This makes a lot of sense. I agree with your post.
There is another factor that will matter a lot for FFXV though. How well it is received by the critics? Will it be another black spot in the history of franchise or actually regain the trust of fans and bring new ones to the series. If FFXV receives critical acclaim, it shouldn't have much issue in achieving its sales target. Sadly it is not as easy since the game is being released after FFXIII.
I don't think a game like FFXIII could have sold as well as it did (6-7 million) if it was released after a critical failure. So FFXV has a tough hill to climb.
Quality is a big concern for Square Enix in general at this point. They've long since lost the luster where simply having their name on the box - or the name of one of their premier brands - put great faith in their products.
Given that we've run into scenarios where they've taken the Final Fantasy name off of a product instead of putting it on, and the amount of consumer facing feedback they try to obtain, I believe they recognize this is an issue as well. Learnings from the service model of video games appear to be something they're trying to integrate into their games across the board, though it's notably more awkward with singleplayer products.
But yes, given the mixed reaction to Final Fantasy XIII, I feel that Final Fantasy XV is a game that's mostly going to have to earn sales on its own merits as opposed to the strength of its brand name. Successes or failures here will impact a lot of the remaining good will for new entries in the franchise.
And, to be frank, there just haven't been many mainline games in the series lately. While most of their old fans seem to still play video games given the size of the modern industry, a lot of them have fallen off being interested in Final Fantasy itself, and there's a whole new generation or two of gamers who never viewed Final Fantasy as a major series.
I also wonder how the FF7R project might have affected their projections for FFXV. It's now facing competition within its own brand.
As for this, I believe the timing is such that it shouldn't really matter. If the game is unappealing, it was going to tank anyway, regardless of FF7R potentially releasing a year or more afterwards.
So Nirolak depending on how much they actually expect to sell do you think they're only expecting 1:4 ratio for Japanese sales?
I speculated that the reason they were throwing so much at PS4 in Japan is because FF still gets around a third of its sales from Japan(and that's at a nadir).
For this though I wrote out my expectations here in the Persona vs FFXV thread:
If my numbers seem a bit high, I'm mentally adjusting for this being the only numbered Final Fantasy this generation and thus having a very long shelf life at low prices.
That and Tabata pretty much confirmed a late PC port at GamesCom so that's got to add a decent number over quite a few years.
My math pretty much works out as follows.
First, the low end. It would be pretty shocking if they couldn't ship 1 million in Japan + Asia. They usually do about 2/3rds of their business outside of Japan, but Japan is depressed due to the PS4, so I'll round up to about 1.25 million per NA and Europe each. Put in 500K over several years for an eventual PC port (FF13 has pretty much done that) for 4 million.
On the higher end, let's say it hits 1.5 million in Japan, sells 2/3rds outside of Japan for 1.5 million in each other region for 4.5 million. If we put in 750K for PC over two years (which is more on par with what Metal Gear has done in ~4 months, and FF7 has already done 920K on Steam), you get 5.25 million. If the game is an ~85-88 type of title, on the console side maybe you get something like 2 million in North America and 1.75 million in Europe instead of an average of 1.5 million each and hit 6 million.
Now, if they just totally blow it out of the water, sure, it could get a lot higher, but I'm not writing that down into the expectations until I see something that really screams "Wow this is going to be huge!" at me.
This was covering what I felt a probable range of sales were, to note. While I cover the breakout hit side, it's also possible the product is just seen as super unappealing and completely tanks in the West. We did end up with a scenario where Lightning Returns seemed to do a fair bit worse than Bravely Default in the US and it's not like Bravely Default was a mega hit.
However, that would be the kind of catastrophic failure that fits in my "If they have 3 million sales, they need to go back to the drawing board and figuring out what to do is much harder." scenario mentioned earlier.
