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[gamechanger87]

I bet the remake will surpass the original's sales considering it will be multiplatform (albeit timed).

I think your expectations for a 20 year old remake that will be released episodically and despite the changes to the contrary will still need to maintain a semblance of the historical turn-based structure are seriously overblown.

People seriously believe that a remake of a 20 year old game will sell 10M copies?

The appetite for a FF7 remake is huge on gaming forums but won't be able to hit the way it did back then.

 

[DrROBschiz]

This project is SE going all out. It could end great or badly. Hard to see an in-between.

explains all teh expanded media and product offerings

insulating and diversifying where they can get returns on this game/brand

 

[orthodoxy1095]

I guess this makes all the media blitz yesterday make even more sense. I just don't think this is going to happen. It's possible I guess, but it'll be a hard slog.

 

[Nirolak]

What does this mean? That they break even on their budget? Does that mean it has a 600m budget?

There's average sale price of the game which will not be $60, and then there's the opportunity cost of just investing the development and marketing budget into the stock market and collecting a massive return over a 10 year timespan.

They want a major return in order to make investing this money in the first place worthwhile.

 

[Instro]

They must have a substantial marketing campaign coming I guess.

 

[Blackleg-sanji1]

How long is the "lifespan" of a game like this? Like by the end of 2016 probably. well, good luck.

Why would it be at the end of 2016? Come on now people

 

[Admiral Woofington]

RIP Square Enix and any big budget JRPGs if this happens.

Who knew, it only took 15 entries to get the real FINAL fantasy.

To be completely fair this game took fucking ages so it can't be used as the rule but the exception.

But whatever I'm fine with p5 type of jrpgs

 

[HyperOne]

This says it all.

What a bomb waiting to happen. Sucks, because it looks like they put tons of effort in. I can't imagine after the brand damage done by the XIII series this has a shot in hell of making ten million.

 

[entremet]

RIP Square Enix and any big budget JRPGs if this happens.

Who knew, it only took 15 entries to get the real FINAL fantasy.

Isn't SE the only company making big budget JRPGs anyway?

No idea of XBX budget, but that's 1st party so less risky for Nintendo. They could also reuse the engine so costs are spread out.

 

[GhostTrick]

Damn, that's not gonna be easy. It may work though, but only if PC version is not a technical sham.

Late PC release means the game will have to get a great word of mouth. Konami was smarter, they got MGSV on same day and date and they enjoyed a far bigger sale volume.

You can bet that if the game was late, bad word of mouth would've resulted in a different outcome. Despite the game being really good.

Now if FFXV gets an FFXIII rep... Welp, any late port is dead in the water. Especially at full price.

 

[Altered Juice]

You're not getting ffvii drive by sales. Good luck with that.

 

[AtomskEater]

Hm, I can see them getting really close to that, especially if they release a PC port sooner rather than later. I was just thinking the other day what their costs must look like with the long development time and now the free movie/anime.

 

[jholmes]

I'm not surprised, I just watched the first part of their free anime and my first thought was that Square-Enix is spending entirely too much on what was already an all-time boondoggle.

My second thought was that the writing was really shit, which doesn't bode well for the game's quality, or its chances at selling 10 million copies.

 

[And_Gignac]

But who knows, this game kind of feels like a relaunch of the franchise and going by the witcher 3, open world RPGs can succeed. But I think the aesthetic and the juvenile premise won't help the game reaching the audience The Witcher 3 got.

 

[georly]

It can do it if it gets tons of re-releases, sales, and ports. They're more likely to make up the money w/ spin-offs though. More mobile games, 15-2, etc. It also needs to review really well, so here's hoping. Best of luck SE.

 

[JetSetRadio]

Good luck, that demo won't help either.

 

[Floody]

What does this mean? That they break even on their budget? Does that mean it has a 600m budget?

With them saying "to succeed", I'd assume no. Wouldn't be surprised if it cost a few 100m though.

 

[SolidSnakex]

I get you, but FF7 has been rereleased on every platform under the sun over the last 19 years to get where it has and Final Fantasy will never be GTA levels of popular.

I think FFXV can do 10 million, but maybe not in the window Square needs for it to be a total success? It might takes years to reach 10mil and Square needs to recoup that investment immediately.

