a purist for turn based on real-time combat. But I found it hilarious bow BG3 awakened a bunch of discourse from people who felt they just couldn’t get into one of the most beloved games of the generation because they don’t like turn based combat. Then the opposite thing happened with FF16 where we had old heads who felt like their childhoods has been murdered by the real-time combat mechanics of FF16
Slight counter-point to Pat's argument for making simpler games quicker: We do _NOT_ want game companies to start following the same philosophy as Disney's MCU and Star Wars series, and just start pumping out as much mindless _slop_ as they can. That's too much in the other direction.
pats whole opinion on that subject is pretty pointless tbh. he's essentially just saying. all he's saying is "i want good game not bad game" he's more then happy to glaze all over the huge triple A games that he enjoys even though they only exist because of the thing he's complaining about. love the man but pat is peak redditor armchair ceo brain. "why dont they just make game good then they make money" yeah okay thanks for the insight pat. now explain why barely anyone played Alan Wake 2.
I love when they take a single game, break it up into multiple games as if I have unlimited time. I couldn't even finish FF7 remake, how can they expect me to stay interested through two more installments of it?
I have a confession to make; My first introduction to the franchise that is FF7 was Dirge of Cerberus. So i am in the small small minority, but i want a Dirge of Cerberus remake like what they did for Crisis Core
FF7 is a legendary game in a legendary series IF you are around the age of 30. Nowadays? Not so much. At 33, I am the target audience for FF7 Remake, but I understand that shit is OLD.
I’m 31 and i don’t feel like i’m the target audience. Nor do i remember FF as a legendary franchise anymore when half of the franchise is bad or okay at best at this point.
@@arpadszabo661 i consider it legendary and I'm 29 but I grew up with ff8 ff9 and ff10 and all of them are considered good. You probably didn't play them
@@Deminese2 i did, but 10 came out 23 years ago. Not having a great game for 23 years while the franchise is still ongoing, is not a legendary franchise.
The talk about dev cycles is really serious, and is going to lead to very real long term issues. Like Pat said, from announcement to the trilogy telling the story of ONE GAME finishing is an entire K-12 education. I know this isnt really a fair comparison. But my nephew was obsessed with Undertale when he was 3. He turns 12 this december. How can anybody possibly maintain legit hype for a property when you get 1 or 2 updates, if that, for an entire decade+? I got Super Mario 1, 2, 3, and World when I was in gradeschool. Sonic the Hedgehog 1, 2, 3, & Knuckles, 3D Blast, Spinball, CD, Adventure, Adventure 2, Advance 1, 2, and 3, all just while I was in school. That's how you become a fan of not just a game, but a NAME, a character, a franchise. Pokemon, in part, STILL commands insane popularity because, in that same time span, he has gotten Sun/Moon, OR/AS, LG Pikachu/Eevee, Sword/Shield, BD/SP, Legends Arceus, AND Scarlet/Violet. He knows the names, he knows the characters, they'll always be a core part of his childhood memories because Pokemon genuinely grew up with him! Final Fantasy, in that time, has dropped... 2 main titles. 4 if you include the FF7R series. He ONLY knows about Cloud and Sepheroth through Super Smash Bros Ultimate. He is half convinced the main antagonist of FF7 is called "Shirt-le Off" because of his alt costumes. You don't maintain a fanbase, customer loyalty, get a good reputation, when you drop a game every 5+ years. I dont want to just crunch dev cycles to toxic levels, but I do want us to have more realistic expectations for graphics and preformance vs good gameplay systems.
Now I don’t think this significantly impacted sales, but one of my disappointments with 7 Rebirth was the story direction and the recent comments the creators made on the story. It felt like a gut punch to basically hear from the devs themselves that they were scared of really going crazy with the plot and are kind of just middling their way through the writing process, trying to please everyone as they always do. That’s always Squares weakness, they want EVERYONE to like EVERYTHING they make, they can’t just pick a vision and stick to it. This is why 15 tried to have action combat and also turn based combat and failed at both. This is why 16 had great action combat but was too easy because they tried too hard to appeal to people who didn’t want action combat, who weren’t gonna get the game to begin with. This is why despite Rebirth having a decent mix of action and RPG the action elements can still feel lacking. Square just refuses to alienate anyone and in doing so alienates everyone
It's interesting that Woolie talked about the nature of FF7 as this "larger than life" IP, of course, making a project out of itself for its long-awaited remake, following the industry trend of creating a cinematic universe, and now you have Marvel not being able to make enough money to greenlit all of their half-assed movies no one wants to see anymore.
I will forever miss the golden age of Final Fantasy games, in which we got multiple fan favorites all within a handful of years. I don't need these insane gorgeous big expensive graphics. Yeah, FF16 and 7R looks absolutely amazing, I love the character animations in 7R so much... But I would take smaller turn based games always. Or, hell, just give us more like FFX if you still want to be cinematic. Just stop going for such multi-million behemoths of projects when it keeps 'falling below expectations.'
the sad reality is that the modern FF fanbase are obsessed with graphics and big budgets. Maximillian is basically the poster child for the FF7R and is coincidently one of the few people you'll see advocate for the PS5 Pro just to get textures slightly better for Rebirth. Almost the entire community around the Remakes have become entirely vapid consumers at this point.
FF7 Rebirth did NOT need that intro to Gold Saucer scene lmao. I could pick out a few scenes besides just that, but oh my gosh that scene felt like SO Much money went into it. We did not need remotely half of that lmao.
It's both an in and out of universe signature of unmitigated decadence lol. I'm still in Remake atm (and loving it tbh) but as someone who enjoys most FF entries I've played I fear for where we're going very much. Especially vision wise, and Yoshi-P can't exactly go around saving the framework of the whole company like he did 14
here is another thing that happen that is very important that happen when Final Fantasy 7 remake came out a goal pandemic covid, I remember very clearly because of all the restrictions going on I remember people getting the remake just to pass time because of the lockdown.
I bought rebirth, but I’m in the camp that wanted a remake not a sequel. I liked how things in remake were expanded, but the sequel stuff is so garbage. Take out the dementors and the ending and FF7 remake would have been perfect. As for Rebirth I feel the exact same. The expanded versions of original sections were great, while everything to do with the other timeline, the dementors and Sephiroth past the flashback fucking blows. I’m undecided if I’ll buy part 3. If it’s as bloated as Rebirth I’m definitely skipping.
I refuse to take seriously the words of execs that do not live in reality. Did they underperform? Yes... In the context of undoubtedly bloated budgets. And let's not forget that it wasn't too long ago that Squeenix was whining about not knowing what to do with Final Fantasy.
ok, bear in mind i'm looking at FF7 as its own series separate from the rest of Final Fantasy. FF7 released in 1997, Remake was 2020. The last game released before Remake was Crisis Core in 2007, so it was 13 years of no games. DOOM released in 1993, DOOM 2016 was, well, 2016. The last game released before 2016 was DOOM 3 in 2004, so 12 years instead. i don't think Remake came too late, i think people just don't care anymore, not as much as they did back in the 90's when technology was the only thing that made FF7 special.
Rpgs infamously do not sell large figures on launch, but have the longest tail by several orders of magnitude. Rpg releases generally have a 10+ year sales tail where every other genre has like a 6-9 month tail. In an environment where the only thing that matters to shareholders is fast money and quarterly results, long-term profit is seen as a failure.
Doom 2016 does not ask the player to be familiar with older Doom lore. A kid born in 2000 could have jumped right into Doom 2016 like it was an original IP FF7R goes out of its way to alienate anyone not familiar with the 1997 original
Well seing as how most ps users are still on ps4, yeah thatll happen. Rebirth sold pretty well. But they could of made the game look like cardboard for the ps4 and i still would of played it. Shame. Oh well.
Rebirth is a 10/10 game that not a lot of people want to play and gamers are being very disingenuous by not stating the fact that final fantasy as a brand was destroyed during the 2010's. It's not a household name anymore. It hasn't been for multiple decades, and square expects it to sell well enough to cover the costs of multiple hundred million dollar flops in Forspoken, Foamstars and Avengers. It's funny that woolly, with less final fantasy knowledge, understands better than pat why final fantasy isn't selling well anymore. A series synonymous with the best visuals in the industry, the biggest adventure, the most graphics, it has pidgeonholed itself into a situation where it HAS to be a 200 million dollar game or else its not FINAL FANTASY THE BIGGEST VISUAL SPECTACLE IN THE INDUSTRY. Console exclusivity hampers sales, clinging to cutting edge graphics kills your budget, multiple decades of bad games ensures your new game won't pop just because people say hey this ones good.
