I don't disagree but if FFXV faces a massive decline in Japan, western sales won't be stable.
As I said earlier, I'm not personally expecting it to do well. I just think there's a theoretical product you could make that succeeds in the burgeoning overseas RPG market while not making a huge impact in Japan.
We actually have a good example of that with Dark Souls and even Fire Emblem is pretty stacked toward the overseas market.
Looking at FFXV though, I see a product that really wants to succeed everywhere, but has awkward clashes with consumer taste in each market instead. I'm assuming they're hoping to power through that on brand power, but I don't think that's really there anymore.
That list is a bit weird.
First, some numbers Are Sold in, while others Are Sold through.
Second, some Are very old numbers, like Bloodborne ( sep 2015), it is surely well Over 2 Million now after The New Version + usual Holidays sales, while others numbers Are seriusly just a guess...
It's a last publicly stated number list that lets us see what the bottom is for reported RPG numbers and get a sense for where a game might want to hit in a broad sense for the type of numbers Square Enix would ever consider sharing.
I guess I could wave a magic wand around instead and magically hack all their databases to figure out an exact sales number for them, or I could ballpark what a multiplatform RPG's trajectory looks like and then look at the most similar case using extra details if/when Square Enix actually does share some data. The general trend here though is huge, growing success with an eventual floor of around 5 million for major $60 console RPGs. There's a huge gap once we start getting to stuff like Risen, but those are games with very different economics.
I had Bloodborne in there so we can see an exclusive RPG near launch for future potential Horizon questions.
I made this before The Division though so we could add yet another game in the 5-10 bucket and it had over 4 million in the launch day shipment.
Edit:
Oh I think I get what people keep freaking out about.
I don't care about the stack ranking here. That's totally whatever. It's the sales trend and the health of the genre.