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[Fabieter]

Please enlighten me on how to read this chart, pulled directly out of a leaked Insomniac slide deck.

SUNSET OVERDRIVE MADE INSOMNIAC JUST $567 PROFIT

What was misinterpreted? The leaks, obviously https://www.resetera.com/threads/ratchet-clank-rift-apart-sold-over-2-72-million-units-made-profit-for-sony-on-a-81m-budget-up-february-2022.796947/

www.neogaf.com

Context matter, but fake news always stick.

 

[tmlDan]

Half of VII-R's sales in the same timeframe and will have a weaker tail.

Interesting how he didn't share a figure or a source.

Why would we trust him? I do believe its lower than Remake but i don't trust this dude when it comes to sales, he only covers the chinese market

 

[adamsapple]

Interesting how he didn't share a figure or a source.

Why would we trust him? I do believe its lower than Remake but i don't trust this dude when it comes to sales, he only covers the chinese market

He's a director at a video game research and analysis firm, he probably knows what he's talking about, I reckon.

 

[mdkirby]

I haven’t bought it, despite playing FF7: remake, mostly because I’m a bit confused about what I’m supposed to have played since then, there multiple random versions of remake they’ve released, I know there was that integrade thing, and some other stuff. It’s just confusing, and I feel if I got and played rebirth now, I’ll have missed a chunk in the middle.

 

[Fabieter]

Interesting how he didn't share a figure or a source.

Why would we trust him? I do believe its lower than Remake but i don't trust this dude when it comes to sales, he only covers the chinese market

I mean the first had alot of going for it. Hype was definitely bigger, double the installbase, start of covid, and sequles always sold way less in the franchise. I would be shocked if it was selling more but half of it is hard to believe yes especially if it's selling more than dragons dogma in most main markets and it would put it under DD2 if it was like half of it. I dont know man.

 

[Minsc]

I definitely enjoy this the most out of any recent FF since XII. But I do think it has a large barrier to entry being a sequel to a sequel of sorts, and that visually the game looks pretty bland/bad most times. The lighting just seem poor, as well as texture work and Remake IMO for the time it released at, looked a lot more impressive to me.

That said, I'm still loving the gameplay of Rebirth, and the systems and structure of it.

 

[Spirit Icana]

I'll copy and paste what I said in the Europe thread here, since this thread is all about Rebirth:

There is almost no doubt in my mind at this point that Square Enix is disappointed with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth's performance.

Final Fantasy 16 sales did not meet high expectations, says Square Enix president

Sales of Final Fantasy 16 did not meet Square Enix's high expectations, said president Takashi Kiryu. Last week the com…

www.eurogamer.net

Final Fantasy XVI met the low end of their expectations, and the SE president,Takashi Kiryu, blamed the performance on the slow adoption rate of the PS5. It appears Rebirth has fallen behind XVI. Rebirth did not receive the budget it did with the expectation that it would fall behind XVI after the PS5 had further grown its install base, even having gone through a holiday, since XVI's release. SE had their PR ready a week after XVI's release to praise its 3million sales performance. They would not be silent on Rebirth if things were looking pretty. The game must've missed its internal projections.

When you consider Europe is not that big a market, and Japan isn't showing good numbers for the game, and NPD had TEKKEN 8 (2 million first month debut, PR from Bandai Namco) ahead of FF7 Rebirth for the year 24' ending mid way through the first week of March for North America: https://wccftech.com/helldivers-2-beat-final-fantasy-vii-rebirth-npd-circana-february-2024/ it puts more shade on the game's 'success'.

Here is Final Fantasy VII Remake's debut performance for reference: https://www.destructoid.com/final-fantasy-vii-remake-launch-month-sets-new-franchise-sales-record/

If Zhuge is right and it's selling half of Remake's numbers, with a weaker tail, FF7 remake did 7 million by September 2020. Rebirth would be on track to hit 3.5 million-4 million in a similar time frame. Sounds too low to be true, but yeah, for this game that's not good at all.

Square Enix will verbalize how they feel about this game's performance soon enough.

 

[Draugoth]

Dying series if true. Its no one's fault but SQEX.

1) Short sighted exclusivity deals alienate fans and limit growth
2) Putting your best team on remakes for a decade is one of the worst management calls of all time
3) FFXVI had unforgivable design shortcomings.

Every SQEX exclusive on PS5 has underperformed. Forspoken, Foamstars, FFXVI, FFVII, and FFVII-2. Great strategy.

Being a PS5 exclusive seems to have been a hidrance.

 

[mckmas8808]

Also, putting Daniel Ahmad as a Source is more BS, he's the guy that said in 2020 that SIE games don't make any profit at all. He's been wrong plenty of times.

No way Daniel said that about SIE games. Proof?