Yeah a lot of people don't want to aknowledge the damage stuff like Dirge of Cerberus, the 13 trilogy (and the entire debacle that was the Fabula Nova Crystallis plan), 15, and the initial release of 14 did to the name Final Fantasy.
i really love ff13-2, it's one of my favourite games in the entire series :o . great voice actors (liam o'brien and laura bailey voice two of the main characters), fantastic music, cool worlds with tons of secrets... i think not that many people gave it a chance because of 13 tho unfortunately but i also like forspoken, so maybe i'm just weird
The issue is being locked to one console that is a laughing stock like the PS5, most gamers don't even remember XIII and XV and don't care as long as the new release is good.
14:30 Pat thinks a cheap port would sell when you could buy the original for cheaper anyhow. They had two options; full remake or re-release the original which you can buy already.
17:28 - Or the high school girl that in a survey said: "Metal Gear Solid is full of old people". That single comment created Raiden... But then, as the years went on, Kojima doubled-down, ending the series on a senior citizen brawler.
These kinds of discussions are ultimately a bunch of people sitting around and going "well if they only did specifically what I wanted for my maximum wish fulfillment then it'd sell 400 million units in 5 seconds!" There's much colder and more cynical reasons for FF7R2's slow sales that better paint a picture of why it hasn't taken off has hard. 1. The first game launched on a platform with an install base of roughly 120 million users. This one launched on a platform with an install base of roughly 50 million. You have under half the potential customers, already cutting your reach by half. 2. FF7R launched on top of covid lockdowns- the single highest period of game spending in human history unlikely to be matched until everyone alive right now is dust. FF7R2 launched on the verge of an industry crash and a greater economic recession. 3. FF7R2 is selling roughly half as much as FF7R and has maintained a long tail of consistent sales thus far. it's entirely possible that this sells as much as FF7R in the long run, just over a longer period of time due to the lower relative install base and the lack of a covid spending boost. 4. This is admittedly much more tangential, but windfall from previous games reception in any particular franchise are often better indicators of sales than the actual product itself. Good example: DMC 2 and 4 sold much better than DMC 3 despite both being considered much worse games. DMC 2 followed DMC and sold better. DMC 3 followed DMC 2 and sold worse. DMC 4 followed DMC 3 and sold better. FF16 sold quite well at launch before plummeting off a cliff- potentially because of poor word of mouth as people got further in and the game's story and mechanics failed to maintain interest- alongside the not insignificant factor of the game being misogynistic as hell in a fanbase that has a lot more women in it. FF16 launched with previous titles being FF7R, ShB/EW, mega-successful critical and commercial hits. FF7R2 launched with the previous title being FF16, a piece of shit with sales that cratered as soon as word of mouth had time to spread. Is this me being unfair to FF16 because it's very bad and am I performing the same type of wish fulfillment I chided people for at the beginning of this post? Yes.
Also worth saying that anyone trying to paint the PS5 as some sort of flop console that has people en masse migrating to PC is also delusional. It has just about the exact same sales as the PS4 did at this point, trailing slightly behind because, again, verge of a recession. It isn't outperforming the PS4 by any stretch but its far from some underperforming brick like the Xbox Serieses or WiiU.
man, i bought a ps5 because of rebirth and only played xvi because i was already getting a ps5 for rebirth. i'm still not ready to call xvi bad, but oh boy it sure isn't good! like, i'm extremely generous with final fantasies, i would describe most of them as games i love or at least respect...except xvi!
Ya know what fuck it,if the million+ copy sellers fail to meet expectations they might as well do whatever. You hear that Capcom,make God Hand 2 already if you guys wanted DMC4 to do CoD numbers
"OH NO, WE CAN'T MAKE SMALLER FINAL FANTASY GAMES"
you mean like in the era of Final Fantasy Tactics where Square was fucking BANGING?
For real! People have been begging for a tactics remake or rerelease for like 20 years.
it's time for The World Ends With You 3 :]
(please)
tbf before remake there was a dozen mobile phone games they were making
@@attackofthecopyrightbotsSmaller games is not code for trash.
I would not use FF Tactics as a good example of what Square wants. At a time when FF7 was selling 10 million, FF8 was selling 8 million and even FF9 was selling 5 million, FF Tactics had sold 2.4 million (by 2011 worldwide), beneath what even FF6 had sold in 1994.
Tactics was not a very well selling game by Square's standards even during the SNES era
Alright gang, let's say it once more:
"A finite industry based on infinite growth is unsustainable."
Indies carry my hopes for this industry at this point.
naw the industry is infinite if it weren't for copyright law strangling it with finite innovations
@@YorkJonhsonthey don’t have funding anymore lol, it’s also drying out.
Stack those blocks while thinning out the foundations and eventually you get an upside down pyramid. Which cant exist.
In biology, that's called cancer.
All good points. It boils down to three key points; development cycles take too long, the bean counters always have unrealistic expectations, and the pursuit of very slightly improved shiny graphics accomplishes nothing but to drive up cost and the aforementioned development times.
Back when Resident Evil VII came out, I watched the SBF (RIP) LP of it and I was amazed by the graphics, foolishly thinking "dude, these graphics are so amazing! We have finally achieved photorealism!", and then as the years went by, I slowly started to rebel against said photorealistic graphics because they are making games too expensive to make and they take FOR EVER to come out, sure, they have their place, I can't imagine a cel-shaded RE7, but more games should have stylized graphics, and it seems many people think the same thing.
there will always be some weirdo on Xwitter complaining the graphics haven't improved since the last one but you know what? fuck that guy lol
Also, even if fans don’t want to admit it, Final Fantasy no longer has the hype it once had. The last really good FF was 10. That was 23 years ago.
Remake also had COVID buff which is a big deal.
Baldur's Gate 3 had the covid debuff, and they still made gangbuster sales. So, that's not an excuse.
covid debuff in 2023?
@@Drago5899 Baldurs gate hasn't been a trash franchise with no good games for 20 years. Having no games at all is much better for your sales than 20 years of duds.
Exactly. So many big companies nowadays keep forgetting covid buff was a huge factor. That buff isn't going to keep going and that was a once in a lifetime situation for them.
And when regarding ff15 compared to 16. The marketing for 15 felt much bigger compared to 16. It's direct show compared to 16 is felt more out E3 the ff14 style live letters they did for 15. It was even being promoted heavily outside of its initial release date like the crossover with Tekken.
Lastly, People were technically still aware of 15 because of its early developments as versus 13. It essentially getting the meme status similar to kh3 in terms of how long it was taking, thus causing this weird astonishment when it actually came out.
16 release relatively quick from its announcement compared to other big square titles so it didn't collect as much in people's mindshare compare to the forever developments like kh3 and ff15.
The phrase "Failed to meet sales expectations" means absolutely nothing when it's coming from Square Enix. If you took a shot every time they said that you would die of alcohol poisoning.
People keep saying this but there's industry analysts saying for once SE isn't being dramatic and both games did ultimately underperform.
Bro, FF7R possibly haven't even sold 3 million yet
@@winter8920
It's sheer cope at this point. They know FF7R isn't doing well, they're just trying to deflect on this issue to avoid admitting the whole thing was just a bad idea.
@@felixdaniels37 stop using that word like that.
Yeah but even Pat and Woolie go "Look at FFXV's sales, and you can see them underperforming compared to that, let alone FFVII Remake of course"
Yeah no I agree with Pat. Timing was crucial. Because if you got FF7R 1 in 2016-2017 and got FF7R 2 in like 2021-2022, this conversation wouldn't even be happening.
It's insane how they are releasing at a rate of almost 1 per console generation. It is taking way too long for sequels.
This is the same company where the 2013 Tomb Raider sold 3.4 million copies in the first month and they still said it didn't reach expectations, their standards for a success have been ridiculous for years
Bro in the very first year that game went on a 50% sale less than half a year after it got out. In that same year later it got 75% sale. You really think they did it out of generocity and NOT because they saw low sales and realised they needed to somehow get more money?
@@qeridexis8604How is 3.4 million low?
@@qeridexis8604the tomb raider trilogy has over 33 million sales now in 2024. It's a massive success and square deemed all 3 failures on launch.