Of course it's not going to be GTA level. The most recent GTA has sold over 50m units. But 10m over the course of its life really isn't all that outlandish. As I mentioned, even The Last of Us is close to or has possibly exceeded that number. And that's a new IP.

 

[LegendofLex]

When you're trying to repair your franchise's tarnished reputation, that's not exactly the time to start aiming for the clouds in terms of sales. Build up goodwill first, then pour in the budget to make the 10m+ sellers.

You only really get sales explosions when no one was put off horribly by your older games and your newer ones are "right place, right time." Good examples: GTA, Call of Duty, Skyrim.

 

[Garrett Hawke]

Oh dear.

 

[Kathian]

I mean it might but what a bizzare target.

 

[ODDI]

It could get there at least I'll do my part to help.

 

[Nirolak]

Yup, it's definitely an uphill battle.

Using my friends as an example, so many have shown resistance to the latest footage because they can't get their head around/get comfortable with the concepts shown.

FF is still very Japanese in aesthetic. It won't be easy to get the masses onboard.

It also took CD Projekt three game's worth of refinement on the concept to get it to the point where it really broke out.

This is the team's first attempt at making something like this on a large scale. It's almost assuredly going to have some rough spots.

And that's fine. New concepts are hard, but you usually don't set your expectations at the moon while trying them.

 

[KingBroly]

There's average sale price of the game which will not be $60, and then there's the opportunity cost of just investing the development and marketing budget into the stock market and collecting a massive return over a 10 year timespan.

They want a major return in order to make investing this money in the first place worthwhile.

Also probably why they have so many tie-ins for it. The cost of this game must be gargantuan.

 

[KillerMan91]

RIP Square Enix and any big budget JRPGs if this happens.

Who knew, it only took 15 entries to get the real FINAL fantasy.

Square is not going to die no matter how much this game bombs( if it bombs). They are financially really healthy company nowadays. Of course XV bombing would mean probably death of big budget JRPGs from them.

 

[Feral Gingy]

 

[YankeeDonB]

Tall order. I can see this ending up quite good and selling quite well, reception of platinum demo notwithstanding (don't believe any long RPG demos well - need story engagement and gradual build up of mechanical gameplay complexity to shine). But most of that's going to have to be in the West....

 

[Foffy]

One million for every year?

I think this game is auto-bomba. That's a crazy amount of copies to be sold, and they're caught in the double-bind of a transmedia project, too.

- Investing beyond the game costs a lot of money
- They do this because they need a return for the game

I have a feeling their FFVII remake is secretly their trojan horse of sustainability here. Multiple games over many years means a lot of money to be recouped, so they better not fuck that up by changing too much or splitting the remake through too many episodes.

 

[shotgunbob04]

Probably not going to hit 10mil but they'll probably get to at least half of that in the first few months.

It's been shaping up for years now to be a game with great art direction but lacking in technical performance. Played the Platinum Demo and my eyes actually hurt from the low resolution/framerate.

 

[NipplesAndToes23]

Whoo. SE might be fucking up again. I was questioning with the amount of money it looks like they put into this. 10 million is a lot just to start hitting profit. For the betterment of the company, I hope they hit that shit, but it's hard for me to imagine it considering the genre.

 

[Ydelnae]

What does this mean? That they break even on their budget? Does that mean it has a 600m budget?

No, for it to break even its budget it wouldn't have to sell 10M, but much less. It needs to sell 10M to prove that AAA JRPGs are still a viable inversion in today's industry. If the game ends up selling 6M, it doesn't mean that they lost money or that they are abandoning the market.

 

[CrimsonCrescendo]

Ah yes, the wonderful game of escalating production costs and increased sales expectations:

XIII was expected to do ~6 million: http://kotaku.com/5369888/square-enix-wants-to-sell-over-six-million-copies-of-ffxiii

Now 10 million is the baseline for success.

 

[Pooya]

Why would it be at the end of 2016? Come on now people

Lifespan being shelf life of the game, sales fall off after the first months. The pocket sales they get later on isn't going to push it to 10 million. You have to sell the bulk of it upfront. This isn't GTA or Call of Duty, those are exceptions.

 

[Wario64]

I guess they haven't taken into account the millions of dollars they'll extract by suing GameSpot for the leak

 

[Squire]

How long is the "lifespan" of a game like this? Like by the end of 2016 probably. well, good luck. JP sales aren't going to help much this time, probably won't even hit a million there.