 

[GHound]

No way Daniel said that about SIE games. Proof?

Tales from the ass probably. There are criticisms to be made and inaccuracies aplenty but I don't think this one is based in reality.

 

[Madflavor]

Tales from the ass probably. There are criticisms to be made and inaccuracies aplenty but I don't think this one is based in reality.

Would it depend on how much Sony takes a cut on profit? If it ain't much, then this could be accurate.

 

[tmlDan]

He's a director at a video game research and analysis firm, he probably knows what he's talking about, I reckon.

that covers the chinese market, he's also not privy to much info at all and never has. He was promoted at Niko Partners as an industry analyst, he is literally a nobody who uses other people's data to make assumptions.

I swear, as a marketing analyst myself it is shocking these people are held in high regard when they make a chart and say look it's going down the industry is dying. He avoids nuance, make's assumptions and is, above all, not to be trusted.

Would it depend on how much Sony takes a cut on profit? If it ain't much, then this could be accurate.

Are you serious? we've seen the numbers, they are profitable but they reinvest them into future games/tech.

 

[Madflavor]

Are you serious? we've seen the numbers, they are profitable but they reinvest them into future games/tech.

When you say numbers do you mean how many copies a game has sold? I know we've seen those, but my question is how much of a cut does Sony take from that? If Santa Monica Studios made, say $300m from GoW:R, how much does Sony take in?

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

Being a PS5 exclusive seems to have been a hidrance.

Honestly it’s probably a lot of things:
- PS5 exclusive
- need to play part 1 to understand wtf is going on
- some gamers were disappointed with the direction they took with part 1
- declining interest + disappointment in the Final Fantasy franchise as a whole


Man I don’t even know. Final Fantasy has such an opinionated and divided fanbase. A remake of Final Fantasy 7 should’ve been the ONE thing that united the fanbase and proved that they still got it. Instead they made it into a bloated, multi-part Tetsuya Nomura cringe turd.

 

[Nonehxc]

​

Aanalysis firm Ampere has been doing for recent PS5 exclusive Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. Square Enix has yet to provide any concrete information on how well Rebirth has sold, but PS5 daily active user data suggests that it's surpassed at least 2 million copies since its launch on the 29th February.

So, how does that compare to other big budget Final Fantasy games released over recent years? Well, for starters, Final Fantasy 7 Remake — the original PS4 version, and Rebirth's predecessor — managed 3.5 million sales in just three days.

Meanwhile, Final Fantasy 16 — which had Square Enix sending mixed messages with regards to its success versus the publisher's expectations — sold 3 million at launch. Like Rebirth, it was also a PS5 exclusive.

Ampere Analysis

Source

Nope. If Spain second hand market is anything to go by...every forum, app and second hand webs and shops are absolutely FLOODED with opened and finished physical copies. Much more so than any other games, this has been bought by lots of peeps, so extrapolating that to all the markets...

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

period. no spinning

Edit:
Let's be clear on something: this is not an issue of the quality of the game necessarily, but an issue with the state of the brand. (But the state of the brand is what it is because of the quality of previous entries)

I wouldn't even say 'quality' of previous releases vs. inconsistencies. XVI was well-regarded by critics but the fanbase seemed very divided on it due to preferences. Remake had less division among fans but there was still a bit of it. Intergrade might've actually conditioned some who picked up Remake or Intergrade to wait for an enhanced version of Rebirth (in this case for example, a PC port or a PS5 Pro patch) in order to pick it up.

Also a possibility that some unaware people could be under the impression the remake trilogy is just one $70 game split into three $70 games, instead of understanding they are taking parts from the original game and adding a shitload of new & expanded content to them. So in the end, the remake trilogy ends up being a much bigger game than the original ever was. But maybe that concept is hard to convey to some people.

Due to my backlog, I haven't even started the game.

Unless SE gives a PR statement for sales, this is BS.


Also, putting Daniel Ahmad as a Source is more BS, he's the guy that said in 2020 that SIE games don't make any profit at all. He's been wrong plenty of times.

He also spread the BS that Sony were locking down exclusivity with as many big 3P as possible when in reality that's only translated to a couple smaller Zenimax games and Square-Enix's big FF & new IP (Forspoken) releases.

And even then, in all those cases the exclusivity was timed, sometimes even still PC Day 1 (like with Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo). Then idiots started running with that as justification for Microsoft buying Zenimax and later ABK.

Clearly exclusivity isn't helping the brand, I continue to be baffled as to how Square thinks taking a $20 million check from Sony is helping them when they're trading millions of day 1 sales on PC and Xbox for it. Nobody gives a fuck about these games 1+ year later when they're catalogue subscription service fodder, of course they sell like shit on other platforms at that point.

