Thread 720097970

Why doesn't modern Final Fantasy sell anymore?
Is the quality just too low? Too woke? Poor design? Shit combat? Bad writing? Flanderized characters? All the above?

This entire series has gone from a almost yearly celebration of Japanese creativity to barely tolerated garbage.

>>720097970 (OP)
FF was never good

mentally ill turd based sissy.

>>720097970 (OP)
Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth are literally the only modern Final Fantasies I've enjoyed, outside of the Pixel Remasters which are just the old games.
Anything past FFXII otherwise has been shit.

I'm largely okay with 7R3 being the last FInal Fantasy I'll ever play, it can go off on a high note for me, then left to die.

>>720098076
guess the PS5 was a barrier to squaresoft as well

>>720097970 (OP)
If you put shitcolored things into games they will sell less.

Someone should really tell people that nobody ever actually liked any of the cuckold shit. Nobody wants it. You do not sell a single extra copy for doing it and you probably lose sales doing it.

Any game that is woke would have sold better if it weren't. It's a mystery why they do it at all.

>>720097970 (OP)
It got sanitised, lost any narrative theme and pacing, removed turn based, stopped doing theatre style panoramic backgrounds, switched to MMO style combat - almost everything post-10 stopped being what made Final Fantasy Final Fantasy, so the people who liked what made Final Fantasy Final Fantasy stopped playing new Final Fantasy.

>>720098346
This actually felt like a return to form for Final Fantasy, but 16 proved Square didn't learn their lesson anyway.
It's all too little too late.

it was selling
no one has a ps5

>>720098695
80 million PS5 sold says differently

>>720097970 (OP)
>Why doesn't modern Final Fantasy sell anymore?
because square enix can't be trusted to even bag your groceries anymore

>>720097970 (OP)
Because the brand mostly only appeals to millennials and older nostalgic folk hoping to hit that same high they got playing the older games. Younger audiences mostly don't care for the FF brand except for hipsters and streamers who want to target that millennial market. Also, the FUN of the newer games, despite being technically better, has declined once Squaresoft merged with Enix.

>>720097970 (OP)
A lot of bad decisions by the owning company.

>>720097970 (OP)
FF7R wasn't an outright flop IIRC, but then again I haven't looked at whatever the budget is for it, I assume it cost a fortune since they're doing everything from scratch and they split the game up so much, there's probably gonna be 7 parts to it by the time they leave Midgar, if the game ever does.
>FF7 is a masterpiece to most of its remaining fans and people are still autistic enough to feud over Aeri[th/s]'s name to this day, so they get a bit fussy about messing with it
>FF7R is loaded with retcons, changes to gameplay, Tifa's boobs, really just about everything's changed
>knowing SE, Aeri[s/th] will probably live or be revived in FF7R too
>Cloud being a Generic Anime Swordsman With Big Sword (despite kinda being one of the origins of that trope) annoys some oldfag weebs and really drives normalfags batty
>splitting up the game into a bunch of different "games" also annoys people who were expecting "FF7 but with effort put in past disc 1" or "FF7 but not prerendered"
>the ghosts
>the yellow paint
>this all pisses off FF7 fans, the biggest faction of people that would've bought it
>a lot of non-autistic FF7 fans have moved out of the FF series anyway
The fact it's selling as well as it is is surprising to me, in theory it should've been a lot worse.

Also NGL, XVI is so much of an unknown to me, I don't think I've seen a single clip, a single ad, a single streamer mention the game, not even one of those ""recommended"" videos on Youtube. I don't know the characters or the plot, nothing.
I remember someone memeing about the game once either here or on Twitter, but fuck if I know, I barely remember what they were making fun of the game for.

>>720097970 (OP)
The PS3 ones and PS4 ones I tried weren’t fun.
I haven’t tried anymore of them because of that.

>>720098729
how many of those are collecting dust in warehouses from scalpers that never managed to move their inventory?