@@thewraithwriter22 Because Tomb Raider was one of the most expensive games ever made when it released lol. Why did it cost so much? I sure as hell don't know, but Crystal Dynamics was absolutely blowing cash on that game before release.
Reminds me of Capcom and their disappointment with DMC4's release and sales, despite it outselling DMC3.
Not sure why Pat thinks the older FFs were cheap to make. Do you really think the original FF7 was a cheap game to make at the time compared to other games of the period.
Probably meant prior but yeah FF7 is like... literally one of the most expensive games of all time.
They were about to be bankrupt and they added a Fukton of voice acting in ff13 2
Pat just wants to keep parroting his opinion that every game should be like Yakuza.
this idea that nobody cares about graphics is due to pat living in a bubble of niche game enjoyers.
the vast majority of the FF community has been celebrating huge graphically intense games for an incredibly long time and asking them to just settle with upscaled PS2 games is fucking stupid especially when being at the forefront of fidelity has been SE's brand for decades.
this is from the guy who desperately looked at steam charts to try and discredit Horizon only to find out that it was as popular as God of War on steam.
love these guys but they have a serious misunderstanding on what is actually popular due to being surrounded by people who happen to think like they do.
we are not past the days of the gang having no clue what Battle Royal was.
"That's true, no layoff announcements"
"just yet."
Ouch.
The Hobbit should have just been a one movie
The problem with Square is that the only thing they still produce that makes any money is Final Fantasy. So when one comes out its expected to prop up the entire company. It's never going to be enough because theyre flopping in every other regard. At least the NFT guy is gone now.
They can't make smaller games because of shareholder expectations. And those expectations are that a new game make _every conceivable dollar_ in _every conceivable universe, per fiscal quarter._
Pat forgot about another audience that FF7 Remake lost: the people who are waiting for the trilogy to be complete to actually play the complete experience. I wanted to get FF7R on my PS4 ASAP, just from that 2015 trailer. But when I discovered it would be a multipart series of $60 (now $70) priced games, splitting the story of a single, 40 hour game, my excitement died. Specially when they announced the DLC for Remake was only gonna be on next-gen.
The fact that players have to spend almost 10 years since Remakes launch to get the full thing, go through multiple console generations, with no clear communication on when these games will be coming out also kept me from diving in.
I was 28 when the remake was announced and I’ll be maybe 41 or 42 when the trilogy is done and probably won’t care to do more than look up the cutscenes on RUclips at that point.
I would have eaten this **** up at 28 though
@@TheJadedJamesthen you really didn't liked it as much and it was just a fade for you. i mean i'm hella poor. only got to play ff7r bc of a shared account with my brother and prolly will only play this trilogy when the PS7 pro comes out and the FF7R bundle gets on sale in my used PS6 but i am as exctited to play them now as when it was announced
Not only that but they clearly don't have a fucking plan!
Didn’t make your money back? How about… making more than one game… that you spend less money on, and they come out sooner because they’re not bloated with content?
that isnt exclusive to ONE platform
I wish Capcom would go back to that.
they can't make the game smaller Chadley and the female AI version of himself he made need me to catalog every species of grass and bug on Gaia
@@4Wilko Capcom doesn’t need to. Their games are doing just fine currently. Square on the other hand haven’t released a good FF for 23 years, then they decide to reimagine and change one of their most beloved games and then surprised pikachu face over it when people don’t care.
@@arpadszabo661
I know they don't need to but I'm not going to like it. With rereleases filtered out comparing their current output to other eras of Capcom is really frustrating.
"Sephiroth must have done this" -Cloud Squarenix Strifeman
I think Intergrade hurt them in the long run too. It felt kinda bad faith. They already said they were going to ask you to buy at least three games to get the whole story. Adding this weird addon with weirder upgrade paths though PSN, etc. It was very strange and felt bad.
Big shock to no one: Selling a massive IP and limiting it to ONE PLATFORM is absolutely no way to get similar results to FF15 and FF14 which are available ON EVERYTHING
This argument doesn't work with FF14 since it was Playstation and PC only for most of its lifetime, as still sold gangbusters. FF14 sold well because it focused on delivering a fun to play, well performing and well written game instead of trying to render every pore on the skin of each character and every hairstrand.
are they on the N-Gage? checkmate.
@@victorteste5325 You're massively downplaying how much larger the ps4/pc audience is compared to just ps5.
FF7, 8, 9 and 10 were limited to one platform and sold much much better
PS5 had bad initial market penetration due to the chip shortage, price, and bad supply versus demand. They picked back up eventually, but PS5 games can only really be sold to PS5 owners, of which there's not all that many of compared to Switch or PC.
I would say I prefer the Blumhouse method, I think it is better to have 100 $3 million projects going than 1 $300 million project going. Will all 100 of those projects be successful or complete, no, but you can get one banger that basically pays for the rest (Paranormal activity), or some critical darlings like Whiplash. (Edit: I'm a bit of a dumb dumb)
Going with a comparison that isn't Like a Dragon, look at From Software. There production cycle has slowed down, but still seem to be constantly publishing quality products every 2-3 years. Probably because they have a good understanding what to focus on and what not to, lots of character/enemy attack animation and detailed worlds, but short cutscenes and lip-syncing not so important. Final Fantasy games wants to do EVERYTHING up to 11.
That's what square tried with all their small voice of cards style games and it didn't really take off
Square tried this and it was losing them money. This is why they just pruned all of their studios projects and are focusing on fewer games but higher quality. Also yakuza cannot be compared to FF games. They reuse the same assets every year for years until they finally have to make a new map. Theres a reason the new majima game is re-using hawaii lol. Its cheap to produce and fast to make.
They should stop making new assets. They learned nothing from the shitfest that was Lightning Returns.
Square literally did this lol. Look at their steam catalogue its mostly indie style oldschool jrpgs. Maybe final fantasy just isn't in the cultural zeitgeist anymore and we don't get a other FF for 20 years.
Its not that Rebirth and 16 failed to meet expectations...they failed to meet expectations to cover for Squares failed products like Forspoken and Foamstars
I bet they're still feeling the effects of the failure of Avengers. They are so goddamn lucky to have FFXIV cover their asses.
@@IndoorSitup that too...honestly there's probably even more games/products I'm forgetting because I'm at work but yeah it's bad
More like they failed to justify the obscene amounts of time and money they poured into these games. FF14 already has those other flops covered, but when FF7 takes over a decade to produce and MULTIPLE console generations, it's going to need to reach a high bar out the gate.
From what has been publicly shared, it really seems like it's not the case this time. Both can be true at the same time imo. Yeah, Avengers, GotG, Forspoken and Foamstars must've bleed them a lot of money, but that doesn't change the fact that these flagship titles (FF16 and 7Rebirth) aren't selling much compared to their previous flagships and even compared to current AAA games.
Avengers didn't make 7Rebirth a AAAA production budget with cutting-edge graphics and scope, it was Square themselves.
Everybody forgets about Symbiogenesis, the NFT collectable art game.
The former CEO pumped a lot of money into crypto. Last update was another investment in march '24.
Looks like the grift isn't paying off for SE
"If we just set our expectations high enough, then we never have to pay our teams for success."
Amazingly this mindset has somehow resulted in an industry where nobody pushes to succeed.
You didn't watch the video.
@@TheOtakuKat The point is squares expectations are wrong. Clearly.
@@wardy4903And as demonstrated in the video, their expectations were, for once, not too high.
@@wardy4903 It's not wrong to expect more from FFXVI and Rebirth sales. It shows how far the brand has fallen
Worst thing is the 'disappointing' sales means that the staff may not get the greenlight for the FF6 remake they asked for.
6:30 I think Pat definitely has a point here. If they had gone the more different route that also would have freed up space for an extremely faithlful 1:1 to the original, including the old fashioned turn based combat type remake and cash in twice with the same assets.
Speaking of faithful remakes, I think the Resident Evil series could also benefit from making a Resdient Evil Classic remake series where they remake RE2 & 3 like they did for RE1 and then make a modern RE type remake for RE1. Those games are so different from each other that there's definitely a market for it.
"Turn based is old, busted, and shit and no one wants it ever again!" - Square Enix, mere minutes before Baldur's Gate 3 dropped a nuke on the industry.