If exclusivity was the problem, then Sony's own games would be struggling being PS5-only. But GOW Ragnarok, GT7, Spiderman 2 etc. beg to differ.

The audience for this game on Xbox is practically gone (consider how poorly Soul Hackers 2 sold on Xbox, when it didn't have a Game Pass deal) and much smaller than it was when XV released on XBO back in 2015. PC software sales in Japan aren't that great and regularly trail behind PS5, PS4 and Switch for multiplatform releases.

That said, there's an increased chance that for Part 3 (and FF XVII), Square-Enix make it cross-gen with PS5 & PS6, and a PC (EGS & Steam, maybe also GOG) Day 1 release. The only way it gets an "Xbox" release Day 1 is if the next Xbox is basically a consolized mini Windows PC/NUC gaming system (or maybe that and a handheld), which is where it seems their hardware is going (hence the recent talk of 'forward compatibility' likely bringing an Xbox OG/360/XBO/Series emulation layer to Windows 12).

They might also try finding a way to scale the graphics down for a Switch 2 version and offer cloud streaming to enhance the visual fidelity on that system for Day 1, like how Flight Simulator can stream in extra textures to the game in real-time. I don't know what type of check Sony'd have to cut to keep Part 3 a timed exclusive but I'd say anything over $100 million is probably a waste that I'd personally rather see directed towards a high-polish AA entry to a JRPG IP they actually own. Or to co-develop an exclusive with S-E on an IP like Parasite Eve. Though, I could definitely still see Sony going for global marketing rights.

 

[Pasta la Vista]

I plan on picking it up eventually but I basically have to force myself through the rest of the first one.

 

[Punished Miku]

The audience for this game on Xbox is practically gone (consider how poorly Soul Hackers 2 sold on Xbox, when it didn't have a Game Pass deal)

Soul Hackers 2 is literally the worst JRPG I've ever played. That should have been a $20 game brand new and it might have found an audience.

A remake of Final Fantasy 7 should’ve been the ONE thing that united the fanbase

Nope, I think that's exactly where they went wrong. They believed the vocal people online driven by nostalgia. There is no silver bullet. FFVII has always been overrated since it was a lot of people's first JRPG. For a lot of people that had been playing Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger previously, it was kind of a step down. The characters always looked goofy as hell and the storyline is a bit of a trainwreck. Originally they had it right. The project was going to be outsourced to CyberConnect, which is about all the resources they should have expended on it.

Instead they took literally the best team they have in the entire company, the team behind FFX and FFXIII and stuck them on remakes for a decade. Say what you want about FFXIII, but it sold well, and Lightning and a lot of the cast were iconic characters that could generate substantial interest from a casual audience just from the marketing and commercials. Their best composer, Hamauzu, is wasted making remakes of more simplistic Uematsu tracks instead of crafting the next Blinded by Light that captures people's imagination. Say what you will about Toriyama, but he's the best they've got as a director right now as well, and always manages to put out high quality games on time and on budget repeatedly. The opportunity cost of missing on on 2-3 entirely original games from them is massive. Remakes will never generate the kind of excitement that makes it worth it to waste a decade of your prime team, who could be making something far, far more interesting and generating new fans for the IP instead of catering to gamers plotting their retirement in 20 years. Huge unforced error that would only make any sense if they actually believed all the people online gushing about FFVII just from pure nostalgia.

But there's other issues with the series in general and their decisions besides making a $210 triple remake for 10 years (I seriously can't believe anyone thought this was a good idea.).

 

[ChiefDada]

Tales from the ass probably. There are criticisms to be made and inaccuracies aplenty but I don't think this one is based in reality.

He is saying that they ARE profitable, in addition to being a catalyst for console sales and by extension a larger ecosystem.

He is listing all of the positives of Sony 1st party strategy in this tweet.

 

[Skelterz]

Rebirth is better than X. Top three FF material, easily.



You're only forced to play one Blitzball game. And I liked it.

Rebirth isn’t better than FFX, somehow X feels less linear than rebirth which is completely unnatural but the moment you realise each area is a rinse and repeat it really dawns on you that rebirth is quite a lazyily put together affair. It lack the soul of the earlier games it’s literally dry.

 

[Fabieter]

Soul Hackers 2 is literally the worst JRPG I've ever played. That should have been a $20 game brand new and it might have found an audience.


Nope, I think that's exactly where they went wrong. They believed the vocal people online driven by nostalgia. There is no silver bullet. FFVII has always been overrated since it was a lot of people's first JRPG. For a lot of people that had been playing Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger previously, it was kind of a step down. The characters always looked goofy as hell and the storyline is a bit of a trainwreck. Originally they had it right. The project was going to be outsourced to CyberConnect, which is about all the resources they should have expended on it.