>>720097970 (OP)
i honestly think it has a lot to do with messaging / the too cute naming scheme. they might have liked the idea of a double entendre on the word "remake" but the consumer would have been better informed and their sales would have been stronger if they'd just called it some dumb shit like "FF7 NEXT: SEPHIROTH RISING" or whatever

>>720100068
It's crazy they've gone from a franchise that single handedly sold muliple generations of new consoles to mainline entries that essentially don't exist in the public conciousness.

>>720097970 (OP)
Make fun, colorful turn based fantasy again and the fans will return

>>720097970 (OP)
so tired of racist idiots on this site who think they are the majority. cant wait for the new civil war to start and you die alone and penniless in a republican corporate owned hellhole state.

>>720100302
The idea was to trick people into buying it, then hook them with the intrigue of a new plot. It only backfired because the changes were hot garbage.

>>720097970 (OP)
Square has spent the past 20 years burning all the good will they had built up over the years. They used to be my favorite dev but I swore off FF after XIII with the recent exception of Stranger in Paradise and it's a miracle that game turned out as good as it did. Outside of Nier I have no interest in anything they do because I know they'll fuck it up. And even with Nier I would not be surprised if they fuck with Taro.

>>720100641
You are laterally me.

>>720100068
>I don't know the characters or the plot, nothing.
the first act that constituted the demo was cool and all but thats mostly because they were aping game of thrones, like straight up beat for beat copying or creating composite characters

>>720100302
i don't think you know what a double entendre is however. nor is your suggested title anywhere close to being more informative than "remake" outside of your own head.

don't hire fans

>>720097970 (OP)
there are only like maybe 4 good ffs, 2, 6, 8, and maybe 10, the jury's out on that one until i investigate it myself, but the rest of them are SHIT

>>720098346
saga is the real final fantasy series

>>720097970 (OP)
Ancient franchise that has no particular reason to still exist. Still, underperforming means overestimating

>>720100334
I read up on the history of the company and it just seems that much of the OG staff was pretty midwit minded and they were just lucky it was a sunrise industry. It also self-selected for disagreeable and immature risk-takers who didn't want to do the safe salaryman option upon graduation. That sloppiness and lack of consistent direction in games is something that's been a universal trait of the Final Fantasy series, Final Fantasy VIII has it especially bad and that was when they were at their peak.

They were young in their 20s back then, and could capture the rule of cool quite easily. A lot of what was cool from the golden age of Final Fantasy was just copies of whatever they seen in the movies. Like the Dollet landing came after one of them watched Saving Private Ryan. They're now in their 50s and 60s and the hierarchical nature of square-enix is really biting them in the ass. Nomura is memed on a lot, but he has an uncanny ability to keep the Fujos interested somehow. Nojima has written quite a lot of shit and seems to be consistently able to write shit.

The loss of the "cool" factor is something that doesn't get talked about. They're elders trying to write for kids. What they need to do is to start handing more responsibility to the next generation.

As this thread proves, just one very weirdly-specific fanatic trying to pretend the series is fine despite it objectively not being so. Wouldn't this board be better of without him?

>>720097970 (OP)
>Ports to Transbox
>Flops harder
When will SE learn that Hazzador and his ilk don't buy games?

Just play the old games. Modern FF only exists to give us official character models for porn.

>>720098729
Most of those are fifa/gta machines for browns

>>720100432
Marxism sucks. Get over it.

>>720100676
There's probably a lot of people like us. Anytime Square somehow magically manages to not fuck something up they will quickly make up for lost time. Like that console Dissida game, you already made a good game on PSP, you don't have to change much. But no they completely fucked it up and now that franchise is dead. Or this FFT remake coming out. I love FFT, but you want me to pay full price for a 26 year old game that is mostly gonna be a 1:1 remake but without the PSP content and no other new content at all? Fuck off. They're so goddamn frustrating.