You are asking for ff13-4
Pat does himself a disservice by saying the (minor) changes to the story are the reason why the game didnt sell a billion copies. 50 million ps5 owners aren't choosing to skip rebirth because of the story. They're skipping it because final fantasy is lame and gay and has been for 20 years.
@@SeasoningTheObese It has been so cathartic seeing what has happened to the industry the past few years. The formats that had been left in the dust because these holier-than-thou devs and "journalists" kept saying were outdated and not that good, only for genre revival bangers to drop and sell millions.
@@vaan_nah that's more on the suits than the devs
I definetly think that the PS5 exclusivity hurt both games.
The adoption rate for PS5's in general have been *shockingly* low.
I can guarantee you it did cause me and my entire friend group wanted both 16 and 7 Rebirth but we are not willing to get a PS5 for either
@@redbananaboomerang3278 Yeah, that's the general sentiment I've seen regarding those games.
I don't call 60 million PS5 a "low" adoption rate.
Have you also considered that people could, hear me out, NOT want to play these games on ONLY PlayStation
@@TrojanGamer10 Dawg, they literally raised the price of the damn thing. That ain't normal.
as it turns out releasing a console that nobody can buy just turns consumers towards PC. And once you build your own pc, you really never do go back. After all, most console exclusives come onto steam, and the ones that dont can be played on pc in other various hilarious ways.
If your sales expectations keep not being met, maybe its your expectations that are the problem
Dude, FFXVI only selling 3 million and still no sales update from Square is *low* for a brand of that legacy. This isn't Square being unreasonable this time. Where even *Pikmin* and *Super Mario RPG* is starting to outsell Final Fantasy is where Square is absolutely right to be concerned
it's Funny hearing these numbers for FF, but then cutting over to Fromsoftware and Bandai shocked that AC6 went beyond their expectations because they knew it wouldn't do Elden Ring Numbers, but it sold over 3 Million copies for AC6 and for a dead series that is the definition of Niche and in Niche Genre to sell that well is great considering the best the Series ever did was 1Million Copies and they already starting do more hiring for staff who work or have experience in the Mecha Genre to make AC Games. {Side Note AC6 makes up 72% of the Value of the AC Series}
I think what Pat said about "I hope you played the original FF7 in the mid 90s for you to really get this in your chest, because we expect you to have" rings with me. Never played OG FF7 and I started with Remake (despite knowing the most common known things like Aerith dying)
I felt FF7Remake did a fantastic job explaining to me most of the plot and made me really hyped for Rebirth. Then the Yuffie DLC came out and as soon as the Deepground stuff happened I was completely lost plot-wise because it came out of nowhere and the game did nothing to explain it, as if I was supposed to know already of this.
That was most of my experience with Rebirth. Sometimes I felt like the game expected me to know the things rather than introducing them to me, which in the end left a sour taste in my mouth.
You need play the original FF7, then play all spin-off, watch shitty Adventure movie, read the novels, play all mobiles games exclusive in japan and finally can play """"Remake"""" FF7.
This is most bullshit KH if you want get it the lore and characters. Nomura is fucking insane.
@@theboihilbirt1277Can you believe some people actually believe Nomura has little or nothing to do with this? This has his stink all over it!
@@ultraspinalki11it’s wild to say this when in interviews Nomura was convinced by Kitase to do the pseudo-sequel idea
@@theboihilbirt1277I will say that you do need to play the original FF7 and crisis core to really appreciate it, but the games are fully enjoyable on their own merit. They still have their own story to tell, a vast majority of it is still retained from the original game. Stop making it seem more complicated and worst than it actually is bro
@@theboihilbirt1277 God forbid a linear narrative plays out like a linear narrative.
"Why isn't our games selling?"
*looks at the PS5 and PS5 Pro prices since the steam version isn't out yet for Rebirth*
That and limiting it to just ONE console and PC doesn't help either. Square wouldn't specifically mention Nintendo and Xbox of all things if they weren't regretting the Sony deal
@TrojanGamer10 I doubt Xbox version will really ever happen but yeah Square missing the Switch is extremely dumb. I bet if they release a trilogy version for Switch 2 they would make gangbusters
Remake Integrade is out, but Rebirth will have gotten pushed back by the Pro.
@wardy4903 they could relatively easy put out a very crappy version like MK1 did
@@TrojanGamer10
The LEAST they could've done was make sure Rebirth was on the PS4 as well, so people wouldn't have to buy yet another console just to keep up with the story. I don't get why they thought a game as polarizing as this would be a system seller.
FF12 is 18 years old now.
I feel like theirs something to be said about making these incredibly high budget games that would need an absurd number of players to break even
“I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I’m not kidding"
yeag
I've had this weird thought in my mind lately, but I feel like this push for higher fidelity in pixel count specifically to emulate real life almost pushes this idea that we can't immerse ourselves in settings unless we're able to view things with a magnifying glass. But then I look back and remember people were able to do that nearly 2 decades ago because of how impressive it felt at the time.
Instead of continuously pushing further towards technological leaps that get less impressive with each generation, why not train ourselves to settle for what we already have? You can push your tech in other ways that push towards that immersion, such as with dynamic systems. Destructable environments, complex AI, interactive buildings and homes, etc.
You don’t understand. I need to see every pore on Cloud’s ass and a fully interactive open world.
@@leithaziz2716 what people always say is that good ai and so on is really expensive, so they can't do that, but i wonder how true that really is. if you look at the credits for these big games there are a ton of people involved in the art and design/scripting side of things, but the size of programming teams hasn't really increased much since the late 90s. i know good programmers earn a lot, but surely good artists do too? i think it's probably because impressive graphics are a thing you can immediately see and assign value to, whereas the benefits of good npc ai and so on are much harder to quantify
@@leithaziz2716 The original Deus Ex from 2000 let you open and close individual drawers in desks and cabinets and many games nowadays don't let you do that, it's EMBARASSING. That game is still really immersive to this day.
I was entering high school when FF7 came out. I was obsessed with it. I had multiple saves with over a hundred hours each. I would theorycraft materia setups with my friends in homeroom. The first thing I did when I got a PSP was set it up to emulate FF7. I was *the* target demographic for a remake of 7.
I'm now 37 years old. In the time I've been waiting for that remake I graduated high school, dropped out of college, became depressed, overcame depression, moved out of my parent's house, had a career in the trades, bought a house, and started a new mid-life crisis career. If they wanted me to care this needed to come out at least a decade ago, be one game, and not cost $200+.
I'd love to see a study done on FF15 and why it sold SO much. The hype prior to its release was high AF, but word of mouth on the game was polarizing from my experience, specially considering the amount of out-of-the-game media you "had" to watch to get the whole experience, and the barebones gameplay (at release at least)
FF15 being the mess it was is probably at least a bit of the reason the newer games aren’t selling as well. A lot of new people must have had it as their first Final Fantasy and were put off by it being ludicrously unfinished.
FF 16 being Game of Thrones, after that series impaled itself with a rusty, shit covered sword, didn’t give that game any help.
Look up "FFXV and the Marketing of Doom". They spent a LOT of money on celebrity voice acting for the Kingsglaive tie-in movie and had to make up for the development costs of FF Versus XIII starting on PS3, changing game engines twice, the creation of Luminous Engine to support the PS4 release, etc. And Luminous then spun off into its own studio, Hajime Tabata quit 2 years after the game released, they essentially announced the game's death (and PC support with it) on its second birthday, and Forspoken flopped.
I think there's a lot to considerate when is about these 2 games and and their "low sales":
1) Them being PS5 exlcusives kinda hurt the availability aspect for the consumers, complete hurting the Microsoft/Xbox users in the process.
2) Maybe people didn't like the "changes" that were made in FF7 Rebirth's story when compared to the original PS1 game, and those story changes were spread like fire by all the internet through social media.
3) Maybe people didn't like the gameplay of FF16, that fact is a action hack n' slash rpg, that's Square's Devil May Cry in a way is something that didn't "click" with a lot of people, like the fact that there's only 1 playable character (Clive) instead of a full party, or that you have many "options" for doing combos or attacks to the point of confusing people, etc. all of that for sure alienate a lot of FF fans, so maybe people only wants a more "traditional" rpg and/or action rpg, rather than a "DMC the RPG" type experience (not everyone is Woolie after all).