Instead they took literally the best team they have in the entire company, the team behind FFX and FFXIII and stuck them on remakes for a decade. Say what you want about FFXIII, but it sold well, and Lightning and a lot of the cast were iconic characters that could generate substantial interest from a casual audience just from the marketing and commercials. Their best composer, Hamauzu, is wasted making remakes of more simplistic Uematsu tracks instead of crafting the next Blinded by Light that captures people's imagination. Say what you will about Toriyama, but he's the best they've got as a director right now as well, and always manages to put out high quality games on time and on budget repeatedly. The opportunity cost of missing on on 2-3 entirely original games from them is massive. Remakes will never generate the kind of excitement that makes it worth it to waste a decade of your prime team, who could be making something far, far more interesting and generating new fans for the IP instead of catering to gamers plotting their retirement in 20 years. Huge unforced error that would only make any sense if they actually believed all the people online gushing about FFVII just from pure nostalgia.

But there's other issues with the series in general and their decisions besides making a $210 triple remake for 10 years (I seriously can't believe anyone thought this was a good idea.).

You missed an "in my opinion"

 

[Skelterz]

Soul Hackers 2 is literally the worst JRPG I've ever played. That should have been a $20 game brand new and it might have found an audience.


Nope, I think that's exactly where they went wrong. They believed the vocal people online driven by nostalgia. There is no silver bullet. FFVII has always been overrated since it was a lot of people's first JRPG. For a lot of people that had been playing Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger previously, it was kind of a step down. The characters always looked goofy as hell and the storyline is a bit of a trainwreck. Originally they had it right. The project was going to be outsourced to CyberConnect, which is about all the resources they should have expended on it.

Instead they took literally the best team they have in the entire company, the team behind FFX and FFXIII and stuck them on remakes for a decade. Say what you want about FFXIII, but it sold well, and Lightning and a lot of the cast were iconic characters that could generate substantial interest from a casual audience just from the marketing and commercials. Their best composer, Hamauzu, is wasted making remakes of more simplistic Uematsu tracks instead of crafting the next Blinded by Light that captures people's imagination. Say what you will about Toriyama, but he's the best they've got as a director right now as well, and always manages to put out high quality games on time and on budget repeatedly. The opportunity cost of missing on on 2-3 entirely original games from them is massive. Remakes will never generate the kind of excitement that makes it worth it to waste a decade of your prime team, who could be making something far, far more interesting and generating new fans for the IP instead of catering to gamers plotting their retirement in 20 years. Huge unforced error that would only make any sense if they actually believed all the people online gushing about FFVII just from pure nostalgia.

But there's other issues with the series in general and their decisions besides making a $210 triple remake for 10 years (I seriously can't believe anyone thought this was a good idea.).

I played SH2 and my friend was playing Arc the lad.. Suffice it to say Arc the lad is the worst RPG I’ve ever seen be played .

 

[Punished Miku]

You missed an "in my opinion"

"Nope, I think that's exactly where they went wrong."

"I think that's exactly where they went wrong."

"I think that"

"I think"

 

[Fabieter]

"Nope, I think that's exactly where they went wrong."

"I think that's exactly where they went wrong."

"I think that"

"I think"

The rest also reads like face value tho.

Anyone who dont think spoken is the best composer is wrong anyway.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Soul Hackers 2 is literally the worst JRPG I've ever played. That should have been a $20 game brand new and it might have found an audience.


Nope, I think that's exactly where they went wrong. They believed the vocal people online driven by nostalgia. There is no silver bullet. FFVII has always been overrated since it was a lot of people's first JRPG. For a lot of people that had been playing Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger previously, it was kind of a step down. The characters always looked goofy as hell and the storyline is a bit of a trainwreck. Originally they had it right. The project was going to be outsourced to CyberConnect, which is about all the resources they should have expended on it.

Instead they took literally the best team they have in the entire company, the team behind FFX and FFXIII and stuck them on remakes for a decade. Say what you want about FFXIII, but it sold well, and Lightning and a lot of the cast were iconic characters that could generate substantial interest from a casual audience just from the marketing and commercials. Their best composer, Hamauzu, is wasted making remakes of more simplistic Uematsu tracks instead of crafting the next Blinded by Light that captures people's imagination. Say what you will about Toriyama, but he's the best they've got as a director right now as well, and always manages to put out high quality games on time and on budget repeatedly. The opportunity cost of missing on on 2-3 entirely original games from them is massive. Remakes will never generate the kind of excitement that makes it worth it to waste a decade of your prime team, who could be making something far, far more interesting and generating new fans for the IP instead of catering to gamers plotting their retirement in 20 years. Huge unforced error that would only make any sense if they actually believed all the people online gushing about FFVII just from pure nostalgia.