Stranger of Paradise was actually good but the grind becomes very boring by the second dlc. The warrior of light fight is kino tho.

>>720098729
COD machines for normies. Average PS5 owner probably doesn't even know what astro bot is.

>>720097970 (OP)
it's not that they don't sell, it's that they spend way too much money making the damn things

>>720097970 (OP)
Square is hopelessly incompetent
Anyone with a passion for making good games has long since left the company

>>720100068
I've never played the original FF7 until I finished Remake and it's just a genuinely shit game.
>All the slow walk+talk segments designed to waste your time.
>All that filler even a newcomer like me notices.
>Gameplay is okay, but fucks up in really obvious ways.
>Hard mode was almost good, but you can't use items or restore SP in any way so it's just kinda ok but unnecessarily a slog.
>Tried too hard to put all the traditional endgame stuff in the first volume.
>Sephiroth comes out of nowhere to be a final boss because of course he is, gotta cash in on the nostalgiafag money I guess.
it's such a worthless product of shareholder insistence.

On the upside it made me go back and finally play FF7 and that was a significantly better game, not to mention a finished product.

>>720097970 (OP)
all the above, easy

>spend infinity gorillion bajillion dollars on a game thats exclusive to a dead system
>get surprised when it "underperforms"

>>720097970 (OP)
The public had the perception that they censored tifa, one of gaming's iconic women, to conform to dei mandates.
Why did ya think the Japanese bought new graphics cards just before rebirth came out? It was so they can play it on pc and mod tifa just the way the like it, uncensored.

>>720097970 (OP)
Japan is entering it's woke-era. They have a rough decade ahead of them.

>>720097970 (OP)
Both good games, but with flaws. Final Fantasy is unfortunately in an era where the hateboner against it is too big.
Just look at fucking Slopkong winning best action over VII. Or Spider-Man 2 getting a GOTY nomination over XVI. What a farce.

>>720100068
The marketing campaign for 16 was excessive.

>>720106381
Yeah? Where?
Easily blockable banner ads on the big gaming websites nobody with an IQ above 50 uses?
Ad-booster ads on free low-effort brainrot mobile games?
TV ads where nobody will see them but the handful of boomers left paying for cable TV?
Radio ads?
Standees at Gamestop?
Best they've got is NEW RELEASE!!! advertisements on game storefronts like Steam and the Xbox store, but ehh...?

201X-202X marketing is a completely different ball game, companies really need to figure this shit out, they can't just shit out the same methods from decades ago like that and expect everything to go well.
Bare MINIMUM, sponsor streamers or give them free copies of your game a couple days early, nigga.
Games (and movies) spend literal tens/hundreds of millions on marketing? Fucking where? Where the fuck is all that money going?
I swear it's probably going to something stupid like slapping an ad in New York Times Square for a day or sending a gazillion pounds of free merch to all the mainline reviewers or something.

>>720105275
>hateboner
Final Fantasy simply doesn't gain new fans, they're just recycling the old ones outside of FF14 pulling some people in.
FF10 and 12 are probably the last mainline games to gain fans, and FF12 was made for the fuckin' PS2 (pee ess two), nineteen fuckin' years ago.
None of the 13 games had fans, FF15 was just kinda "there", and then Square Enix fucked off to go "remaster" all their 2D games about three times each because they don't really know how to really recapture that old FF essence. I mean hell, go look at that time all the remasters had that gross stock RPG Maker look to them for some reason, then they lazily upscaled the 3D games and that was just good enough.

I still replay 2, 5, and 9 every now and then, and I recently replayed 12 ILJS or whatever the fuck it's called (I'm going to replay it again with an overhaul mod soon), but I've had no interest in anything made after 12, they don't look interesting.

The fact is that most of the people who wanted to see a remake of FF7 are in their late 30s now and don't really give a fuck. The people who still give a fuck about FF7 are the weirdos who consumed every piece of extended media that SE crapped out and buy figurines and sponsored cup noodles and shit. They could have got away with it if they'd made just one game, but now they're staring down the barrell of a third triple-A budget game that they have to make that nobody fucking cares about.