4) The fact that not that many people still have a PS5 yet and they don't consider to change/upgrade to the new hardware, because there isn't that many "offers" in terms of games to play, the lack of exclusives, cases like the one of Concord have effects in the people POV about the console and Sony itself, or that people don't think about getting a new console only to play 1 single game (not everyone is Maximillian Dood with FF7 Rebirth and the PS5 Pro after all).
...and many more other possible reasons of why this 2 game didn't sold as expected, which is a shame because they're really good games,
the problem with xvi isn't that it was an action game, it's that it wasn't a very good action game, and it was also at the same time trying to be a not very good rpg. if it could have pulled at least one of these halves off, i might've liked it better than i did, it might even have been cool despite the entirely mid story and underdeveloped characters. but between bland and repetitive encounter design, criminal overuse of qtes in the big setpiece boss fights that absolutely killed any hype they were trying to build, and how shallow and tacked on every single rpg element came out, the reason people didn't like the gameplay of xvi is because it just wasn't very good.
don't get me wrong, there are incredibly annoying final fantasy fans who just whine about it because it isn't turn-based, as if the series suddenly stopped being turn-based in 2023 and not twenty years earlier (or, arguably, thirty! but that's off topic), but just because people who should have been playing dragon quest this whole time are wrong when they complain about final fantasy gameplay doesn't mean that xvi's gameplay was any good.
hell, after i rolled credits on xvi i was worried i was just getting too cynical with the way everything it threw at me failed to grab me, i couldn't even remember any of its music that people were talking up so much. but then i started playing dmc5 immediately after and loved everything it had going on, so i do feel confident that the problem was xvi and not me.
The lack of sales for Rebirth is unfortunate if only for the fact that a lot of people didn't experience its combat. Whatever the game's other faults may be, combat is _sick_ ! The customization, abilities, team attacks, etc. I'm really curious to see how they iterate on it going forward.
"no but entire game is bad because it not 100% faithful to original"
@IndoorSitup hope Takashi Kiryu sees this bro 🙏
This ain't the 90s, story matters to a lot of gamers. If you're going to sell a game on being a remake, remake it. If you're gonna make a different game, make a different game. This game probably wouldn't have sold half of what it did if it didn't bait and switch by putting on an FF7 costume and it made its situation worse by not actually being FF7.
@@alastor8091
Frankly I don't think a story like this would've sold even in the 90s. Hell, if anything a game like this would've probably been recieved WAY worse back then; Square already set the bar for storytelling high enough by that point for this to be acceptable.
True, the combat is what took me from not interested, didnt play remake to day 1 buy. It was that good.
It's always really funny when Woolie comes in knowing NOTHING about the subject and just kinda BSing his questions
Like a reporter who did no research whatsoever before the interview
FF7 Remake came out like the month of Stimulus checks in America. People stuck inside with FREE MONEY
@@blakesummers3764 The first FF7 Remake game was always going to sell, and the sequels were always going to sell less, because making it a trilogy was a stupid idea
Why pay 100 dollars for the same game 3 times. When you can pay like 5 or 10 for the OG.
@@TheJadedJames Sequels always sell less if the game follows a story you must play in sequence to follow. RE sells well because nobody fucking cares about the story.
i'm pretty sure how Dragon Quest games get made is the executives all bow real low to Yuji Horii and then he takes the entire team into some sort of development temple and shuts the door, and then no one enters or leaves until one day white smoke appears from the chimney and a new Dragon Quest game is released
Honestly if they made more games with the Ever Crisis aesthetic I’d play the hell out of those.
I feel that the FF7 Remake trilogy will make more money after the entire trilogy is released. I could see a decently priced bundle of all 3 games selling well. and in the long run could be quite profitable.
I like where Rebirth/Remake went but I'm a PC player VEHEMENTLY against giving Sony any money for a paper weight. I would have paid full price for Rebirth if Squeenix didn't try to fuck me with exclusivity deals.
Wonder how many people are in the same spot.
Indeed. When I was willing to pay for a PS5 they weren't available. Now that they are, I don't care. There are very few games on it that I want to play to warrant spending the money and the few that I do want to play will be released on PC eventually, so I'll just wait.
I bought a ps5 just for FF XVI and FF VII Rebirth. And FF XVI was meh, but okay I guess, FF VII rebirth is the biggest cultural disgrace in history that destroyed the most well known death in gaming.
not enough ps5 owners who are also jrpg fans who also already beat ff7r i guess?
i don't even own a ps5 (or any other console atm, might get a switch sometime), it's not my fault, square :] . i'll get it on pc
If I knew FFXVI would come out on PC anytime soon, I would have put that money towards that instead of Black Myth Wukong. I think they should have announced it sooner
They can talk about the remake all day, but the fact that 15 (the one with the car, the one that fans “like”) did better than 16 is wild. This is going to make SquEnix (and I’d think Sony too) take a hard look at where things stand. Because Sony “won” the console generation, but the install base just isn’t there. There’s no way the SquEnix board just declares: “We’re okay with selling fewer units in the name of exclusivity.”
I don't think they're competent enough to even cut themselves a break like that and go "There isn't an install base for this."
I don't think even maximilian dood can even sell this series anymore
Pat is right about the development time for the FF7 Remake trilogy being way too long. A series should not get announced and then have to span multiple console generations to complete a trilogy. It's kind of the embodiment of everything currently wrong with the industry with it being teams of thousands and ungodly amounts of money. I went from the start of my 20's to the start of my 30's for 2 games with the last one not even being that enjoyable. I mean we got 3 quality Resident Evil Remakes from the span of 2019 to 2023.
Me, a Silksong fan:
(I'm in my 20s, but it's weird to realise a quarter of my life has been spent waiting for a game. It's a unique feeling. Fighting game sequels can also take a decade, but that's because they continue supporting current titles, so I don't mind)
Nah, RE3 remake was shameful compared to the original PSX game, far from being "quality" in any way.
Long? The wait from Remake to Rebirth was 4 years which is shockingly fast considering how big the game is and how most new games take 5+ years to come out now
RE remakes aren't full rpgs with a party of 6 unique characters and multiple open maps while not cutting any levels or content from the ps1 game unlike REmake 2 and 3
Insane to hear someone say rebirth wasn't enjoyable but resident evil 3 remake was.
Man i didnt even think about how long its been since the inital remake announcement
YES! MAKE SMALLER GAMES BUT GOOD GAMES! MAKE EM CHEAP, SELL THEM NORMAL! MARKET THEM WELL SO YOU DONT SET UP FOR FAILURE! THE END!
I'd have bought Rebirth but I don't have a PS5. I'm not sure Ill be able to play it until a PC release.
Rebirth and FF16 were ps5 exclusives. Nobody bought a ps5 because it's too expensive. Way to keep your audience away from your product, Square.
Clearly square enix fault that the SONY Playstation ist cheaper😂
@mucknstrunz they could have been released simultaneously on other platforms to boost sales.
@@MurakamiTenshi idk ps5 is really popular. the ff brand is just not that mainstream anymore sadly. The trend goes to games like baldurs gate that give you a lot of options. FF is more classical in that way. I think ff15 did a lot of damage to the brandbecause it was a mess. even tho i loved it but i love almost every ff game
There are 60 Million PS5 owners in the world. Thats a lot of 'nobodies'.
PS5 has over 50+ million active users.
sorry but this is just SE cope
are you saying Rebirth somehow magically couldn't sell more then 5M to 50 million people?
If they wanted me to play Rebirth, maybe they should've made Remake tell like a cohesive and satisfying story that a new player can get into. Not like 1/3 of a story or whatever full of padding and time ghosts and canon fan wank. If all you've got is "this is a very expensive game", how are you gonna get people to play? They got a lot of people to try Remake 'cause the original FF7 has a ton of fans that talked it up, which drummed up a lot of interest. Of course you wanna see what's going on if so many people love the game. But I'm not going in for more after that game, man. I had a bite and did not like what it tasted like. I don't care what's gonna happen next. Who's gonna throw 70 bucks at the next one if they feel like that? Obviously I'm not speaking for everyone but judging by sales I'm not alone either.
True. I played the original many times, and remake was not for new players. I was confused even this way, but its obvious that was made with the expectation that everyone who will buy this already played the OG. But there is 2 issue with that. 1. That’s not the case and many people barely understand what’s happening. 2. Those who played it don’t want a reimagining
This was me. Never touched FF7 and was excited to finally play such a gassed up story. Unfortunately Nomura wants to make an Evangelion Rewrite instead. Maybe in another 30 years I'll get an actual FF7 remake...