But there's other issues with the series in general and their decisions besides making a $210 triple remake for 10 years (I seriously can't believe anyone thought this was a good idea.).

This entire post is a terrible and misinformed take

This series of remake is far better than FFX or FFXIII which were the start of the downfall of the series. It, along with FF16, have brought the series back into the spotlight for quality again

The composer has plenty of original and amazing tracks in this

I’m sure if this was a sub game or indie or not on the specific platform you’d be humming a different tune though

 

[Punished Miku]

This entire post is a terrible and misinformed take

This series of remake is far better than FFX or FFXIII which were the start of the downfall of the series. It, along with FF16, have brought the series back into the spotlight for quality again

The composer has plenty of original and amazing tracks in this

I’m sure if this was a sub game or indie or not on the specific platform you’d be humming a different tune though

I'm not saying the game is bad. I'm saying this is made by literally the best people at SQEX, the people who made XIII. If it wasn't a slow motion 10 years retelling of something we've mostly seen I think we'd see their talents generating a lot more interest and sales. I can't think of anything more wasteful than taking the best creatives at a company and telling them to just remake something that already exists. That's a project for a junior team. Naughty Dog understands that at least.

Anyone who dont think spoken is the best composer is wrong anyway.

The guy who can't even put out the OST with a live orchestra for a mainline FF game.

 

[ShadyAcshuns]

Pretty low for a game of this magnitude. 2 mil would be good for a game like Unicorn Overlord, not a Final Fantasy title.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

I'm not saying the game is bad. I'm saying this is made by literally the best people at SQEX, the people who made XIII. If it wasn't a slow motion 10 years retelling of something we've mostly seen I think we'd see their talents generating a lot more interest and sales. I can't think of anything more wasteful than taking the best creatives at a company and telling them to just remake something that already exists. That's a project for a junior team. Naughty Dog understands that at least.

Yeah and this is a vastly more interesting and ambitious game than the forgettable embarrassment to the series that FFXIII was

You talk about FF7 being goofy and in the same breath praise the FFXIII team for that project

This isn’t a normal remake either - there’s so much that they’ve changed that other than the characters it is basically an entirely new final fantasy game with very loose framework for the story

I’m fine with them making multiple games of this since the quality is on point. I was not fine with how many iterations we got of XIII

 

[Fabieter]

Pretty low for a game of this magnitude. 2 mil would be good for a game like Unicorn Overlord, not a Final Fantasy title.

2m would be insanity for unicorn ocerlord in this timeframe.

 

[Go_Ly_Dow]

Pretty low for a game of this magnitude. 2 mil would be good for a game like Unicorn Overlord, not a Final Fantasy title.

These are unconfirmed numbers and also the topic itself states 2.2mil launch numbers, which implies day 1 or week 1, but this isn't included in the OP title or in the info for some reason.

 

[Brock2621]

Rebirth deserves to sell much more, my gosh what an incredible ride that was. The amount of content packed into that $70 was astounding (I'm 120hrs in and still haven't gone back and finished all the side quests)

 

[Punished Miku]

Yeah and this is a vastly more interesting and ambitious game than the forgettable embarrassment to the series that FFXIII was

At no point have I tried to compare FFVII Remake to XIII. I'm comparing FFVII Remake to a new original game and the huge opportunity cost of not getting that.

 

[Fabieter]

I'm not saying the game is bad. I'm saying this is made by literally the best people at SQEX, the people who made XIII. If it wasn't a slow motion 10 years retelling of something we've mostly seen I think we'd see their talents generating a lot more interest and sales. I can't think of anything more wasteful than taking the best creatives at a company and telling them to just remake something that already exists. That's a project for a junior team. Naughty Dog understands that at least.


The guy who can't even put out the OST with a live orchestra for a mainline FF game.

You mean the guy that basically makes music for a full fledged final fantasy games every two years.

 

[ShaiKhulud1989]

Square is already making (hope the source is not banned) Part 3 with steady schedule and Rebirth director was promoted to the SE board.

But it's clear that Rebirth failed because some very sketchy numbers and a tweet from a guy who was wrong plenty of times and don't have direct access to actual WW sales data.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

At no point have I tried to compare FFVII Remake to XIII. I'm comparing FFVII Remake to a new original game and the huge opportunity cost of not getting that.

What opportunity cost? This FF team needed to do a remake like this so they could focus and raise the quality bar. The structure of having the game’s core already identified allowed them to create a game of this quality in a time efficient manner

It should allow them to use this template for future new games whenever the series is complete.

 

[Punished Miku]

It should allow them to use this template for future new games whenever the series is complete.

Cool, I'll be interested whenever they get done with their training then.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Cool, I'll be interested whenever they get done with their training then.