Redditbirth

>>720100068
>and people are still autistic enough to feud over Aeri[th/s]'s name to this day
Eris Gainsborough.

>>720097970 (OP)
FF lost all appeal to me once graphics got 'good' and I found out that what they actually had for a vision was k-pop plastic characters

>>720097970 (OP)
Because its fanbase has primarily become old and miserable like yourself and they struggle with finding new fans for it, so it bleeds out over time.

>>720108640
Late 30s AND don't like the direction the remake went. I think most people just checked out the second the ghosts came into play.

>>720097970 (OP)
I'm sick and tired of Final Fantasy games being arbitrarily split into chapters. It makes them feel small and segmented like a Devil May Cry game.

>>720097970 (OP)
>release FFXI classic
Ok here's another 14 expansion lol
>patch the FFVIII remaster so it doesnt look so ass
Here's another "mash X to win" casualslop FF movie-game (15 and 16)
>ok fuck it fine VII Remaster or something, christ
Ok but we split it into multiple $100 parts and made it really woke and also into a movie-game
>meh whatever just fucking release a classic-style FF game
Ok we just copy-pasted pirated FF1~6 ROMs from the web and slapped em on mobile stores for $40 each

Its their own fault.
Retards have been purposefully killing their own business for decades and every time they get close to going bankrupt they get back out of it by doing contract cutscene work for other developers.

>>720109125
That was pretty much my experience, I loved 7/8/9 back on the ps1 and I was interested to see what a remake would be like. I didn't finish remake because of all of the padding and the direction that the story took, but I can imagine someone who has watched advent children fifty times shidding themselves over all the garbage they added that you have no idea about unless you've played all the psp games. I think they thought that there were more of those people left than there actually were.

FF really started to fall off when it stopped being (X) niggas in a row.

>>720108640
or it could be that people are interested in the remake but not interested in the episodic split across 3 games (not to mention the inevitable re-re-make or -master as it will be spanning multiple console gens). they could just have gotten smart and realized that square will have to do some kind of bundle release with all episodes or even a re-remake that unifies them into one game, and they're waiting to get that complete game instead of the piecemeal episodes. whereas pt1 had all the anticipation and hype, and pt3 represents the completion of the game, pt2 is naturally a weak middle point where it isn't showing anything new nor does it finish the story.

another massive weakness of the split is that the (baseline) plot is already known, so for example aerith's death in pt2 and cloud's true past, yet to be revealed in pt3, have already been spoiled for newcomers both because of their own curiosity when they google too hard and because old players never shut up about it. so even the new players who really got into pt1 have had their experience ruined by the yearslong gaps between each installment which has spoiled everything for people who actually gave enough of a shit to want to understand more about the plot.

square really did not think about the implications of this, they were so blinded by the greed of selling a remake 3 times.

>>720097970 (OP)
There's a noticeable phenomena of franchises that retained their original creators influence that have been able to sustain their success and even grow even more over time. Think Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, Dragon Quest, Monster Hunter, Souls, etc. Then on the other hand, you have the franchises that have been cut off from their original creators' guidance that have stumbled and fallen into irrelevancy and are merely basking in the shadow of past accomplishments, like Halo, Dead or Alive, and yes, even Final Fantasy.

The absence of the Gooch is obviously not everything, but it is a major factor.

>>720100068
>>splitting up the game into a bunch of different "games"
Having each part give the player gigamaxxed gear and materia and having them fight Darkness Destruction God, Devourer of Reality in some epic cinematic 20 minute final battle (and then starting from zero fighting wolves and slimes in the next part) was probably the single most retarded decision. The pacing and power scaling is total dogshit.