11:05 Hey, I've got a lil rust on the bones, but I'm still here 😂😂😂
FF7 remake was literally the only reason I bothered to get a PS4, and when Rebirth came out on PS5 I was like "Well f*ck me then". So I am waiting till FF7 part 3 Revengeance comes out so I can buy the whole thing on a single console, that's all that is to me
Was a bit torn on Remake but I loved Rebirth. Hope it and part 3 are great experiences for you when they arrive.
I know the focus was mostly on FF7R but,
I think newcomers to FF aren’t hooked with FF16 because it just doesn’t get recommended on RUclips or overwhelmed with the other FF because they don’t know the series is like an anthology. (In addition, I think the current gaming climate plays a role with the censorship controversy of FF7R too)
I think the lack of “moments” that hooks laymen people played a role in low sales.
I had FFX on my PS2 but I didn’t really spend much time on it. Then I watched the Wakka Files and I rebought FFX/2 on Steam because of it.
I don’t even know what ff16 about. I bought strangers in paradise because I’ve seen clips of Jack but I’ve never been recommended any shorts nor video on FF16 other than Digital Foundry’s stuff. I still get Dragon’s Dogma 2 stuff much more frequently with the sphinx or open world shenanigans.
Digressing but,
I like FF as an art gallery than a game series.
18:24 I also agree that games are too big (including file sizes). It’s quantity of hours vs quality of hours. Sonic Adventures 2 was shorter than Frontiers or the devilish 06, but I had way more fun and satisfaction with Adventures 2. Space Marine 2 is shorter than most games nowadays but I still came out satisfied and wanting more.
Ff16 suffers from mmo pacing.
It's a fine game, it rivals other action games easily, but it has a unique problem of being questline focused the same way ff14 is, which works for ff14 because the msq is not the only thing you are doing in that game.
@@Vanity0666 Yeah im going through it now (bout 2/3s through), I dont mind the story so far and i like the characters but the game suffers from tremendous bloat thats beginning to wear on me a bit.
Unnecessary crafting system that still ends up mostly being linear.
Like 70% of the side quest (some main quest as well) could easily be cut and change nothing and ignoring them is not easy cause the other 30% I feel are worth doin and I dont wanna accidentally skip any good ones.
Weapons and Items in this game are extremely unfulfilling to upgrade due to them just being small incremental stat/damage boost.
The amount of QTEs in this game is a meme (like why does every other door need me to hold down a button to open it; its absurd) and very inconsistent.
I still lean more positively towards 16 still and I love 14 but it feels like they took a lot of the absolute worst parts of what is usually required in MMOs and put them into a game that shouldnt be constrained by the limitations or problems of a MMO.
If it's a Squex property, then it will never "meet expectations".
Don't forget, that's the main reason they sold Eidos.
I understand exclusives are the main appeal of consoles, but when your games budget is that big you NEED to get that product on as many platforms as possible to even have hope of making a profit.
"Square Enix thinks a $400 game will work out for them lol" - Me, whenever Remake was announced to be 3 parts.
Maybe these games didn't absolutely need budgets that eclipse most other arpg series
On top of all the reasons you guys mentioned a bunch of people are also waiting for it to release on PC because that's where they played Remake, and it's still not there yet.
In the time since the announcement of ff7r to now you've had ds2 scholar of the first sin, bloodborne, dark souls 3, sekiro, elden ring lol
Not to mention Armored Core VI and the DLCs to those games except Sekiro(😢)
if rebirth is confirmed to be a launch title for switch 2, boy oh boy the ps4 crowd will be super pissed
I am surprised Rebirth sold way less despite being based of the most popular installment jampacked with content.
It is, but they actively turned off sections of it's possible audience, both of those that didn't want Kingdom Hearts nonsense in their remake and people who were getting it because they thought they were getting to finally play a modern version of the game everybody jizzed about for 20 years, and instead left confused as fuck only to find out all that shit wasn't in the original and it's a weird meta sequel where you needed ot have played the original. So they made sure their audience for the second was guaranteed to be smaller than the first, and then put it only on PS5.
Somehow they managed to be so stupid as to do it again as well, since the second still has the stuff that makes the story of the original impossible to remain effective (such as Zack being alive and all the Sephiroth and time ghost shit), but still tried to have their cake and kept all the major events the same. So now the people that stuck around because they were excited to see what they possibly had planned got "FF7 but worse and makes less sense" as their reward for it.
@@Amodelsino The story being different is massively overblown by haters.
No. It‘s not surprising
- It’s only on PS5
- It’s a direct sequel to a game with a controversial twist
- Final Fantasy 7 is pushing 30 years old and FF7R is too reliant on you remembering it clearly (which could have worked if it released in 2010, but not to today when you’ve got to be 34+ to have played FF7 when it was new).
FF7 Rebirth is the most expensive niche game ever game
@@TheJadedJames I think the biggest thing is that they severely overestimated how many times they could cash in on people's nostalgia. Most people do not finish games. We know this just by looking at achievement statistics. I think a lot of Remake's sales were people who remembered playing FFVII over 20 years ago, played the first few hours, and then never touched it again. Their nostalgia trip was satisfied for a couple of days.
Why would any of those people bother to buy Rebirth?
@@enterprise9001 You can make direct sequels that are somewhat inaccessible to people who didn’t play or finish the original thing. But FF7 Rebirth is an even more extreme versions of that than something like Mass Effect
Man console exclusivity sucks the life out of sales huh
Barring 1st party titles, I guess.
For a console no one was able to own for years, at least. Switch exlusives, for example, have always done fantastic because so many people own one.
2 million, totally lifeless
Sony squareenix and microsoft. xbox doesn't have exclusives which means theres no reason to own a console but more people can play the games. Squareenix & Playstation has exclusives they'll hold on to which are not making what their exceptions are because they're locked behind their console (until it gets released to later platforms)
From what I've heard, the numbers Squeenix are using are *supposed* to be taking into account each game's exclusivity period.
However, they really can't be doing themselves any favors by locking all the PC players out of the hype machine for 7 Rebirth. 16 is available on PC now, and I've basically heard nothing about it. It's honestly made me reconsider where it lives on the list of my purchasing priorities.
Everyone keeps pointing at issues like "Oh the exclusivity limited the sales" or "Oh, Rebirth is a sequel to Remake, that's why it's selling less" but that's ignoring the fact that FF7-10 sold like gangbusters while limited to a single platform and even as far as sequels go, Rebirth is selling worse than FFX-2 and the FFXIII sequels.
I think there's an Occam's Razor here that people aren't talking about: FF didn't get popular because of its substance, it got popular because of its graphical edge over its contemporaries. The games were good before 7 but it would be naive to ignore the power that those FMV cutscenes played in the marketing campaign for the game, same with 8 and 9 and 10.
But now? FF is just another AAA series among MANY that looks gorgeous. They have no unique advantage in graphics anymore and so they're losing market share to games that look just as good if not better.
This isn't a solvable issue, FF can't really back out of the AAA business model that THEY invented and pioneered and popularized. The answer might be that FF becomes a more infrequent thing and Square has to rely on other IP that aren't saddled with as much baggage
I agree with almost all you're saying. I do think this console generation has hurt gaming in general because of disruptions during early hype cycles and people just reprioritizing. Lots of people who would buy something during hype for it, will maybe rethink things months and such on. I'm not making a judgement on if that is good or bad, just that it seems to be a part of it for all gaming at the moment. Momentum and inertia is a thing.
I think the biggest reason why Rebirth only sold 2 million units was because it was a sequel to a controversial game. If it was a direct sequel to a popular game it would have sold better.
Remake alienated people whether they were new to the franchise or returning fans.
The only people who came back were the few returning fans who weren’t alienated.
If Square Enix made a faithful remake in 2020 they’d have outsold all the Resident Evil remakes, because new players & old fans could play them.
But the developers at Square were clearly bored with the idea of a faithful game remake and rebelled against it to their peril.
@@TheJadedJames I think that's maybe looking too hard into it. If controversy was enough to kill game sales, than XIII would have tanked XV's sales. Hell, XV's dev cycle would have tanked XV's sales.
And being a sequel doesn't really justify it either when plenty of sequels have sold better than their predecessors.