Cool, you do that. And then go on to complain about all the ways it doesn’t conform to your idealized version of a final fantasy game

Meanwhile genuine fans of the series will simply enjoy quality final fantasy games whatever form they manage to take

 

[Angry_Megalodon]

Rebirth is at the top of the charts in the main markets. The narrative pushed by this person doesn't match reality.

If the idea is that FF as a franchise is not GTA, Spiderman, or Pokemon, yes, it's not. Is that a surprise?

As for exclusivity, Square explained that launching on more than one platform would have delayed it. Too bad their keyboards don't have the magic port button.

 

[Spyxos]

That's less than I expected. I've only heard positive things about the game. It will certainly sell more over time.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Pretty low for a game of this magnitude. 2 mil would be good for a game like Unicorn Overlord, not a Final Fantasy title.

2 million in little over a month isn't bad at all for a game that's only on a single platform with an install base of "only" ~ 55 million. It only looks "low" because XVI managed that plus an extra 1.4 million in the span of a week, similarly on a single platform which at that time had an even smaller install base (relatively speaking) to where it was by the time Rebirth launched.

And I guess the optics of that are why S-E haven't announced anything yet in terms of sales figures. Though it should also be said, XVI launched in a somewhat less busy period than Rebirth, and didn't have to content with a surprise juggernaut like Helldivers 2 (though Diablo 4 and SF6 were big releases when XVI came out).

Nope, I think that's exactly where they went wrong. They believed the vocal people online driven by nostalgia. There is no silver bullet. FFVII has always been overrated since it was a lot of people's first JRPG. For a lot of people that had been playing Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger previously, it was kind of a step down. The characters always looked goofy as hell and the storyline is a bit of a trainwreck. Originally they had it right. The project was going to be outsourced to CyberConnect, which is about all the resources they should have expended on it.

Instead they took literally the best team they have in the entire company, the team behind FFX and FFXIII and stuck them on remakes for a decade. Say what you want about FFXIII, but it sold well, and Lightning and a lot of the cast were iconic characters that could generate substantial interest from a casual audience just from the marketing and commercials. Their best composer, Hamauzu, is wasted making remakes of more simplistic Uematsu tracks instead of crafting the next Blinded by Light that captures people's imagination. Say what you will about Toriyama, but he's the best they've got as a director right now as well, and always manages to put out high quality games on time and on budget repeatedly. The opportunity cost of missing on on 2-3 entirely original games from them is massive. Remakes will never generate the kind of excitement that makes it worth it to waste a decade of your prime team, who could be making something far, far more interesting and generating new fans for the IP instead of catering to gamers plotting their retirement in 20 years. Huge unforced error that would only make any sense if they actually believed all the people online gushing about FFVII just from pure nostalgia.

But there's other issues with the series in general and their decisions besides making a $210 triple remake for 10 years (I seriously can't believe anyone thought this was a good idea.).

I can sort of see what you're getting at, and maybe an alternate universe where Square-Enix approached the FF VII remake project as a smaller-scale remake may've made some sense.

But it is what it is, and regardless how you feel, Rebirth does seem to have universal praise. Even if this installment doesn't exactly hit the high notes in sales performance intended, the team have an extremely good foundation to leverage for Part 3 and future mainline Final Fantasy titles, between this and XVI.

 

[mayham2199]

First FF16 now Rebirth. What's with people wanting these games to fail?

They outright just lie and manipulate numbers to try and make the sales look bad every single time.

 

[Punished Miku]

Cool, you do that. And then go on to complain about all the ways it doesn’t conform to your idealized version of a final fantasy game

Meanwhile genuine fans of the series will simply enjoy quality final fantasy games whatever form they manage to take

In reality, I literally just agreed with your point. I honestly wasn't arguing or disagreeing with you in my last post.

So you had to invent a disagreement we may or may not have in the future lol. I loved XIII and you didn't. I am not juvenile enough to claim I'm the genuine FF fan and you're not. You can have the title. World's best FF fan, as long as it's not the trilogy he hates and talks shit on.

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

Soul Hackers 2 is literally the worst JRPG I've ever played. That should have been a $20 game brand new and it might have found an audience.


Nope, I think that's exactly where they went wrong. They believed the vocal people online driven by nostalgia. There is no silver bullet. FFVII has always been overrated since it was a lot of people's first JRPG. For a lot of people that had been playing Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger previously, it was kind of a step down. The characters always looked goofy as hell and the storyline is a bit of a trainwreck. Originally they had it right. The project was going to be outsourced to CyberConnect, which is about all the resources they should have expended on it.