>>720097970 (OP)
Who could have thought that shitting up your flagship title with idiot multiverse bullshit instead of doing the remake you said you were going to do was going to lead to a huge fail.

>>720097970 (OP)
>Poor design?
>Bad writing?
This was my impression of the first part of the FFVII remake and is why I didn't buy its sequel. I also didn't buy XVI because XV sucked.
XIV is an absurdly long visual novel dressed up as an instanced, heavily simplified version of WoW.

... I liked Stranger of Paradise!

>>720109998
16 had an identity crisis where it couldn't decide whether it wanted to be Game of Thrones or anime. And of course, the best parts are when it full on anime. Unfortunately by the end, it was full on Game of Thrones mode. Season 8 Game of Thrones mode.

im honestly in awe that after all these years we get a modern ff7, andd they fuck it up to such a massive degree

even setting aside the story retardation

it has been 5 YEARS since the remake was first released and it STILL IS NOT COMPLETE

iome game, chopped up and released piecemal over the course of what will be an entire fucking DECADE, not o mention that it will span AT LEAST TWO CONSOLE GENERATIONS ith a HARD CAP between part 1 and 2 so you literally have to get an ENTIRE NEW CONSOLE just play past fucking MIDGAR

"it underperformed bros!"

BO FUCKING SHIT WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU EXPECT???

SDFGASFRGAGFDGAFDEHGATHJYRHJYRTIHJWIRYTJHIYRJHIRYTJHTIJHITJGITGJIRETJGIQWTAERIGJ

It's kind of weird how SE keeps making these high profile megaflops where they still keep trying to make some sort of gaudy cinematic game which doesn't even have an audience anymore.
Yes, pushing the boundaries of jrpgs into spectacles games was interesting in the PS1/PS2 era since it was a huge leap forward in gaming capabilities, but now it's old hat and people want the actual gameplay.
Nobody is impressed by your 17 minute long cinematic every half an hour of gameplay. People want the actual beef.

And it's frustrating since they clearly are capable of making a "classic" game as demonstrated by Brave Default and a plethora of side games. They have the talent and the know-how, they just refuse to make a higher end game of that type and keep trying to do the cinematic thing.
Never go full cinematic retard.

>>720110590
>Never go full cinematic retard.
Going cinematic is what got them big, that's the thing.

>>720110274
I would argue the anime parts were the worst parts, I will never forgive my brother becoming my flightpack so I can fight a dragon in space. Like none of its writing was worth mentioning in a positive light, but that moment was when I completely gave up on it.

>>720110775

Yeah but like I said that was back in the day when the leap into cinematic was relevant and breaking new grounds. Then it just feels like they're doing the same thing over and over and over. It doesn't seem fresh or interesting and instead comes off gaudy and overdesigned.

>>720097970 (OP)
16 was an incredibly mediocre game. it doesn't sell because it's just mid game after mid game. there are a lot of revisionists for 13 on this board now but it was a total pile of shit when it released and i think irreperably damaged the franchise.

>>720097970 (OP)
Deserved for censoring Yuffie and Tifa.

>>720108462
there were straight up massive billboard ads around towns.
the game also has many shitty crossover shill promotions. twitter and tiktok plastered with it.
tons of interviews with yoship talking about his butthurt over the JRPG label and similar that were talked about everywhere heavily.

it wasnt a marketing failure. everybody knew the game was coming. it was an unappealing game failure.

>>720108640
people wanted a real remake, not whatever SE sharted out.

>>720109889
nah zelda and monster hunter also sold out their original audience. they just got lucky with it.
well I guess MH wasnt, as they now shat the bed with wilds.

>>720097970 (OP)
because FF went from being an adventure to being a franchise for sad salarymen to push their donutsteel self-insert OCs into while disregarding the actual game itself. Everyone needs to go, there is not a singular good oldhead on the Square side. No more Lightnings, no more Nostis, no more Jaws-sequel Sephiroth. This is also really fucking funny because the Enix is the complete oposite, Yuji Horii is still based.