I think the basic issue is that FF doesn't have a very compelling pitch for AAA audiences now that they have so much AAA competition
@@skieth9999 That’s a false equivalence. FF7 Rebirth is a direct sequel.
Not liking FF13 is irrelevant to the purchase of FF15 because it is an anthology and you know the new game is doing its own thing.
FF7 Rebirth is declaring “We aren’t doing a remake. It’s a multiverse sequel or whatever.” So you’ve got to be on board with that story decision to be on board with the new game.
@@TheJadedJames I'd argue two points:
First, the average normie that makes up 70% of the better selling FF games' buyers don't know they're not direct sequels. That's actually something that people who only buy the Flavor of the Month big AAA game don't care about. And again, there are plenty of direct sequels that do fine, if not better, than their predecessors. Games like Witcher 3 did better than Witcher 2, for instance.
Second, even if we want to do an apples to apples comparison, Rebirth is doing worse than other direct sequels to FF games. FFXIII-2 sold 5 million units world wide, 1 million just in Japan
You aren’t gonna get PS4 sales numbers with the PS5 install base. I’ve also never disagreed with someone more about a video game. Wanting evercrisis style over what we have gotten in the remake series?? Dude has to be drunk.
Edit: I guess I see his point though. Still a hard disagree.
- takes a shot to get there -
the install base for PS5 is still around over 50+ million active users. PS5 and PS4 actually have pretty close numbers to users. there is really no excuse for Rebirth selling poorly outside of SEs decisions.
I guarantee you that Square Enix’s executives are dumb enough to NOT include the exclusivity money in the sales of the game. They probably went “cool, free pile of money” and blew it on Babylon’s Fall and forgot about it. Then, when the new Final Fantasy games come out as exclusives and sell less because of it, they lose their minds and are confused why the game is making less money.
I mean lets be honest first n foremost balders gate 3 absolutely crippled ff16's long term sales ontop of 16 just flat out abandoning its rpg roots while bg3 embraced it
Bg3 being a competitor is absolutely true. People with full time jobs (people who had the original 90s/00s final fantasy hype experience) aren't going to have the time to play two full 100+ games and bg3 appeals more to the classic rpg sentiment than FF7R2
Square Enix just refuses to make rpg's in their flagship rpg series.
"Why are we failling?"
I’m going to be real, as someone who fucking hates turn based games, I absolutely welcomed FF7 Remake; HOWEVER, I bought BG3 because it just seemed like more game, and the idea of making your own adventure like what BG3 offered was irresistible.
That softened my stance on Turn Based, but the main reason I just didn’t get FF7 was because there was so many other games I wanted instead and it was expensive.
@@clockworkphysicistI’m not a purist for turn based on real-time combat. But I found it hilarious bow BG3 awakened a bunch of discourse from people who felt they just couldn’t get into one of the most beloved games of the generation because they don’t like turn based combat.
Then the opposite thing happened with FF16 where we had old heads who felt like their childhoods has been murdered by the real-time combat mechanics of FF16
@@TheJadedJames I am going to go in and reveal that I like FF15 BECAUSE it’s not turn based.
Slight counter-point to Pat's argument for making simpler games quicker:
We do _NOT_ want game companies to start following the same philosophy as Disney's MCU and Star Wars series, and just start pumping out as much mindless _slop_ as they can. That's too much in the other direction.
pats whole opinion on that subject is pretty pointless tbh. he's essentially just saying. all he's saying is "i want good game not bad game"
he's more then happy to glaze all over the huge triple A games that he enjoys even though they only exist because of the thing he's complaining about.
love the man but pat is peak redditor armchair ceo brain.
"why dont they just make game good then they make money" yeah okay thanks for the insight pat. now explain why barely anyone played Alan Wake 2.
I love when they take a single game, break it up into multiple games as if I have unlimited time. I couldn't even finish FF7 remake, how can they expect me to stay interested through two more installments of it?
I have a confession to make;
My first introduction to the franchise that is FF7 was Dirge of Cerberus. So i am in the small small minority, but i want a Dirge of Cerberus remake like what they did for Crisis Core
FF7 is a legendary game in a legendary series
IF you are around the age of 30.
Nowadays? Not so much. At 33, I am the target audience for FF7 Remake, but I understand that shit is OLD.
Older, When FF7 came out 30 year olds now were like 2-3 years old. You have to be at least in your 40's to really remember FF7 on release.
I’m 31 and i don’t feel like i’m the target audience. Nor do i remember FF as a legendary franchise anymore when half of the franchise is bad or okay at best at this point.
@@arpadszabo661 i consider it legendary and I'm 29 but I grew up with ff8 ff9 and ff10 and all of them are considered good. You probably didn't play them
@@Deminese2 i did, but 10 came out 23 years ago. Not having a great game for 23 years while the franchise is still ongoing, is not a legendary franchise.
I’m 20 and played FFVII for the first time in 2020. Since then FF has easily become my favourite gaming franchise, and VII one of my favourite games.
05:42
That one's me. (In opinion, not that he's talking about me)
The prophecy has been fulfilled!
"No layoff announcements just yet." They're waiting so they can do them on Thanksgiving and Christmas again, clearly.
The talk about dev cycles is really serious, and is going to lead to very real long term issues.
Like Pat said, from announcement to the trilogy telling the story of ONE GAME finishing is an entire K-12 education.
I know this isnt really a fair comparison. But my nephew was obsessed with Undertale when he was 3. He turns 12 this december. How can anybody possibly maintain legit hype for a property when you get 1 or 2 updates, if that, for an entire decade+?
I got Super Mario 1, 2, 3, and World when I was in gradeschool. Sonic the Hedgehog 1, 2, 3, & Knuckles, 3D Blast, Spinball, CD, Adventure, Adventure 2, Advance 1, 2, and 3, all just while I was in school. That's how you become a fan of not just a game, but a NAME, a character, a franchise.
Pokemon, in part, STILL commands insane popularity because, in that same time span, he has gotten Sun/Moon, OR/AS, LG Pikachu/Eevee, Sword/Shield, BD/SP, Legends Arceus, AND Scarlet/Violet. He knows the names, he knows the characters, they'll always be a core part of his childhood memories because Pokemon genuinely grew up with him!
Final Fantasy, in that time, has dropped... 2 main titles. 4 if you include the FF7R series. He ONLY knows about Cloud and Sepheroth through Super Smash Bros Ultimate. He is half convinced the main antagonist of FF7 is called "Shirt-le Off" because of his alt costumes. You don't maintain a fanbase, customer loyalty, get a good reputation, when you drop a game every 5+ years. I dont want to just crunch dev cycles to toxic levels, but I do want us to have more realistic expectations for graphics and preformance vs good gameplay systems.
Now I don’t think this significantly impacted sales, but one of my disappointments with 7 Rebirth was the story direction and the recent comments the creators made on the story. It felt like a gut punch to basically hear from the devs themselves that they were scared of really going crazy with the plot and are kind of just middling their way through the writing process, trying to please everyone as they always do. That’s always Squares weakness, they want EVERYONE to like EVERYTHING they make, they can’t just pick a vision and stick to it.
This is why 15 tried to have action combat and also turn based combat and failed at both. This is why 16 had great action combat but was too easy because they tried too hard to appeal to people who didn’t want action combat, who weren’t gonna get the game to begin with. This is why despite Rebirth having a decent mix of action and RPG the action elements can still feel lacking. Square just refuses to alienate anyone and in doing so alienates everyone
This is the root of FFXIV's biggest problems as well!
It's interesting that Woolie talked about the nature of FF7 as this "larger than life" IP, of course, making a project out of itself for its long-awaited remake, following the industry trend of creating a cinematic universe, and now you have Marvel not being able to make enough money to greenlit all of their half-assed movies no one wants to see anymore.
I will forever miss the golden age of Final Fantasy games, in which we got multiple fan favorites all within a handful of years.
I don't need these insane gorgeous big expensive graphics. Yeah, FF16 and 7R looks absolutely amazing, I love the character animations in 7R so much...
But I would take smaller turn based games always. Or, hell, just give us more like FFX if you still want to be cinematic. Just stop going for such multi-million behemoths of projects when it keeps 'falling below expectations.'
the sad reality is that the modern FF fanbase are obsessed with graphics and big budgets. Maximillian is basically the poster child for the FF7R and is coincidently one of the few people you'll see advocate for the PS5 Pro just to get textures slightly better for Rebirth.