Instead they took literally the best team they have in the entire company, the team behind FFX and FFXIII and stuck them on remakes for a decade. Say what you want about FFXIII, but it sold well, and Lightning and a lot of the cast were iconic characters that could generate substantial interest from a casual audience just from the marketing and commercials. Their best composer, Hamauzu, is wasted making remakes of more simplistic Uematsu tracks instead of crafting the next Blinded by Light that captures people's imagination. Say what you will about Toriyama, but he's the best they've got as a director right now as well, and always manages to put out high quality games on time and on budget repeatedly. The opportunity cost of missing on on 2-3 entirely original games from them is massive. Remakes will never generate the kind of excitement that makes it worth it to waste a decade of your prime team, who could be making something far, far more interesting and generating new fans for the IP instead of catering to gamers plotting their retirement in 20 years. Huge unforced error that would only make any sense if they actually believed all the people online gushing about FFVII just from pure nostalgia.

But there's other issues with the series in general and their decisions besides making a $210 triple remake for 10 years (I seriously can't believe anyone thought this was a good idea.).

I agree with some of this. Yes FF VII might seem overrated if you were into Square’s games already.

But get real, it was indeed many people’s first JRPG. It defined JRPGs of the 32 bit era and gained way more mainstream attention than the games before it. The characters/world of FF7 made a big and enduring impact on gaming culture, probably bigger than any other JRPG.

And it was a big, ambitious, visually stunning game that was bound by the technological limitations of the time. Perfect candidate for a remake.

FF fanbase can’t agree on anything, but I think “FF7 is one of the better games in the series, is the one with the biggest cultural impact, and the one that shows its age the most/was most held back by the tech at the time” is about the closest thing to an uncontroversial sentiment you could find in the Final Fantasy community.

So yeah, I do think that a true remake, as in one that was more or less true to the vision of the original + what they would’ve loved to do if they had 2020 technology, could’ve been THE game that made Final Fantasy as iconic in the 2020s as it was in the 1990s.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

In reality, I literally just agreed with your point. I honestly wasn't arguing or disagreeing with you in my last post.

So you had to invent a disagreement we may or may not have in the future lol. I loved XIII and you didn't. I am not juvenile enough to claim I'm the genuine FF fan and you're not. You can have the title. World's best FF fan, as long as it's not the trilogy he hates and talks shit on.

It’s just weird to me to be dismissive of remakes or the composer’s contributions with so many new tracks. You honestly don’t seem to understand how radically different this “remake” is. To me it’s an entirely new FF game that happens to use the same characters. Everything else about the world, gameplay systems, etc is entirely new compared to the original

Like, I enjoy new RE games but am I going to not play RE4 just because I would have preferred RE9 instead?

And that’s a remake that is far closer to the original than this is

 

[Punished Miku]

It’s just weird to me to be dismissive of remakes or the composer’s contributions with so many new tracks. You honestly don’t seem to understand how radically different this “remake” is. To me it’s an entirely new FF game that happens to use the same characters. Everything else about the world, gameplay systems, etc is entirely new compared to the original

Like, I enjoy new RE games but am I going to not play RE4 just because I would have preferred RE9 instead?

And that’s a remake that is far closer to the original than this is

I'm not dismissive of Hamauzu. I personally think he's the best composer in the history of the series. I said I think he's wasted in a game with majority Uematsu music as the base. The initial trailer for XIII (regardless if you think the game sucks, you're entitled to your opinion), truly caught people's imagination and attention with blinded by light in the marketing. People freaked out. FFVII marketing is using Uematsu slow ballads that mostly would appeal to nostalgia. There's of course good stuff buried in the OST. I am looking forward to listening to it extensively when it finally hits streaming services. I know the battle system is good in FFVII Remake. It was good in XIII as well. I know the art design is good. It was even better in XIII because they had the freedom to create more freely. This is the best of SQEX.

I'm not even a Naughty Dog fan and I would also think it's a colossal waste if they had Neil Druckman remake The Last of Us 1 and 2 again for 10 years when I'd love to see what else he has in his head for ideas for other types of games, genres, anything. A junior team can handle a remake, always. That's not weird. I would hope you would be saying the same thing if you heard Druckman was going to remake Uncharted 1-3 and then retire. Wouldn't you rather see Druckman make a sci-fi game, or a dark fantasy game, or anything new?

Anyway, I am just repeating myself. This is the same thing I said in my first post and I just wanted to leave it at that.

I agree with some of this. Yes FF VII might seem overrated if you were into Square’s games already.

But get real, it was indeed many people’s first JRPG. It defined JRPGs of the 32 bit era and gained way more mainstream attention than the games before it. The characters/world of FF7 made a big and enduring impact on gaming culture, probably bigger than any other JRPG.

And it was a big, ambitious, visually stunning game that was bound by the technological limitations of the time. Perfect candidate for a remake.