>>720111626
this is unappealing?

>>720111019
They probably just don't know where to take it anymore. Every release gives them mixed signals. FF7 put the core identity of FF on the line and it's biting them in the ass all these years later. They're expected to iterate on the same thing but innovate at the same time. Every new game feels like this strange combination of playing it safe while also moving further away from the roots of the IP in an attempt to be the next big thing.

>>720111793
Wilds sold 10 millions in like 2 days

>>720112256
And the sales went off the cliff instantly. It's not gonna reach world sales and maybe not even rise.

>>720097970 (OP)
Is it finally time for everyone to admit that Final Fantasy is a dead series and it hasn't been good or truly relevant for nearly 20 years now?

FFXII is debatable to some but I'll be generous. It came out in 2006, which is 19 years ago now. The last truly universally well received FF game was FFX which came out in 2001. The only good FF MMO was FFXI which came out in 2002.

Look at everything which has come out after these titles. The FFXIII trilogy was a flop. FFXV was a flop. FFXVI was a flop. The FFVII remakes are mediocre. FFXIV has been the only mild success for them in terms of monetary value but even that is a failure by the series archaic lofty standards and is crashing hard right now with many admitting it wasn't that good to begin with.

Final Fantasy simply isn't relevant anymore and hasn't been for a long, long time. There are two entire generations who have grown up with Final Fantasy at its worst.

>>720111626
Nigga, I live within walking distance of Seattle (and walk there sometimes, even though I hate it. I like getting bao buns there) and I didn't see any XVI billboards or ads.
Plus Twitter and Tiktok accounts only work for advertising if you're already following them, same with the interviews, it's all advertising to people who are probably already going to buy it and/or they already know about it, which really just spins back to the "the only people that buy FF games anymore are the people who already just buy them because they're Final Fantasy games" thing mentioned a few times in this thread.

>>720097970 (OP)
I bought a PS5 just for Rebirth and honestly is the only game from the current generation that I actually liked. That first playthrough was magical, and the second playthrough on hard was even better.

>>720097970 (OP)
because it be a unc game noone normal wants to touch it

>Take a beloved classic
>Shit on its legacy and insert the fans of the original as bad ghosts trying to keep the story from changing
>Wonder why your game underperformed

Every sane person knew Rebirth would flop after Remake was le ebin rugpull. People bought the game Final Fantasy 7 Remake because they wanted to play a remake of Final Fantasy 7 not Kingdom Hearts bullshit. Doesn't help that Remake and Rebirth are so bad on their own merits.

>>720112380
>Plus Twitter and Tiktok accounts only work for advertising if you're already following them
no

>>720110590
>It's kind of weird how SE keeps making these high profile megaflops
Been like this since the Enix merger.
There's a reason FFXI was the last good FF game.
It was already 90% done before the merger and the talent that made X and XI hung around until mid-late 00s.
SE hemmoraged money during the 00s and the 10s relying on FFXI subscriptions and outsourced cutscene side-gig work to stay afloat while they worked on "Project X" (FFXIV).
We ended up with a half-baked WoW clone aimed at very casual players which alienated their core fanbase.
The new Singleplayer FF games are nothing like the classic pre-X FF games people liked, so again they appeal to mega-casuals.
The old guard have all long since left the company, either retired, died or quit.

SE and FF is just a shadow of its former self and like everything in Japan, just floats along on its prestige of being "nostalgic popular thing", just like Pokemon, Nintendo, Evangelion, Doraemon, Conan etc.
They're creatively bankrupt and dug themselves into a hole they're too talentless and retarded to dig themselves out of.
FF17 will be the same old shit, mash X button to get to next cutscene.
FF14's next expansion will be the same shit. Le wacky cutscenes with "dont stand in the red circles" popups on screen.

It took the old Final Fantasy games 3 years to produce between major titles. The current Square Enix are too slow.