Almost the entire community around the Remakes have become entirely vapid consumers at this point.
Squeenix could make a ton of money by releasing DLC costumes for Tifa, Aerith, and Yuffie.
FF7 Rebirth did NOT need that intro to Gold Saucer scene lmao.
I could pick out a few scenes besides just that, but oh my gosh that scene felt like SO Much money went into it. We did not need remotely half of that lmao.
It's both an in and out of universe signature of unmitigated decadence lol. I'm still in Remake atm (and loving it tbh) but as someone who enjoys most FF entries I've played I fear for where we're going very much. Especially vision wise, and Yoshi-P can't exactly go around saving the framework of the whole company like he did 14
here is another thing that happen that is very important that happen when Final Fantasy 7 remake came out a goal pandemic covid, I remember very clearly because of all the restrictions going on I remember people getting the remake just to pass time because of the lockdown.
I bought rebirth, but I’m in the camp that wanted a remake not a sequel. I liked how things in remake were expanded, but the sequel stuff is so garbage. Take out the dementors and the ending and FF7 remake would have been perfect.
As for Rebirth I feel the exact same. The expanded versions of original sections were great, while everything to do with the other timeline, the dementors and Sephiroth past the flashback fucking blows.
I’m undecided if I’ll buy part 3. If it’s as bloated as Rebirth I’m definitely skipping.
They're making ff7 a trilogy, right? If so, then it would be expected for the middle entry to suffer some diminishing returns
I refuse to take seriously the words of execs that do not live in reality. Did they underperform? Yes... In the context of undoubtedly bloated budgets. And let's not forget that it wasn't too long ago that Squeenix was whining about not knowing what to do with Final Fantasy.
ok, bear in mind i'm looking at FF7 as its own series separate from the rest of Final Fantasy.
FF7 released in 1997, Remake was 2020. The last game released before Remake was Crisis Core in 2007, so it was 13 years of no games.
DOOM released in 1993, DOOM 2016 was, well, 2016. The last game released before 2016 was DOOM 3 in 2004, so 12 years instead.
i don't think Remake came too late, i think people just don't care anymore, not as much as they did back in the 90's when technology was the only thing that made FF7 special.
Rpgs infamously do not sell large figures on launch, but have the longest tail by several orders of magnitude.
Rpg releases generally have a 10+ year sales tail where every other genre has like a 6-9 month tail.
In an environment where the only thing that matters to shareholders is fast money and quarterly results, long-term profit is seen as a failure.
Doom 2016 does not ask the player to be familiar with older Doom lore.
A kid born in 2000 could have jumped right into Doom 2016 like it was an original IP
FF7R goes out of its way to alienate anyone not familiar with the 1997 original
Well seing as how most ps users are still on ps4, yeah thatll happen. Rebirth sold pretty well. But they could of made the game look like cardboard for the ps4 and i still would of played it. Shame. Oh well.
I have a ps5 and I’m still waiting for rebirth on pc.
It is finally time to finalize the Final Fantasy with one fantastic final game.
Square Enix does make "hi res PS2 games" like the SaGa and Mana series.
Square, my money is sitting RIGHT HERE, just bring it to PC for crying out loud.
release them all on pc and console nstead of months later
Sequel Fatigue. Why should I buy Rebirth if I didn't finish ReMake.
Rebirth is a 10/10 game that not a lot of people want to play and gamers are being very disingenuous by not stating the fact that final fantasy as a brand was destroyed during the 2010's. It's not a household name anymore. It hasn't been for multiple decades, and square expects it to sell well enough to cover the costs of multiple hundred million dollar flops in Forspoken, Foamstars and Avengers. It's funny that woolly, with less final fantasy knowledge, understands better than pat why final fantasy isn't selling well anymore. A series synonymous with the best visuals in the industry, the biggest adventure, the most graphics, it has pidgeonholed itself into a situation where it HAS to be a 200 million dollar game or else its not FINAL FANTASY THE BIGGEST VISUAL SPECTACLE IN THE INDUSTRY. Console exclusivity hampers sales, clinging to cutting edge graphics kills your budget, multiple decades of bad games ensures your new game won't pop just because people say hey this ones good.
Yeah a lot of people don't want to aknowledge the damage stuff like Dirge of Cerberus, the 13 trilogy (and the entire debacle that was the Fabula Nova Crystallis plan), 15, and the initial release of 14 did to the name Final Fantasy.
Rebirth is not a 10 lol
Square pretty much did everything they could to damage the FF brand in the ps3/360 era
i really love ff13-2, it's one of my favourite games in the entire series :o . great voice actors (liam o'brien and laura bailey voice two of the main characters), fantastic music, cool worlds with tons of secrets... i think not that many people gave it a chance because of 13 tho unfortunately
but i also like forspoken, so maybe i'm just weird
The issue is being locked to one console that is a laughing stock like the PS5, most gamers don't even remember XIII and XV and don't care as long as the new release is good.
14:30 Pat thinks a cheap port would sell when you could buy the original for cheaper anyhow.
They had two options; full remake or re-release the original which you can buy already.
17:28 - Or the high school girl that in a survey said: "Metal Gear Solid is full of old people".
That single comment created Raiden...
But then, as the years went on, Kojima doubled-down, ending the series on a senior citizen brawler.
These kinds of discussions are ultimately a bunch of people sitting around and going "well if they only did specifically what I wanted for my maximum wish fulfillment then it'd sell 400 million units in 5 seconds!"
There's much colder and more cynical reasons for FF7R2's slow sales that better paint a picture of why it hasn't taken off has hard.
1. The first game launched on a platform with an install base of roughly 120 million users. This one launched on a platform with an install base of roughly 50 million. You have under half the potential customers, already cutting your reach by half.
2. FF7R launched on top of covid lockdowns- the single highest period of game spending in human history unlikely to be matched until everyone alive right now is dust. FF7R2 launched on the verge of an industry crash and a greater economic recession.
3. FF7R2 is selling roughly half as much as FF7R and has maintained a long tail of consistent sales thus far. it's entirely possible that this sells as much as FF7R in the long run, just over a longer period of time due to the lower relative install base and the lack of a covid spending boost.
4. This is admittedly much more tangential, but windfall from previous games reception in any particular franchise are often better indicators of sales than the actual product itself. Good example: DMC 2 and 4 sold much better than DMC 3 despite both being considered much worse games. DMC 2 followed DMC and sold better. DMC 3 followed DMC 2 and sold worse. DMC 4 followed DMC 3 and sold better. FF16 sold quite well at launch before plummeting off a cliff- potentially because of poor word of mouth as people got further in and the game's story and mechanics failed to maintain interest- alongside the not insignificant factor of the game being misogynistic as hell in a fanbase that has a lot more women in it. FF16 launched with previous titles being FF7R, ShB/EW, mega-successful critical and commercial hits. FF7R2 launched with the previous title being FF16, a piece of shit with sales that cratered as soon as word of mouth had time to spread. Is this me being unfair to FF16 because it's very bad and am I performing the same type of wish fulfillment I chided people for at the beginning of this post? Yes.
Also worth saying that anyone trying to paint the PS5 as some sort of flop console that has people en masse migrating to PC is also delusional. It has just about the exact same sales as the PS4 did at this point, trailing slightly behind because, again, verge of a recession. It isn't outperforming the PS4 by any stretch but its far from some underperforming brick like the Xbox Serieses or WiiU.
True and correct, really annoying pat never mentions part 1 came out during covid lockdown
man, i bought a ps5 because of rebirth and only played xvi because i was already getting a ps5 for rebirth. i'm still not ready to call xvi bad, but oh boy it sure isn't good! like, i'm extremely generous with final fantasies, i would describe most of them as games i love or at least respect...except xvi!
I didn't play this one or the 1st.
Was a huge fan of the OG but these remakes always looked inauthentic to me.
If I can wait through the console exclusivity window, I may as well wait for the ff7r trilogy bundle to go on sale. There's enough games to play.
Imagine if FFR3 came out and it was PS5 pro only. How pissed would you be
final fantasy doesnt need god of war level visual fidelity. scale it down to bravely default level graphics and just make it extremely vast and deep
Ya know what fuck it,if the million+ copy sellers fail to meet expectations they might as well do whatever. You hear that Capcom,make God Hand 2 already if you guys wanted DMC4 to do CoD numbers