FF fanbase can’t agree on anything, but I think “FF7 is one of the better games in the series, is the one with the biggest cultural impact, and the one that shows its age the most/was most held back by the tech at the time” is about the closest thing to an uncontroversial sentiment you could find in the Final Fantasy community.

So yeah, I do think that a true remake, as in one that was more or less true to the vision of the original + what they would’ve loved to do if they had 2020 technology, could’ve been THE game that made Final Fantasy as iconic in the 2020s as it was in the 1990s.

I get it. I'm not in the FFVII OT trying to hate on the game or anything. I just think it's a boring project compared to what could have been. I think if Todd Howard spent a decade remaking Skyrim it would be a huge waste when we could get Elder Scrolls 6. And I don't think a Skyrim remake would sell the same as it did before. I think they're outsourcing Fallout 3 and Oblivion remakes to small external studios. FFVII is definitely a cultural touchstone game for people and the genre, but I think it's just not worth 10 years of remakes with the top tier talent.

 

[Dr. Claus]

I'm not dismissive of Hamauzu. I personally think he's the best composer in the history of the series. I said I think he's wasted in a game with majority Uematsu music as the base. The initial trailer for XIII (regardless if you think the game sucks, you're entitled to your opinion), truly caught people's imagination and attention with blinded by light in the marketing. People freaked out. FFVII marketing is using Uematsu slow ballads that mostly would appeal to nostalgia. There's of course good stuff buried in the OST. I am looking forward to listening to it extensively when it finally hits streaming services. I know the battle system is good in FFVII Remake. It was good in XIII as well. I know the art design is good. It was even better in XIII because they had the freedom to create more freely. This is the best of SQEX.

I'm not even a Naughty Dog fan and I would also think it's a colossal waste if they had Neil Druckman remake The Last of Us 1 and 2 again for 10 years when I'd love to see what else he has in his head for ideas for other types of games, genres, anything. A junior team can handle a remake, always. That's not weird. I would hope you would be saying the same thing if you heard Druckman was going to remake Uncharted 1-3 and then retire. Wouldn't you rather see Druckman make a sci-fi game, or a dark fantasy game, or anything new?

Anyway, I am just repeating myself. This is the same thing I said in my first post and I just wanted to leave it at that.

I get it. I'm not in the FFVII OT trying to hate on the game or anything. I just think it's a boring project compared to what could have been. I think if Todd Howard spent a decade remaking Skyrim it would be a huge waste when we could get Elder Scrolls 6. And I don't think a Skyrim remake would sell the same as it did before. I think they're outsourcing Fallout 3 and Oblivion remakes to small external studios. FFVII is definitely a cultural touchstone game for people and the genre, but I think it's just not worth 10 years of remakes with the top tier talent.

Except we have continued to get brand new entries in the franchise. So the Skyrim 6 point is complete malarkey

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

I'm not even a Naughty Dog fan and I would also think it's a colossal waste if they had Neil Druckman remake The Last of Us 1 and 2 again for 10 years when I'd love to see what else he has in his head for ideas for other types of games, genres, anything

This is a terrible analogy though. TLOU1/2 were just graphical changes and added nothing new to the series other than that. And they already looked good. I can understand those that think it’s a waste (even though it was necessary for the PC release anyways and helped feed into the TV show)

FF7:R is not that situation at all. The original games were 2D isometric. The new game is open world with new characters, new world locations, vastly expanded means of traversal, story beats, etc.

You’re comparing a 1:1 graphical remake with a new game that only uses the basic framework while everything else is radically changed

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Except we have continued to get brand new entries in the franchise. So the Skyrim 6 point is complete malarkey

He conveniently ignores FF16 because it’s not what he personally wanted

There’s seemingly always some excuse

I really don’t think he’s a big fan of the series at all

 

[Dr. Claus]

He conveniently ignores FF16 because it’s not what he personally wanted

There’s seemingly always some excuse

I really don’t think he’s a big fan of the series at all

It is something I have noticed. People just want an excuse to shit on the franchise and never actually played and/or enjoyed it to begin with.

Most people would say “I don’t like it” and move on. These folks tend to constantly join every thread to talk about how much they hate it and everything associated with it and how it is the end of the world. So much hyperbole.

 

[Punished Miku]

He conveniently ignores FF16 because it’s not what he personally wanted

There’s seemingly always some excuse

I really don’t think he’s a big fan of the series at all

I was attempting to not take your bait and get derailed even more into pointless bickering. What do you want me to say about FFXVI? What do you think I am ignoring? I'm glad the MMO team got a shot at making an original game. Cool. XIV sounds like it's really popular so give them a shot at something new. That's exactly what I want to see more of. I personally think the game is a huge disappointment, but I don't think it's a management or strategy mistake to greenlight the project. What does that have to do with me thinking CBU1 is wasted on a remake?