Oh, are they not impressed with this?

 

[Feichaw]

The only SE game that has a potential to get 10+ million sales is Final Fantasy VII Remake.

Good luck.

 

[Rinさとり]

Wont reach that without PC version

 

[Crimsonclaw111]

Those expectations and no PC version.

Lol

 

[PancakeAlmighty]

Add on a expectetly delayed PC port to attract double dippers, and I think it'll break 10 mil over time, but at launch or even the same year? Hell no

 

[Fishlake]

I just wonder at what price those 10 million need to sell at on average. Steam sales are great but if you don't make up the cost 10 million steam sales can be very little compared to full price. It says over its whole lifetime but that does not tell you how much they have spent on this. I hope this pays off for them but I really hate seeing companies gamble with large games that can bring down a whole studio.

 

[Maxim726X]

It also took CD Projekt three game's worth of refinement on the concept to get it to the point where it really broke out.

This is the team's first attempt at making something like this on a large scale. It's almost assuredly going to have some rough spots.

And that's fine. New concepts are hard, but you usually don't set your expectations at the moon while trying them.

Sadly, it doesn't appear that they can afford rough spots...

So. When this game inevitably fails to reach these lofty expectations, what happens to SE?

 

[DrROBschiz]

It also took CD Projekt three game's worth of refinement on the concept to get it to the point where it really broke out.

This is the team's first attempt at making something like this on a large scale. It's almost assuredly going to have some rough spots.

And that's fine. New concepts are hard, but you usually don't set your expectations at the moon while trying them.

Well they have lots of opportunities to continuously make money on this over its lifetime outside of just game sales

 

[Pilgrimzero]

Good luck with that square. You haven't made a good FF since 10.

 

[APZonerunner]

I figured their upper-tier target would've been 8 to 8.5 million, which would be around 2 million more than FF13 before mega cheap PC fire sales rewarded it an extra million to get it to 7, and similar numbers to FF8 and 10. That feels achievable if all the stars align. This just feels mad. I can't see it at all unless it genuinely reviews in the mid 90s and is a top-tier GOTY contender and has the word of mouth to match, Witcher 3 style.

Best of luck to them, though. I'd really love to see this game succeed on the level they want it to.

 

[CHC]

It may or may not sell that much, I'm not going to say that it can't.

However I'm going to have a hard time feeling bad for SE if it doesn't because changing the direction of the game about a dozen times since the initial reveal was quite foolish. I'm sure they wound up scrapping about 10x more content than the end-user will ever see in the finished product, and the whole production of this has been a bloated mess.

Then factor in other stuff like hiring celebrity voice actors (always a monumental waste of money) and deals with brands like Audi... the budget is just inflated beyond belief.

 

[Obliterator]

CDPR recently announced the Witcher series as a whole has sold around 10 million with the Witcher 3 making like half of that if I recall correctly

No Witcher series has shipped 20 million with half of that being Witcher 3. So almost 10 million.

 

[duckroll]

With them saying "to succeed", I'd assume no. Wouldn't be surprised if it cost a few 100m though.

Tabata recently commented on the budget and said that even including all the shit they wrote off when Versus was canned, the entire 10 year cycle for the project isn't remotely close to the numbers thrown around for GTAV and Destiny. So it's probably closer to 100 million than "a few hundred" million.

 

[djnewwest]

Never happen with these characters. Noctis and the whole J Pop boyband is cringe worthy.
As a grown ass man, Id be embarrassed to be caught playing this game. I grew up playing Final Fantasy. Starting with FF1 on the Nes. It used to be about warriors and knights in armor with shields and swords. Not this bullshit skinny kid boyband crap.
After playing the demo FF is still dead to me

It will sell good in Japan though.

 

[kromeo]

The only SE game that has a potential to get 10+ million sales is Final Fantasy VII Remake.

Good luck.

Maybe im way off the mark but I think this will sell more than 7 remake..

 

[Nirolak]

Sadly, it doesn't appear that they can afford rough spots...

So. When this game inevitably fails to reach these lofty expectations, what happens to SE?

They re-evaluate how they handle AAA productions most likely.

Their income will be fine though. They released jack shit last fiscal year and made record setting bank on the strength of their mobile and to a lesser extent MMO business.